Abstract Sitting down and standing up are such elementary gestures that we forget they perform a social choreography. Depending on context, these actions can signify obedience, resistance, attention, solidarity, threat, humility, rest or elimination. During a residency in Berlin (2024), I started exploring how sitting down and standing up operate in my cultural context, from the commands I internalised as a child to displays of dominance. This pre-verbal language of power plays out in institutional rituals (“All rise", "You may be seated", "Please stand for the national anthem”), in playground elimination games (musical chairs, last one down is out) but also in acts of care (sitting at someone’s bedside, rising to embrace, crouching to meet a dog’s eyes). Every time we sit or stand, we reposition ourselves in relation to others. My research aims to articulate the language embedded in this vertical movement, and to disrupt its automaticity. When the automatic grows strange, things become interesting.

I propose to share my practice through a 15-20 minute lecture-performance in which spoken word alternates with instructions. The audience will be asked to sit and stand repeatedly, under different verbal framing. I unpack the choreography of sitting and standing as a social script, while simultaneously demonstrating it. The format is experimental, simple, and politically urgent.