Artists Reach Out: Londs Reuter

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Londs Reuter

Londs Reuter
(photo: Alexis Ruiseco-Lombera)

Londs Reuter is a dancer and dance-maker based in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently choreographing towards the question: what does it take to be brave?

Londs has received support from New York Live Arts (Fresh Tracks 2014-2015), Danspace Project (Food for Thought), and the Knockdown Center (Sunday Sessions). She has been in residence at MANCC (Forward Dialogues 2019), Snug Harbor Cultural Center, PLAYA Summer Lake, and Center for Performance Research. As a dancer, she has performed in museums for Ceclia Vicuña and Simone Forti, in galleries for Abigail Levine, on film for Sarah AO Rosner, and on the many illustrious downtown stages of New York for Ursula Eagly, Will Rawls, Marissa Perel, Jillian Sweeney, and Katy Pyle/the Ballez.

Londs (usually) spends many of her days working in museums, generating time- and space-based strategies that prioritize the presence of disabled people in cultural space. She established the Access Programs at the Brooklyn Museum and currently works in accessibility at the Whitney. Londs is one course away from a Master’s Degree in Disability Studies from the City University of New York. londsreuter.com

Londs Reuter and Jacob Slominski participating in
the 2019 MANCC Forward Dialogues program at
Florida State University
(photo: Chris Cameron)

From left, Dan Reuter, Londs Reuter,
Jordan Morley and Lydia Mokdessi
at Judson Memorial Church
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

My current project, Private Inventory or No Health Insurance, is an improvisational movement practice that has been morphing towards writing and documentation for the past year. I was going to publish a printed work through 53rd State Press in 2020. Printing is not currently a possibility, but publishing is possible. I’m working with my editor, fellow dance artist Laurel Atwell, to determine an online format that can hold the project. I’m excited to place the work in an open-source context, which actually feels better suited to the ideas of the project.

I was working on this project while in residence at PLAYA in Summer Lake, Oregon, for the first three weeks of March. I was in a rural, isolated location while the pandemic was taking root in New York City. It was frightening to hear about new realities in New York while I looked out at a sublime alkaline lake in the high desert of Central Oregon. I left the residency early and returned to a different home than I’d left.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I was a ham and an extrovert in childhood, so my parents (who are both therapists) pushed me towards performative extracurriculars. In puberty, I started to climb around inside myself and embodiment practices really resonated with me—though I didn’t yet have this language. I went to a Christian boarding school for high school, which sent me even deeper inside. In adulthood, I started to climb back out. I came out as a lesbian at 18, I found somatics in college, and when I moved to New York at 22, I started to expand my understanding of what counts as choreography. Each step was an opening—and it was scary at the time.

My work has been winding in and out of conversations about disability, because my life winds in and out of this context. To be fair, I wander through unlimited contexts, but this one had been right there all along. I just wasn’t ready to be accountable to it.

I have often empowered my family as material to my choreography. My brother has been a major collaborator (in my life and my art) for many years, and he’s autistic. Our collaboration pushed me to be more accountable to how ableism is bound up in my work, because it’s embedded in my environment, my behavior, my practices.

I’ve been following this dance of accountability, especially towards the ableism I’d allowed to be invisible to me (which was in service of my power as a non-disabled person). This has led me to graduate work in Disability Studies, accessibility work in cultural spaces, and an expanded community of artists and artistic practices.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I got kicked off my catastrophic healthcare plan when I turned 30 and learned that no medical records follow me around. I have never seen a physician more than once, because, as a freelancer, I was always bouncing around from one plan to the next (when I even had one). I decided to start generating documentation about my body—an archive big enough to hold standard medical information based in imperial metric systems as well as intuitive information that would normally be dismissed by the medical industry. I call this practice Private Inventory or No Health Insurance.

This practice has allowed me to better understand my material, thereby strengthening the possibility that I’ll use my resources well. It has helped me look at my body as it is—with its limits and peculiarities and daily tumult—to recognize my utility and pivot away from harmful ideas of health, beauty, or individualism. I can only reach so high alone and THAT IS OK.

I’m practicing being accountable to my body as my material, which is a rigorous pursuit in these stressful times, and I’m envisioning a future where we lead with the needs (both loud and quiet) of the body instead of the demands of industry.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I’m trying not to treat this moment of crisis as an opportunity. I’m trying to do my part to keep my neighbors safe and our social systems intact. I see my whole life as the Art Project and dance sits inside of that. Right now, tuning into the possibilities of stillness, breathwork, meditation, and home-practices like cooking and cleaning—that’s the dance right now, because the Art Project requires it.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

In my Private Inventory practice, I have many scores that tune the dancer into their particular material: its pliancy, its hairiness, its immunity, its boundaries. While the practice was not made for a pandemic, it was indeed informed by the work of disability justice leaders. This moment of disease is showing us, on a larger scale, the ways productivity is not a measure of intellect, of capacity, or of eligibility for healthcare! Disability justice thinkers are some of the folks leading the path forward through this revolution and, in this way, my practice feels aligned with a new world we’re currently imagining.

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

I’d like to offer an anti-capitalist score from Private Inventory.

Instead of fully exerting yourself, try moving in the middle of your range. Instead of a total extension, perhaps you stretch your limb only 50% as much as you can. Instead of jumping, perhaps you simply give your body the feeling of loft. As you begin to find the middle of your range, see if you can sense what 50% effort might mean to a body like yours. How about 20% effort? 75%? How can you calibrate your effort to circumstances that ask too much or too little of you?

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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