MoverWitness
MoverWitness is a practice of embodied observation in which moving and witnessing provide different perspectives upon a shared event.
The Practice
What is often referred to as Janet Adler's Discipline of Authentic Movement forms the ground of Eila Goldhahn's creative practice, research and teaching. The practice attends both to the mover's embodied experience and to the witness's observation of movement from a different position.
Questioning the term authentic, with its implication of an underlying or universal truth, Goldhahn proposed the term MoverWitness in her doctoral research, Shared Habitats: the MoverWitness Paradigm (2007). The name emphasises the relational structure of the practice and the distinct perspectives of mover and witness.
The dyadic practice can expand into group forms in which participants move and witness within the same unfolding event. In these group forms, Goldhahn uses the term Shared Habitat to describe a common field constituted through multiple viewpoints rather than a single shared perspective.
MoverWitness is practised over time. Movement, witnessing, speaking and reflection develop attention to one's own embodied experience while making perceptible the differences between how an event is experienced, observed and subsequently described.
Research
MoverWitness has been taught by Eila in higher education contexts including Plymouth University, the University of Ottersberg and the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki, both as an artistic practice and as a methodology for arts-led research.
Her continuing research asks what MoverWitness can contribute to questions of observation, perception and knowledge across artistic and interdisciplinary contexts.
Learning MoverWitness
Eila teaches MoverWitness through workshops and small ongoing groups. The practice develops over time through moving, witnessing, reflection, reading and discussion.
Two groups currently meet monthly in Bristol and Devon. Workshops provide opportunities to encounter the practice in shorter formats, while ongoing groups allow participants to develop greater familiarity with moving, witnessing and the language that emerges from the practice.
For those wishing to deepen their engagement, Eila also offers individual mentoring and study alongside group practice.
Enquiries about workshops, ongoing groups, individual study and training are welcome via the contact form.
Supervision & Consultancy
Alongside this work, Eila facilitates mentoring, supervision and consultancy in collaboration with partners in education and the public arts. She is a mentor within an EU-funded German support network for women artists.
She also works with organisations interested in embodied observation and creative practice within interdisciplinary research. Her current enquiry considers what attention to the embodied position of the observer might contribute to research across the humanities and natural sciences.