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Obsessed with Light is not a bio-pic of pioneer Loïe Fuller, but rather an insightful examination of the artistry and incredible impact her work still has on contemporary culture, including artists like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Taylor Swift and Shakira. The American creator of modern dance, Fuller (1862-1928), created a completely new kind of spectacle which combined dance, fabric and movement. She propelled herself into swirling abstractions which made audiences gasp and she immediately understood the importance of copyright and protecting the ownership of innovations. Creating a dialogue between the past and the present, artists such as Robert Wilson, Bill T. Jones, Iris van Herpen, William Kentridge, Trajal Harrell and Studio Drift speak about her influence in their own work. ​

At The Function (I Shake My Ass) is a hybrid video game performance in which maker Connor Cook controls live a video game environment with his body and a dance pad. The work emerges from year-long research into subcultures surrounding dance-based rhythm arcade games like 'Dance Dance Revolution' or 'In the Groove'.

In the niche subculture 'Stamina Play', efficiency, quantification and speed have an extreme importance, resulting in the dancer’s body to become merged with the machine in an unsettling and impressive way. In this machinic evolution of dance, the dancer’s movements are reduced to little more than a rapid foot wiggle. Cook’s research views the awkward, optimized movements of the dancers as an allegory for our contemporary technological culture under late capitalism, similarly organized around efficiency, standardization and submission.

The performance attempts to reinject the possibility to dance with technology, by reappropriating the logic of the dance game in order to articulate an alternative relationship to technology that is open, indeterminate and playful.

Connor Cook is a recent master graduate from the Design Academy of Eindhoven and previously studied architecture at Harvard University. He received the Pierre Keller Award at the Hublot Design Prize ‘22 for his practice of computational performance.

A figure transitions between two realities: An external material one - in which they are subjected to increasing levels of social interaction - picking up ‘human’ traits as they go. And an internal fluid one - in which they are able to seek refuge to be and feel themselves.

EXT. is centred around the experience of someone trying to figure out what it is to be ‘human’. The film is a reference to our experiences as social animals and the often absurd evolution we go through, to adapt to society.

It also references gender exploration - the journey of an initially gender neutral character, that is increasingly nudged to conform to a binary - in order to fit in - and their escape to a fluid space, devoid of expectations and norms.

The film uses movement instead of dialogue as a means of expression and follows the protagonist on their awkward journey through different surroundings, like an avatar in a computer game.