In this phase of research we started to create a fictional archive of earthly, contemporary, lived experiences and focused on modes of being with each other in choreographic and playful ways. The residency in Lake studios is part of Judiths multidisciplinary project HORIZON PROBLEMS and will be premiering in Sophiensaele this autumn. Inspired by the novel „The Dispossessed“ by Sci-Fi writer Ursula LeGuin the work flirts with the idea of a speculative, anarchistic Mars colony that elevates difference, constant negotiation and imperfect unisons to virtues of coexistence.

MADE IN BERLIN – Senat funded residency

My name is Sunia Asbach and I brought my character ARNE and its habitat with me for the time at Lake Studios.

I have already went a long way with ARNE and when I arrived at Lake Studios -two weeks late because of an infection with Covid- I had following tought in my mind:

>Think< less. >Do< more. Become concrete.

…
it worked.
and I am super happy about it.

After a longer period of studying ARNE and it existence itself I returned to let the figure speak by it actions.

MADE IN BERLIN – Senat funded residency

hey! my name is Am Ertl. I work as dancer and am at the moment based in Berlin and Stockholm.

i spent the time at lake studios attenting to my dancing. it was an extreme luxury to give time and space just to the practice of dancing.
it was almost like i was knocking on dance’s door with curiousity who would open everyday.
in that process i made many different scores, games, tasks. some of which i threw away, others to which i returned again and again.

one game i made i call The D and The M. its a game that plays with the relationship between music, dance and language. it is very simple:

the basic instruction is this:

DANCE _______ MUSIC

then fill the blank with different words like:

TO
FOR
THROUGH
WITH
INSIDE OF
INTO
TOWARDS
BECAUSE OF
THE
DESPITE OF
NEXT TO
UNDER
OVER
ABOVE
AGAINST
AWAY FROM
OUT OF

i play the same song over and over again. each time i step onto the dancefloor, i embody a different relationship with the song. dancing from a different position, through relation.
to be affected, to attend to my dancing and the track, the music. characters emerge, stories appear. how i listen to the song changes each time, depending on what words i have given myself as a task – depending on what story i dance.

there is something about repetition that is just great. playing the same song over and over again gives me a frame to work within, a structure to relate my movement towards, a cluster in which i can jump move dance feel in, a box to shake. each time it plays, i get to know it better, different. i start to recognize details, nuances, layers. its a meeting. handshake

repitition in this way makes it possible for me to recognize what has changed. to attend to change by reapeating.
it makes me think of this exercise i learned, where the task is to repeat the same movement. but u always repeat the version of the movement u just did. that way it completely transforms, changes. u have to be super attentive to detail.
also it makes me think of disintegration loops by william basinski. i love that album. he used old tapes of his compositions and cut a part of them, then glued that part together (a literal loop) and put it in the casette player. one track is around 1 hour long and while you listen the tape breaks a tiny bit each time its being played. slowly the repeated loop is changing, like clay reshaping. disintegrating… i once made a movement score based on disintegration somehow. we moved from breaking apart on the inside bit by bit.
now i also have to think of my collegue Morgane, didn’t you make an exercise in school that was similar? i remember seeing the videos from the class dancing to one song they just listened to, but in the studio there’s another one playing – it looked very funny.
and of course now i also think about stina nyberg’s piece splendour!

coming back to this game The D and The M – what i found when playing this game dance was that my dancing grew into – i dont know how to call it – characters, personalities. i felt certain feelings depending on which word i chose. whole worlds opened up to me through this game. worlds in which i was on a mission of some sort. courting, digging, pushing, hiding, pretending, glorifying, denying, dying, burying, mourning.

heres a list of songs i used in this game:

prizewinning by julianna barwick
otherside by perfume genius
good ones by perfume genius
golden hours by brian eno
to the moon and back by fever ray
formwela 1 by esperanza spalding
wait a minute! by willow smith
in the air tonight by phil collins
saint claude by christine and the queens

MADE IN BERLIN Residency – supported by Berlin Senat

MADE IN BERLIN Residency – supported by Berlin Senat

Azzie McCutcheon is a Berlin based dance artist interested in performance as transformation: a place for the sharing, exchanging, understanding and developing of human experience. Creating as dancer, choreographer, movement practitioner and teacher, her work spans different performative styles including performance installation, physical theatre, dance comedy, dance film, contemporary dance and fusion belly dance. Recurrent themes of research include: perception, blurring boundaries, the spaces in between, the uncanny, creating character and narrative through physicality. Most of her work aims not to create linear narrative, but rather endeavours to invite the possibility of engaging or affecting an audience on a visceral level.

Introduction

I decided to use this residency to continue a project called Limbus (working title). The project began during previous residencies where I explored themes related to the need for control in unfamiliar situations, which in turn led me to research ‘the uncanny’. I am interested in the uncanny as:

“the familiar made strange, or the strange rendered familiar” Sara Meyers

          and                                                                                             

” a mental state of projection that precisely eldies the boundaries of the real and the unreal in order to provoke a disturbing ambiguity, a slippage between waking and dreaming” Anthony Vidler

I recounted discoveries made previously and pulled together themes, moments and references that interested me the most:

• Blurring of form using fog and backlight
• Chair image
• recorded voice: experiences of unfamiliar situations and ‘dislocated mouthing’
• ‘searching’ movement quality
• slow collapse
• Josephine Machon’s ‘(syn)aesthetic performance’: coming from the Greek ‘syn’ meaning ‘together’ and ‘aisthesis’ meaning ‘sensation’ or ‘perception’, ‘(syn)aesthetics’ refers to a fusing of the somatic and the semantic in the creation, reception and analysis of performance
• ‘Uncanny valley’: the relation between an object’s degree of resemblance to the human being and the emotional response to the object (humanoid objects that imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers).

I decided that the focus for this residency was to work with sound and light and posed the following research questions:

• How can interactions of sound, light, and movement/the body blur boundaries of what appears:
  • Familiar and unfamiliar?
  • Recognisable and unrecognisable?
  • Human and non-human?
• What is found in the spaces in between?
• How can we create a sensation of the ‘uncanny’ for an audience?

During this residency I worked with sound artist Diane Barbé: https://dianebarbe.com/ and light designer Thais Veiga: https://thaisnepomuceno.art/

The Human Scale

I thought about what perceptible visual and aural things make a human being recognisable to us as human. I listed:

• Gesture
• Voice
• Facial expression
• Gait
• Posture standing and sitting

As a way back into the research I decided to continue working with a scene I had previously created where I am sitting in a chair and moving through different gestures, facial expressions, and sitting positions. I worked with a particular movement quality I had already developed, and worked with how the above could be abstracted through this quality. I also continued to work with ‘dislocated mouthing’; mouthing speech of a recorded voice being played externally.

I continued by researching the scale of human to abstract, using an improvisation task of exploring the gestures, facial expressions and positions in this movement quality at changing intensities of 0-10: 0 being naturalistic/human, and 10 being the most abstracted version. Inspired by the concept of uncanny valley, I was interested to find the ‘sweet spot’ at which this figure appears, through its movement, mostly recognisable and familiar as human, but just a little strange, or somehow, ‘off’. After this I created a graph that could also be used as a score:

Alongside these improvisations I worked with Diane in order to find how we could sonically create a sensation of slipping in and out of the voice appearing (un)recognisable and (un)familiar. We discussed how important language is in how we perceive voices as recognisable and human, and yet also our aural conditioning to the uniqueness of the human voice that we can also perceive an emotionality or tone even in a made up language (e.g. songs by Elizabeth Fraser and Cocteau Twins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhGoZLudKyk).

We explored how the voice could be introduced into an otherwise abstract soundscape – coming in and out of aural perception, or muffled in a way that one can recognise the voice as human, but not clear words or language. Our aim was to echo the visual stimulus in a way that might induce a sensation that the perception of this figure is slipping between (un)recognisable and (un)familiar.

Ambiguity and Associations

A large part of the residency was spent working with movement and sound in the research and creation of ambiguous visual and sonic images.

I began working with a large piece of black heavy material to research how the form of the body can instantly be changed, and suggestions of other more ambiguous forms can emerge (especially with the use of a backlight as it blurs/merges the forms of whatever is in front of it together). I researched what is was to try and create an amorphous creature with my body fully emerged in the fabric, as well as what it was for half the body to be visible. Here Xavier Le Roys Self Unfinished (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3rv1TeVEPM) comes to mind, and the question arose of whether it is possible that the observer can switch between perceiving a body in a fabric, or a strange Praying Mantis-like creature; like in the famous ambiguous figure picture above.

During another improvisation with the fabric I picked it up and carried it across the space. Immediately the image or character emerged for me of some kind of farmer or labourer, and I realised how visual moving images and physical actions can also enable a certain human association through context, created through our anthropological and social history.

With Diane we worked with ambiguous sounds and the associations they create. Diane had many recordings of sounds that were made electronically but sounded natural, or vice versa. We experimented with these sonic and movement images, exploring what associations were produced audio-visually. The aim was to play again on the boundary of perception: how could we create a slippage between e.g. an amorphous creature and a human labourer, or machinery and frogs singing?

During an improvisation with Diane I started pulling the fabric up and down repeatedly, and she was playing a chorus of frog sounds. The way she manipulated the sound alongside this action brought the image of a ‘washerwoman’ to mind, and the frogs began to sound to me like a ‘workers song’. I couldn’t tell which came first: whether the physical action/image made the sound appear as a workers song, or the sound created the association of the image as a washer woman. And, at the same time, the repeated action was reminiscent of machinery and the sound then appeared like rusty cogs turning. This opened up the potential for how we could begin to work audio-visually within our aims.

I also worked in the final week of residency with Thais to investigate how I could work with light within my aims. We didn’t have much time to explore many things, but one discovery was the use of multiple lights directed at the body, flicking between dark green and blue. We worked with flicking between the lights and the shadows they created, aiming for moments in which the shadow of the body blurred its form, or flickered, creating a constantly morphing or shifting form.

Pareidolia and a triangle becomes a mountain

An important discovery during the residency was the phenomenon of ‘Pareidolia’: the tendency to perceive meaningful forms in suggestive configurations of ambiguous stimuli – for example seeing faces in clouds or the bark of a tree, or even in machinery. Upon discussing this with Diane she introduced me to Diana Deutsch, a psychologist known for researching auditory illusions in speech and music/sound. Amongst her discoveries are pareidolia sound illusions; where people hear words in random sounds, and that people hear different words from one another and different depending on the particular day or mental state. What I noticed listening to these sounds was that as you listened, the words you perceived shifted over the e.g. 2 minutes you listened to them (and were different on each day I heard the same sounds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB0I5x_Skzg  We also realized that a similar effect occurred with some sounds that Diane introduced – for example a sound that first sounded like an electronic noise but over time (even though the sound didn’t change) it shifted within my perception to become the sound of a hovering insect.

We incorporated these findings into the work, investigating how we could combine audio and visual stimuli in a way that could induce a ‘pareidolia’ like effect or experience. We were inspired here by Éliane Radigue’s statement that slowly a triangle can turn into a mountain: when something changes slowly it can change without you perceiving the change happening. We wanted to create this illusion, so worked with slow movement and slow sound transition, but also in using sound to create a specific atmosphere that encouraged a ‘trippy’ state in which perceptual shifts are more inviting, in order that an audience might ‘zone out’ and in again during a transition between images.

We therefore worked with these images audio-visually and dramaturgically in order to find what combinations might induce these kinds of perceptual shifts: experimenting also with using less complex visual images during a longer sound illusion phase in order to allow the audience to zone more into the sound and pareidolia effects that they might encounter by doing so. During this particular sequence we also explored the use of darkness and a strobe light using single flashes at a low frequency in order to re-establish darkness and allow the potential for the image in front of the audience to be ‘burnt onto the retina’ during the flash, adding to potential for inducing a perception of ambiguous images.

Reflections

During this residency my key findings were:

The creation of what I have labelled ‘the human scale’ and how playing around the transition point between movement appearing naturalistic or abstract has the potential for creating an uncanny affect. I would like to continue to work deeper audio-visually with this in order to further research how this works with the recorded human voice, through aural effect and ‘dislocation mouthing’.

How the use of ambiguous movement and sound images can offer shifting perceptions of familiar/unfamiliar and recognisable/unrecognisable.

How movement and sound can create specific associations and therefore perceptions, and how when used together they can affect the perception of one another. At first I was trying to offer a shift of perception through a visual movement image changing from one thing to another, or a sonic image changing from one thing to another. I realised however that the key is to find how these images can work truly audio-visually: to research more carefully constructed audio-visual combinations that may therefore offer much deeper ambiguities and perceptual shifts for an audience.

I also realised that perhaps as I am someone who is fascinated in perception, when I look for example at the ambiguous figure above, I find it easy to switch constantly between the two possible perceptions. However feedback suggested that for many people once you see something you cannot ‘un-see’ it. This is a matter I find frustrating, and would like to research more deeply therefore how I can create images that can stay for a longer time imperceptible, unrecognisable or ambiguous enough that they can create an uncanny effect for an audience. I would like to research more how the use of light (or lack of) and audio-visual combinations can allow the space for an audience’s imagination to create the kind of ambiguity and uncertainty in perception that encourages an uncanny sensation to be experienced.

The questions I therefore leave this residency asking, hopefully to be answered in the next research phase of this work:

• How can I use ‘the human scale’ to create movement that creates the most interesting uncanny effect for an audience, and how can this work audio-visually (using recorded human voice)?

• How can I use specifically constructed combinations of movement and sound audio-visually to create shifting ambiguous perceptions of images?

• How can I use the concept of pareidolia, time/duration, dramaturgy, and the creation of specific atmospheres to aid in these perceptual shifts?

• How can I use movement, sound and light to create the space needed for an audience to create individual ambiguous perceptions that may lead to a sensation of the uncanny?

I grew up in Brazil, a huge country, with a colonial past and an extremely unequal society. I guess this condition influences how the body gains visibility in my work, as well as the kind of forces and issues that run through it. At the same time, it is not necessary to be Brazilian to relate to the topics that my work addresses, because they are, essentially, human issues.

Creative processes are a very important part of working for me. I need to take time for developing my pieces, in order to get to know and relate to their elements as well as to deepen their nuances. For me a premiere doesn’t mean solving or finishing a piece: I keep studying it, polishing it and updating it, based on my meetings with the audiences.

The audience’s reception is constantly in my thoughts when I am creating a new piece. For me it is essential that my pieces are accessible to others, regardless previous experiences with the performing arts world. I work so that my pieces can touch, sensitize, provoke, move someone. I don’t wish to present a concept or teach something with my performances: I develop the dramaturgy of my creations making sure that there is always a “space” where each spectator feels free to “move” within the piece and make their own connections.

MORE INFO:
https://www.clarissarego.com

***

Wednesday, 01.12.21

STARTING THE RESIDENCY

***

Thursday, 02.12.21

SOLO STUDIES

SOLO STUDIES is a trilogy of dance solos in which I occupy, for the first time in my artistic career, after 20 years of working as a dancer, the position of choreographer.

The beginning of this project corresponds to my move from South America to Central Europe, a change that made me more sensitive and aware of issues related to identity, representativeness, belonging and memory.

Each solo has a body as its axis, an existence which is limited to a specific spatial condition and posture. From there, I investigate how slowness and endurance can affect and transform the situation not only of this body on stage, but also the body of each person present in the performative event.

The performances of SOLO STUDIES are BLOOM (2018), MAR (2020) and RISE (2022).

To take time, to be present, to look and listen keenly: perhaps this is the only way to relate to these performances; perhaps this is also the only way to better understand the world in which we live in.

***

Sunday, 05.12.21

MAR

MAR is an invitation to slow down the gaze and sensitize the listening beyond known structures of comprehension. By embodying existences that have been historically denied or erased through dominant modes of representation, MAR evokes us to perceive life beyond the human, the tangible, the logical, the categorical and the bureaucratic. On stage, a body – one and many at the same time – on the verge of bursting, aiming to occupy the space that belongs to it. MAR is the announcement of an uprise.

***

In the first 10 days of my residency at LAKE studios, I am working with Dani Paiva de Miranda on creating a light design for MAR, the second piece of the trilogy. This is also a way of strengthening the dramaturgical thread that connects the pieces of SOLO STUDIES, in addition to opening paths for the creation process of RISE, the last piece of this trilogy.

DANI PAIVA DE MIRANDA is a Brazilian performer and light designer. He had artistic training at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris and at the London International School of Performing Arts (LISPAS) in London. For 10 years he performed at Slava’s Snowshow, taking part in various international tours, a period of great learning that inspired much of his artistic trajectory. Daniel is co-founder of CuntsCollective and has been working with Sita Ostheimer, ALLEN’S LINE company, directed by dancer-poet Julyen Hamilton, and LiNing – Physical Guerrilla. He is also a resident light designer at Dock 11 in Berlin. Daniel currently lives between Lisbon, Berlin and Copenhagen.

MORE INFO:
https://www.instagram.com/dpmirandadp/?hl=en
https://www.cuntscollective.com/

***

Monday, 13.12.21

RISE

After 10 days of immersion in MAR, today I am starting the creation process of RISE, the piece that will close SOLO STUDIES trilogy. Actor and playwright Henrique Fontes (coming directly from Natal, Brazil!!!) is joining this creation process to work with me on bringing the word to the trilogy. Verbal and non-verbal language, as well as idiom and translation, will be some of the topics researched during the creation of this piece, focusing on deepening communication with audience members.

HENRIQUE FONTES is an actor, director and dramaturg based in Natal, northeast of Brazil. Undergrad in Social Communication and grad in Social Sciences, Henrique has been working in Theater and Dance since 1989. Through his Cultural Space Casa da Ribeira, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, Henrique has produced more than 40 productions for the stage. Henrique is the director of Grupo Carmin, created in 2007, and as a playwright he has written and staged 19 texts, including A INVENÇÃO DO NORDESTE, the most awarded Brazilian play in 2019 (16 nominations and 9 awards, including the Shell award for best dramaturgy). Internationally, Henrique was part of the Maine Masque Co. Company (Maine/USA), in 1998, and has maintained, since 2001, a partnership with the English playwright Ed Bailey (London/UK).

MORE INFO:
casadaribeira.com.br
grupocarmin.com.br

As a continuation of previous collaborative works around feminity and its conception in western culture since Ancient Greece (Women and Watery Men, EARTHBOUND SQUATTERS, The Pile + the Pyre), this research focuses on the figure of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179). “Gifted” to the church by her parents, Hildegard lived as an anchoress (walled-in seclusion) and later became the abess of her own cloister. Remarkably, Hildegard is one of few female voices that has survived within a historical record. She is a prolific composer of the middle ages, recorded her own mystical visions, scientific and natural findings as well as leaving behind an archive of letters and correspondence.

We are drawn to the notion of Viriditas (Greenness), a metaphor within her work that points at the omnipresence and the sensorial experience of divinity in the earthly world. Reclaiming this idea independently from patriarchical and anthropocentric Christianity, we want to engage with this “Greenness” as an image of erotic entanglement and a potentiality to relate otherwisely to a contemporary world threatened by ecological crises. The residency at LAKE studios gives us the opportunity to vocally explore specific “green” lines from Hildegard’s compositions, as well as looking for their resonance in our bodies’ presence and movements. ///

/ REPORT FROM WEEK I /

We read out loud to each other the text from Audre Lorde “the uses of the erotic” while receiving head to toe body work.

Tapping the erotic sap

Hilde like many a female mystic before her penned some hot and heavy devotionals to her Beloved. The Song of Songs inclusion in the bible established the acceptable precedence, parameters and metaphors for how longing, physical desire, or sexuality could be expressed in word. The Song of Songs is the erotic text of the bible and offers sensuous imagery of things growing, blooming, wet with dew, spices, fruits, animals, lips, mouths, eyes and of course the Beloved and Bride.

// excerpt from ch. 4 Song of Songs – Old Testament

Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride;
    milk and honey are under your tongue.
The fragrance of your garments
    is like the fragrance of Lebanon.
You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride;
    you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.
Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates

// excerpt from Favus distillants – Hildegard v. Bingen

A honeycomb dripping honey was Virgin Ursula 
who longed to embrace the Lamb of God. 
Honey and milk were beneath her tongue. 
For she had gathered around her, 
in a host of virgins, 
a garden of apples 
and the flowers of all flowers.

Taking single lines out of text from Hilde’s compositions, we then gave ourselves 5 mins to write new poems.

Hilde wrote  “and your mouth is like the sound of many waters”

Answer I

and your mouth is like the sound of many waters 
my lips are thirsty for your truth 
my tongue wet and strong 
growing as a vine from the back of my throat 
pushing past unparted lips 
like a seedling leaving the soil 
in search of the sun

Answer II

and
your mouth
is like the sound
of many waters

and
your eyes
like the sky and
how it changes every day

and
the toes of your
feet like pebbles
in a mountain river

the
minutes spent with you
disperse like humming bees
in friendly sunlight

when
it is winter in you
the stars reflect
from your frozen skin

and
the infinite universe
echoes
in your night

when
it is spring again
i ride on your
sweet fragrance

Hilde:  „previously she had disfigured earth“

Answer I

previously 
she had disfigured earth 
fiddling around with those 
fingers wet & warm of innocence 

when 
raising her eyes from 
the site of her play & facing chaos 
shivers crossed her small body 

nowhere 
to hold onto 
leaning into darkness 
she found home 

all 
things begin & end 
the cutting of the thread 
the breaking of the bread/branch

Answer II

previously she had disfigured earth 
when she laid within it
from head to hip
against the mud
spreading her legs and arms
apart together
and tried her best to be an angel

// REPORT FROM WEEK II //

adapting a ritual from the poet CA CONRAD, with closed eyes and fingers spread, touching texts we asked for assistance in writing prayers. prayers for prayers and when is a prayer praise? the number 5 a sometimes guide.

I speak to you in tongues
there is no other way
in order to know you
(however I will call you).

I speak to you words yet unknown
Every word I speak is a name for you
for every word is a call, is me tilt(ing) toward you,
the other.  I'm inclined.

And thus, every name I call you by
bears a secret, something untouchable
every word I know for you
speaks of a world behind a veil.

I cannot lift the fogs to see behind,
my bones are heavy, 
but sometimes 
your light shines through
and warms us like a fire.

///

O to reject protection
that I shall love with exceeding love
that I might appropriate all kinds of knowledge
secret and sacred languages
and in all their riches
a sense of mystery
remains distinct
delights and haunts 

(Through) a dedication of song
that is purely sacred
the unknown language
switches roles
the hierarchical list
made humble in the fear of death
flees beneath the wings

///
Like the roof of the world,
which in ancient times was believed
to be held up by Atlas, the titan,
also the roof of your mouth is dark.

Like the winds, your soothing murmurs
are born in the darkness.

We say roof to what is lifted 
to create spaces underneath it.
We say arch and refer to the beginning of the world.
First, you set the tent. Then the story begins.

After all, the world you made has been cosy
for many of us until now.
After all, it is the dark cave of your mouth
that expels the words that come to touch us.

What is the so-called inside  
if it is feeling that lifts me up to the stars 
carries me to the edges of the world? 

///REPORT FROM WEEK III ///

Viriditas – work in progress showing at UNFINISHED FRIDAYS V.78

//// REPORT FROM WEEK IV ////

The Ten Commandments | Revised Version from DECEMBRIS XXII ANNO MMXXI | as received through green messaging from Hildi v.B.

i.
I am the Earth, I am your home, I am holy. I gift and sustain your life.

This is not about restricting your freedom, but you will never leave me. No matter how far you journey, you will always return to me. We can’t avoid each other. We have the most intimate relationship of all relationships.

ii.
I will stay unknown to you and you have inherited my mystery.

iii.
To take my name in vain is to curse your own.

iv.
Respect rest. Cherish what is.

v.
Be grateful to those who have supported and and fed your growth.

vi.
Nurture all living things, whether you understand their courses or not. Do not violently interfere in their paths. Life needs your love. Be aware of your role in the cycle of life and death.

vii.
Honor the power of erotic bonds.

viii.
Do not be moved by scarcity, it is an illusion. There is no such thing as owning. You can always only have a share. Be generous/generative with your entanglements.

ix.
Be honest. Practice listening. Do not betray yourself or others.

x.
All forms of life are of equal value inherent unto themselves. Do not fear difference.

If you would like to try and live according to the revised 10 Commandments, we are happy to receive reports of your experience at

Chartreuse is a dancer/performer/artist based in Berlin. She is originally from Texas but spent much time on the West Coast in the US (San Francisco and Seattle) studying and making dance. She relocated to Berlin in 2018, and in doing so radically shifted her process as an artist. As she navigates transitioning, her artistic work has focused towards care, mutual aid, and sisterhood* for queers and trans femmes. The strongest influences on her practice come from Radical Faerie ritual/culture and the writings of adrienne maree brown.

_____

WEEK 1: REST

“How will you be useless to capitalism today?

A question to embody everyday. Journal. Meditate. Sleep on it. Daydream.

Please rest.

Disrupt and push back against a system that views you as a machine. You are not a machine. You are a divine human being. WE WILL REST!” -Tricia Hersey (The Nap Ministry)

_____

I often work with the tarot as a tool for divination, communing with questions, and courting the unknown. For this residency, I’m working with Cristy C. Road’s Next World Tarot.

Day 1- Three of Pentacles (“The Team”) Mars in Capricorn

This card is about the tangible. It is about resources. It is a reminder of our interconnectedness. It’s being held by the quilt that is woven by the collective. Taking time to regroup.

I also drew this card on January 1st, 2021 when asking for a tool to guide me through this year. This card presenting itself today is a reminder of a recurring lesson for me this year… that I don’t have to do it alone.

Today I’m landing in the studio tired, edging on burnout. It’s not the most ideal state to be entering a residency period. I’m taking care of my body. Stretching. Beyonce is playing on the speakers. Calling to the energies, allies, and friends that will be part of this collective with me for this month.

_____

Day 6- The Knight of Wands (“The Fire Starter”) …an invocation to the moon as a trans ally and sister*

The last time I was dancing in the “Big Studio” here at Lake Studios was an intense day where friend and artist Jeremy Wade informed me that a dear friend of mine, Mariana, had taken her life the night before. This space holds this memory for me… dissolving to the floor in grief and tears and building myself back up off of that floor. But here I am today laying on this floor again.

I began to walk in a spiral… calling to the moon. Today SOPHIE is playing on the speakers… (a brilliant trans sister lost too soon). I am reminded of the power that is bubbling just under my flesh, ready to be called on. I release it. My neck arches back. Cycles. The tides pulling. Bloodshed. A guiding light in darkness. I know this dance. Hello moon in the sky.

_____

Day 9- The 8 of Swords (Restriction), The 4 of Cups (Reevaluate), The Knight of Cups (The Love Song)

Today my friends and co-conspirators Judy and Theo visited the studio to join in the practice. We all drew a tarot card to name the energies we were holding. Judy is an illustrator and will be making a zine to document the process of this residency. We began to discuss Jupiter and it’s potential magic as a trans ally. We danced an invocation to Jupiter to a song by a super talented Berlin-based trans musician named Mandhla.

We made an altar to honor the (tr)ancestors, each offering some items. With each item came names and stories. What emerged was a beautiful and intimate moment. I could feel the presence of these (tr)ancestors with us as their stories were told and we laughed and smiled. After this we finished off the day with a care ritual in the sauna. Today was nourishing.

_____

WEEK 3: CARE

Day 13- The 9 of Cups (Happiness) Jupiter in Pisces

During this residency I have learned how to do my own estrogen injection. Yesterday I did my injection for the first time by myself. It felt like a big step and I’m feeling very at home in my body today.

While at Lake Studios I have been reflecting on the pressures and expectations to produce… that the dance studio is framed as a site of production. What does it mean to insert a community practice of care into that frame? How does it subvert production? In my application for this residency I was direct that my intention is to reappropriate resources (money, space, time) from institutions towards the communal care of trans femmes… that is this art practice… to invoke a pop-up care temple.

I have been lighting a candle every day for Ella, the Iranian trans women that took her life at Alexanderplatz in October. Her story is with me. Today I dedicated a dance to her. The dance was powerful.

_____

DAY 17- The King of Cups (“The Throne of Movement”)

I did a ritual today of sensually shaving my entire body as the sun was setting.

Today was Unfinished Fridays at Lake Studios. Within the framework of UF, I shared a bit about my process throughout the month at the residency. I showed the altar that was built. I mentioned my daily candle lighting process. I talked about Ella. I did my estrogen injection for the audience and then proceeded into a dance invocation. Before I started dancing, I invited the non-cisgender people in the room to accompany me and hold space. It was powerful and beautiful to feel their support and care. I’m grateful for my time that I’ve shared at Lake Studios.

My residency will conclude in a few days with a ritual on the night of the solstice, December 21st.

György Jellinek

I’m a Berlin based freelance artist working on the field of performing arts and film.

I had the honour to work here in Lake Studios from 11.10.2021 to 21.11.2021

Dancing has always been present in my life since both of my parents were dancers and choreographers, but it was never a desire of mine to start practicing it. I think I am almost always a spectator. I feel a passivity in everything I do. I am the one who sits in the last row, at an event, even my own: the stage, the first row has then become the last. I have the feeling that this also has to do with a form of hesitancy the idea that there’s not the possibility of touching something, of intervening, of breaking open. This idea of being a spectator is connected for me with an idea that I experienced from the earliest childhood, the experience of waiting.
It was a cold day and as our first class began in this new building, I saw the top of three pine trees moved by the wind through the windows and I tried to do the exercise the way these trees were moving, and I suddenly felt connected to them and the more connected I felt to them, the more distance I felt.
After I started working in film and could think in films, my thoughts and interests about stage became much more concrete. In film there is distance in several layers. The distance of the characters from the narrative and then the lens from them, and at the end the gaze of the audience from the screen every time it’s watched. For me art was never a tool for self-expression but always a possibility to re-observe my surrounding.

Te text above was written by Massih Parsaei my collaborator and partner in this residency, it’s the text i sent to Lake Studios Berlin as an artist statement (about myself) when I applied. It is his perception about the way I see myself. I asked him to write this not because I have difficulties with defining myself but because of my fascination in the connections and relation between perception, representation, memory and other notions around this topic. I’ve applied with a kind of project that had only little to do with these notions and as much as i wanted to focus on that these concepts kept drawning me to them. Most of my life I’ve been working in circumstances where let it be my, a collaboration or someone else’s project but there has always been a kind of ex- or internal pressure, that required great discipline and strong focus. Since this was my first residency i applied for, i had no other expectations than what i previously experienced while working on something. Despite my expectations, here I felt in a kind of safe space, where I felt that I could allow myself not to worry about the outcome of the initial project, but to follow my intuition to discover how this interests will materialise. From this point on a kind of journey started that affected me in ways that I most probably wont be able to describe with full value. 

I worked mostly at nights. There’s something in this quiet and dark environment which allows me to perceive things separately where information are not melting into each other so I can make a deeper connection to my surroundings. I can simultaneously hear and feel myself breathing even if I don’t put too much attention to it, there’s an awareness on how my clothes behave while moving and I can tell when the tram 60 is passing by the station two blocks away from the big studio. On the movement part of my research I’ve been working with these kinds of sensory memories, selecting and focusing on them and let them merge into sensations that were unique for me. Amongst others I used self-inflicted pain as one kind of stimulus to wich I could not control my bodies reaction. And through repetition of this in different contexts, I wanted to observe, memorise and learn my bodies intuitive response to it. I think there is something beautiful in the level of honesty and reality pain and other physical reactions causes wether it’s experienced or observed. Working with these different sensations inspired a number of short moments and scenes that might find place in my works in the future. 

The daytime was more about collecting for me. I studied about the things that interested me, reaching out to scientist and doctor friends to give me accessible information or book recommendations on these topics. Sharing and contesting the ideas i planed for the evening sessions with the other residents and with my collaborator were also a great way to understand them better. It was also the time to literally collect items, sounds and other materials for the night, where I would try out images, scenes and concepts from a bit more stage-design angle, that came to my mind during the day. 

Lake Studios has a high awareness on sustainability and environment friendliness. You can see how much effort was put into making this highly functional space do as little harm as possible to the environment. Thus creates a living space where you can live up to these expectations and inspires you in your work. I used sustainable printing methods on the notions of memory. I used the plants in the garden to make photosensitive solution for this work. In connection to memory, encoding and representation, I was interested how much information in the process of inheritance gets lost and how to try replacing them. I manipulated images trying to influence the perception of the spectator in a way to generate associations that effects their somatic response. Although i love photography, i struggle transferring the complexity of a moment in one “un-manipulated” frame. The effort and struggle of trying to recreate a moment that has passed is a process that I value a lot in this method. 

The project I and my collaborator applied for the residency was to create a kind of signing communication system where unlike sign language, we would strictly follow the structure and grammar of spoken language, using the alphabetical nature of it and translate them into non-static full body movements that would make it possible to translate a complex text to a dancelike sequence. We used film as a tool for differentiating the punctuation of sentences, thus making a “video library” for creating an online “movement translator” in the future, where one could translate a text to a movement-film sequence. The aim of the research is not to create a better functioning language but to mirror the existing one in a precise manner that approaches communication in the same abstract way as language does. One theory of the evolution of human language states that it developed first as a gestural system, which later shifted to speech. However the cause of the shift to vocalization is still unclear. By shifting speech to a movement-film system which still carries the complexity of written structure but in a way further abstracting it with cinematographic tools and with the body as a tool that could have been an intuitive communicator, our goal is to rase questions around the necessity, boundaries and freedom that language carries. It has been quite a challenging task to develop the movement vocabulary and to shoot the video material for this project. I’m looking forward to continue working and developing this text to movement translator, but unfortunately the editing and programming of the gathered material can’t be finished in the premises of Lake Studios.

It has been a great pleasure to work in such an inspiring environment for six weeks. 

26.11.2021

Hi everyone, my name is Anna Castillo.

I am a choreographer and Flamenco dancer based between Berlin and Barcelona. 

I had the privilege to grow up between Chile, USA, Germany and South Africa. The constant movement of my body with the clashing of cultural phenomena have deeply shaped my identity. Through living transnationally in-between and around boarders this lifestyle has shaped my interest of new forms of moving but also lead up to questioned already existing ones. Personally I think this is the main reason that has lead me to my research in investigating the space in-between Flamenco and Contemporary dance. Because I have kind of always lived in-between space. 

The first two weeks I have looked into floor work with Marti Corbera. Marti Corbera and I share both the same dance background, from an early age on our identity has been shaped by Flamenco but foud ourselves within time to fid more and more interest into contemporary dance. 

Its been interesting to see which difficulties and advantages our body and minds shaped by Flamenco have to offer:

There is a strong attachment to rhythmical pattern, which is very difficult let to ignore. Event if we try to. Each time we worked with music our impulse to move with the rhythm became bigger and bigger. We have been so strongly conditioned to understand rhythm its its smallest detail, that ignoring it become actual difficult task. 

We found a very big difference in doing same exercise with and without flamenco shoes. There is an immediate change in presence and corporal feeling, when we put our shoes on. Already the shift of gravity in the entire body changes and therefore also the movement. But also years of training and associations seem to come up as well. I dont know if I have ever understood or questioned before the symbolic weightor meaning and physical affects these shoes have on my movement.

I would say the use of Flamencoshoes showed us what an actual mental burden into movement languages it was. 

One challenge we faced was to move a liquid as possible by interconnecting our bodies on the floor. To put this into a context as a Flamenco point of view: A) as a flamenco dancer you usually never lie on the floor and B) you also never touch another person. That meant it was quite a challenge.

For instance we practiced this sequence for serval days, how to improvise together in this unsusal form for us. After finding a comfort level of liquidness of movement, we tired to use the shoes.  For me suddenly the entire excercise felt like we had to start from 0. 

The use of flamenco shoe had completely changed the corporal experience. First it was difficult to find balance and grasp on the floor. Second eventhough we have become great in moving together,  I suddenly had a big fear to hit Marti with the one of the shoes / foot even though it had never occurred before. It was more the  unusualness of this actuation which had become our biggest challenge. 

Flamencos main fascination to me its the improvisation skills. Most People don’t know this about Flamenco, but it’s a highly improvised dance. If you ever go to see a Flamenco show (tablao) in Spain half of the dance performance will probably be improvised. Its an improvisation with a certain type of structure and loose rules between dancer and musicians.

Therefore we tried to take our improvisations skills into the floor and in the communication between each orther,

to be continued …

Forgetting Rainbows

JUNE:

***

Before I can reflect on what I am communicating through my gestures or speech, my body always already creates the feeling of being-with; it expresses itself through attitude and gestures, and at the same time reacts to the impressions of others. This “intercorporeality” (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 256) forms an overriding, inter-subjective system in which, from childhood on, forms of bodily interaction are established and constantly updated anew. It comprises the self and the others, the conscious and the unconscious: “I do not need to look for the others elsewhere, I find them within my experience, they dwell in the niches which contain what is hidden from me but visible to them” (Merleau- Ponty 1974, 166).

***

And we are standing here, noticing the feeling of our feet against the surface.  Feeling the pull of gravity has it pushes us down, softly.. our feet connect to this floor and I close my eyes and imagine what is under… the layers of material under the floor boards, the pipes and metal, nails, the roof from the floor bellow and then the space…. I am floating here on the second floor.  A pocket of air under me, I breath part of it in.. breathing in my space.  And then there is more wood, more fibres, more pipes – plastic, and a little cold space – concrete space of foundation which is difficult to penetrate but easy to imagine, it sit there over the earth, dampening slowly but never changing its form. I sense the earth, its ruff and sandy texture, we are near water and you can feel it’s ripeness for giving and sharing and holding.  Remember the rain, as you watched from the window those big drops slashing and erupting like tiny gunshots against the garden beds, your outstretched hand not feeling the wetness but rather the rhythm – so instant, the drops raining down like a crying child, out of the sky.  The lithosphere.. the epidermis..  the container of my body and yours.  Hold me together and please don’t let me fall apart.  

***

As I lift my arm, I notice a tiny Beatle that is crawling towards my wrist, I resist the urge to shake it off and watch it as it moves between and over my freckles.  My wings are flapping now and the flowers in the garden have gone to sleep, there was movement in the sky and I remember saying goodbye.  Down on the pier, you waved as the ship left the dock, a white handkerchief in your hand.. we will see each other again.. because I dream of your so often.  Take my hand and I will pull you with me.  I am stronger now from working in the orange orchard, I have gained back my strength.  I can can hold you with me.  Come under this tent that I call home for now.  Look how beautiful it is, how the light only half penetrates the surface… your look purple – the light is making your skin glow.. If we close our eyes and be quiet we could stay here, live here, be safe here. I thinking about the moment we were born, pushed out of that dark hole, it was so shocking, all the bright lights, entering the stage but I did not want to be the main attraction… I just wanted to be the back up dancer.. put me back in the shadows where I will crawl and thrive quietly. 

***

A STUDY ON SPACE

Can you imagine the space between your eyes

Can you imagine the space that fills the nostrils 

Image and sense the space that fills the lips 

Can you imagine the space that fills the tongue 

Can you Imagine and sense the space that fills the whole mouth, tongue teeth gums lips 

Can you Imagine and sense the space that fills the brain 

Can you Imagine the throat.. imagine the space that fills the neck

Can you imagine and sense the distance between your shoulders

And now imagine and sense the space that fills the shoulders 

Can you imagine the length and the volume of your arms

Can you imagine and sense the space that fills your thumb

Can you imagine the space that fills for fore-finger

Can you imagine and sense the space between the thumb and the forefinger

Can you imagine and sense the space that fills the middle finger

Can you imagine and sense the space that fills the ring finger 

Can you imagine the space that fills the little finger, the pinky

Can you imagine the space that fills all the fingers and the space between

Can you imagine space between the palms and the back of the hands

Can you imagine the space that fills the whole hand

Can you imagine the space that fills the heart

Can you imagine the distance between either side of your chest

Can you imagine the distance between the breast bone and the spine 

Can you imagine and sense that fills the whole cavity of the chest

Can you imagine the distance between the sides of your waist

Can you imagine the distance between the belly button and the spine

Can you imagine the space that fills the whole abdominal cavity 

Can you imagine the length and the volume of your legs. 

Can you imagine the space that fills the feet

Can you imagine the space that fills the whole body 

Can you imagine the interior space from which all sensations are arising 

Can you imagine the space that extends beyond your right side, out beyond the most distance stars

Can you imagine the space that extends beyond your left side, out beyond the most distance stars

Can you imagine the space in-front of you, that extends out beyond the most distance stars

Can you imagine the space behind you, that extends out beyond the most distance stars

Can you imagine the space in-front of you and behind you, that extends out beyond the most distance stars

Can you imagine the space below you, extending out beyond the most distance stars

Can you imagine the space above you extending out beyond the most distance stars

And can you imagine that, the vastness of outer space and the vastness of inner space are continuous

Can you image that this continuous space is full

Can you image that this continuous full space is the space of your sensing body 

Can you image that everything that arrises, is part of this awake space

Can you image that everything belongs: sensations, feelings, sounds, thoughts, in this awake boundless space

Can you imagine that this full and sensing space, holds and listens to all that arrises within it. 

JULY

Prologue: 

I want to take you into my body.  Into its depths, into its painful, pleasurable and elastic parts.  

I want you to take another breath in with my lungs and feel how my body expands differently to yours.. how my body collapses in subtle ways as we exhale, how my breath taste and how warm it is in here. 

Music stops:

I want you stay for a while.  I give you my consent to be here.  To exist here and come with me on this trip through my layers.  

Lets begin.. Allowing ourselves to sense the fields of perception and fantasy through our encounter with our bodies past, present and future.

Ending:

And as if she had duplicated herself, I see many bodies.. arching and dipping in an endless clockwork rotation, contained in the central sphere, never daring to exit the light.  The more they dance, the more bodies appeared.. opaque bodies, old bodies, lost bodies capturing the movement each time in their own special way and then letting it disappear to become new again and again and again..  

until the dance was so familiar that we could join, join this dance from anywhere.. closing our eyes and remembering the feeling of her breath with yours, it takes you here so we can dance together. Existing together or just be here.. with all of us.   

Keep your eyes closed and listen along with me, notice how the shadows play across your eyelids.  Notice how it’s getting colder.  Put your hand on mine and let’s take a breath and say goodbye. 

Unfinished friday_LAKE_9 april from Can-doc GbR on Vimeo.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Alice to Siegmar – March 5th, 2021

dear babe,
here a little retelling of what Tonija and I have being doing this week. Since the first day we’ve danced at least twice a day, sometimes 3 times, to Bartok’s 1st violin sonata, embedded in a long ongoing conversation on dance performance companionship friendship, many anecdotes, feeling out how we talk and what we like to tell each other. sometimes we record and i might transcribe some bits in order to anotate them later
I will focus now on the dance and try to describe it
starting from moving with our eyes closed and to this piece of music, we seem to be calibrating a way of dancing and not dancing in and with the music, mostly not to it. in the same way, dancing in each other’s presence, with it, rarely to it. we look at each other while sitting, sometimes taking notes, sometimes also moving. that’s a lot then, dancing + the other + the music. and its also very little. little container, little motor.
today we went and did this in the tunnel that connects the shore to an island in the lake and we filmed it for you. i’m afraid it looks terrible and i think it does because it is still trying to much to be something. i love being chatty! and it kills all magic. so here another question, about holding the mundane in the midst of the exquisite or inversely or just both there.
these are issues we deal with, i hope you understand.
i resist attaching this that we do to some other scores like the dance of companionship. it’s almost the same and yet another DoC. I think because it’s just the two of us, the face to face is much stronger than I am used to. as a result tonija keeps her eyes closed a lot and we almost never look at each other when we dance.
she said yesterday that the blush is a central thing in her work.
i send you the video of this tunnel dance in spite of what it is, please forgive!
with love,
Alice

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Antonija to Siegmar March 5, 2021

Monday 13h ?

report from Alice dancing : Ballet russes

Cutting room floor

I need to see her like an animal

I need to see her like when we are in the garden

She needs this too

All of it

Move around

« Being familiar with it « 

Pattern Language breakdown

Pointer fingers

Précision

« A little bit excited »

I am seduced by the floor

I am under her feet

Dancers feet

Not any other kind of feet !!

Scanning close for heat signature

Shock

Every once in a while

Being interested in what just happened

And forgetting now

This is also a familiarity

Like ironing a shirt on the floor whilst she gets
dressed over there

PrepRing to go out

But never actually going out

Multi attentions

Hot iron

cables

Surfaces of grass and stones in the living room

Who really was

Christopher Alexander

What makes a good leader

Is this adrag show ?

A purge

Wood energy

Percolations

Step down To be able to feel free to be foolish and
at work at once

Biding times 

Build as you tread said Siegmar Z 

TEXT 2

FRIDAY 12h30 

Recall Dialogue

B.Akomolafe / S.Chen 

Chopping wood :

I go to chop the wood because I am cold and need to
have logs and kindling for the fire. There is no point chopping only 1 hrs
worth of wood to burn : if I am going to do it I might as well do it for as
long as I physically can or until the supply of whole logs is split and
stacked.

I do this together with An.

We were freezing taking coffee on the gas stove in
the garden in the morning frost.

We finish the chopping and moving and stacking from A
to B to C.

The chopping itself makes us warm.

We do not need to light the fire inside.

We stay outside and invent things or discover things
to keep us active.

A combination of urgent tasks like wood chopping also
walking arm swinging and foot moving on the path and rock moving on the path

That is in no way urgent but a leaning into to the
landscape

Silently we are together and it’s not really working
we are doing we are walking moving and prying large rocks from the earth
clearing a path with our efforts both alone and occasionally together when the
stone is clearly took heavy or big to move alone

The roots of trees are made visible.

Will we stumble on them.

The path takes a different direction through the
forest towards the brooke.

In Scotland they call this the Bourne.

The source.

We work and walk together until we are noticing it is
getting colderthe sun has changed. What time is it today ?

We work and walk together until the invented creative
task seems done for now

We go back to the house and light the fire. 

We were cold

What we did with our time with our bodies warmed us
and solved the problem

Now we are still …

Now the energy of the wood

Is burning bright flames and becoming embers. 

The ending of the 2 nd movement Adagio is the kind of
ending

One really can fall in love with. 

I need this subtlties very much. 

I was glad to exit my practice session in time to
give Alice a private empty encounter to witness just the ending of theSonata

Sonata meaning

To be played as opposed to to be sung

Co existing with the Sonata.

In studio

Stud I o

I study myself :

The given self of situation and it’s constituents

The self of the dancer dance and companions of sound
light space and

Inner and outer

Inviting being seen. 

*

Alice to Antonija – March 19th

dear Antonija,

it is time to thread you in again, into this weave of companionship,
dialogue, pondering and hesitation. As you were passing on the art of gentle
vandalism to the french students i transcribed the bits of conversation we’d
had on our first week together, and this week now with Siegmar we’ve been spending
a lot of time trying out ways of annotating texts by each of us, experimenting
with ways of letting our works affect each other and of letting these processes
shine through (where I pose distance as activating force she insists on
entanglement and we danced across these perspectives – this is of course a huge
simplification). So we continue the attempt at both holding companionship,
shaping it and making it perceptible without stopping its course.you spoke to
me about the blush as a determining fact in your work and this has been staying
with me. the blush as uncontrollable expression of embarrassment for being
exposed / for exposing oneself… Siegmar works on sitting with the
uncontrollable and I would love to hear you both speaking about this

on Monday Siegmar and I moved with
our eyes closed in turns then danced to listen to the Bartók sonata. I became
impatient. I wrote: 

Why
do I find it so difficult to dance with this music? The music is
beautiful, it opens a world, and a time long gone that can then reexist in the
contemporary situation when it is played and listened to. Dancing to
expressive music is difficult for me as I fear the danger of illustration, of
dance acting as the unnecessary illustration of a piece that doesn’t need it
the least. Dancing to or with this music I find it hard not to feel like a
nostalgic cliché. Suddenly I can’t stand averting our gazes or any other
so-called inward gaze; every little shift or accent, however hard I try to keep
it separate from the music’s logic, collides with it and their mutual
amplification feels contrived in an unpleasant way.. It seems like my only
way out is the hyper mundane, almost nothing.

Why
do I not have this problem with litterary texts? I was educated to consider
dance and music as much closer relatives to each other. Where I hear the
parallels between the music and the dance (whatever they are), I can much more
expand the gaps between dance and text. So that the space between dance and
music tends to shrink, and I can more easily widen the space between text and
dance, a thick gluey space that connects them.

This
music also carries the problem of screeming out “art” so loudly. I love art but
my dance here becomes a pretention to art and I want to run away. I can’t
believe we stuck to this for the whole last week with Tonija. A mix of
commitment to whatever our situation would bring up and her famous emperor’s
clothes?

I
think today Siegmar’s presence and our friendly interactions – not estheticized
or aligned to the music, but following their own logic – is the foot in the
door I won’t close just yet then. As she shakes her ass and tities, rolls her
head of hair around and slides onto a made-up mazurka, a twerk, a crawl across
the floor, my joy returns. Not because she’s being ironical: because she’s
actually making sure she has a good time instead of taking the music, the
situation, and thus herself, too serious. She revitalises the music by hosting
its humour, its naughtiness, its play. Not illustrating, but tuning into that
vitality. Repurposing it.

The foot is still in the door even
though we didn’t move or dance since. Yoga, talking, writing. We will dance
again for sure, and I would like to return and insist, it bears so many desires
and conflicts for me. That the choice of this piece of music was rather
arbitrary doesn’t matter. It seems we can respect it enough without needing to
be devoted to it. It seems fine to hold on a little and see which of those
desires, conflicts, paradoxes, we want to make room for. I hope you are
interested.

(Yves told me about this dream he
had yesterday, where these 2 guys presented themselves as “jumeaux de faire”;
they had each made a sort of convoluted, ornate needle, that was meant to
attach to a horse saddle, and those two needles were exactly identical… Yves
offered this to the collection of figures, didn’t say if those were figures in
the dance of companionship or the scores as figures, like the doubles in
parallel lives and the non-formal unison)

About the Bartók – Siegmar asked if
other choreographers had worked with his music, that I knew of, and I
remembered Anne Teresa de Keersmaker had and the score to this is actually in a
book in the library here. We didn’t watch it yet but might

…I just remembered that I had
recorded the score as I told it to Siegmar. my score nerd self is getting all
excited as I see the formulation finding itself

Alice: We’re going to play
this piece of music, it’s a sonata for violin and piano by Bela Bartok. And
we’re going to dance, and also watch and take notes when we want to. The idea
is to dance with this music. It’s a bit of a cousin to the dancing as
a way of listening except, what’s not in there is the focus on helping the
other listen. And one thing that we are suspending or interrogating or maybe
leaving aside is dancing to the music. Can we dance with the music, listen
to it and listen to ourselves and to each other and everything around, even
though maybe not in a very responsive way…
Siegmar : So we’re not using each other to listen, and we’re not dancing
to the music. But we’re dancing as listening to the music and everything else?
Alice: …maybe I should have completely left out the dancing as
listening; maybe this one is called dancing and listening. 

and now reading this it seems
like a dance of companionship with the music, and I understand the possibility
to wake up the dance, to sustain and expand it by using the same technique of
calling in all the imaginable companions like bones sounds breaths thoughts
etc. (I guess this is all one is supposed to do when dancing, but for
me it takes efforts and tricks to actually do it)

I’m having a stroll through the
first week transcripts and remember that we spoke of cinema, “faire son
cinema” and the necessity to balance between making room for imagination and
the invention of narratives around present situations, and the attention to
what is there that resists those, that exists in the matter as well as the
imaginations we do not share in and which are also there. I find myself
doing this while conversing. I tend to attend those a bit like movies or novel,
I revel in the hesitations, the moves towards and away, the avoidances and the
shifts. Could this film/novel be called Rougeur or Rougissement?

triangulation: Siegmar remarked
yesterday on the role of triangulation in our respective works. It’s a useful
tool, and I want to try to sketch the triangulation each of the scores I work
with engage. (What) does the term evoke when you think of what you do? As
a trio that hardly ever gathers we also have something like this, asymmetrical
of course and starting with the material fact of you and Siegmar not spending
time together without me, anyways the 3 is in the room when 2  of us are
here at the lakeI remembered also a text I had wanted to read about the role of
the Third in Levinas’ thinking and how it might take us out of the ethical/political
separation that is often understood as his. Maybe the 3 of us can read this
next week.

dear Anton I hope you arrived
back home well and happy from your journey. And I look forward to monday.

warmly yours

Alice

Siegmar to Antonija, March 20th

Dear Anton, 

I want to offer you a bunch of words that we have collected and foregrounded
in each others texts Alice and I. I’m not doing it as algorithm but following
my own interested attention.  I guess they are traces of what we were
doing individually and alone and threads reaching out towards you. i would love
to pick at them with you. or to start expanding the list with annotations,
thought bubbles, and reaction

I would love to dive into your stuff
with you whatever that stuff is. I brought another listening session and texts
and stories and plans for a dying and living well together garden, grief and
pleasure or is it joy or love or regeneration  … the other thing as
collective practice in any case.wanna talk about processes of soil and manure
and time.

Also I thought that maybe each day
another one of us could host the mornings, so warm up and work proposal till
lunch. my wish would be to start form each of our own work/practice/research to
propose how to work from that. It could be a way to introduce each other to
each others practices and to offer myself to experimenting with your research
approach. or offering myself for you to experiment with/on me.

and also i attach the Ensembling
text, which is a text that i wrote for the piece that we did with alice, we
started annotating that one too, but i think i prefer to send you that text as
it was first. would be curious to hear what comes up for you.

i can’t wait to get togetherlove to
you into the sunny day

s

but
here are some words so here we go.

habits of narration

sudden jumps

approximation

triangulation with a possible
otherwise

entanglement of distances

response-ability

compassionate witness

non-verifiable difference

doubles in parallel lives

interdependent distance

vague recognisability

re-emerging out of the chaos of
the world (or form under the table)

what makes it bareable enough to
keep going – the soothers

letting pleasure arrive in one’s
body where it normally doesn’t

imagining is inserting some
unknown, (re)(con)figuring

naming as non-taxonomy but
availability

regenerative
practice listening to what is, was, will be, and never again will be

the pleasure of responsivity

togethering

useful

adaptability towards material

holding on to the plant for
orientation

training to sit with change


paying attention to the limits
of your own perception

re-membering more

we have swallowed for too long

the alienating forces of intimacy

we are connected in a cloud of
spit

flesh-positive

the uncontrollable imposes itself

sitting with the uncontrollable

grief work as performance work –
performance work as grief work

the alchemy of loss

mutual gravitational field

my bodies are part of collective
bodies

vital and necessary pleasure

learning from grief

regenerative praxis with
earth/soil humus

post-humus

Antonija to Siegmar, March 19^th

The Black Triangle
: a west village lesbian bar : a method for an applied polyphony

Dear Alice,  Dear Siegmar, 

My time away threadbare…

Missing strong lady minds and
looking forward to leaning in …

Meanwhile, a little mess …

The blush holds many kin in her
hot embrace 

embarrassment is just the common
name for the loudest stinkiest child, 

there is also outrage, shy, lost,
found, aroused, all terribly too close relatives 

A political blunder blush 

A un documented blush 

A watching the train wreck blush 

A missing the train blush that
then has all the colour drain out of it …

So so many …

trying to count them just brings
the colour right back up 

Welcoming
the unwelcome  

Some definitely entangled
counterfeiting and renegade and serious stuff in a dubious mix 

Refined methods next to dumb
instruments 

propped up queerly in a dusty
corner 

Called on 

Ms.Thang to the dance floor
please !

The whole room ablush…

The music is blushing. 

She is definitely not being
listened to 

These well dressed emperors are
talking all over her. 

Oh. 

An
abitrary song ?

She is loved by other Emperors
too.

She brings all manner of ethics
 one couldn’t notice so painfully clearly without it

Now they are some noticed
 does the song need to be there ? 

Certainly another song surely
sets up  another set of organizing principles 

to resist 

to be guided by 

to do things to us we can’t
understand 

Testing the lie of what one
presumes to be worth attending to 

Like 

A dream  

The twins ride hard on needled harnesses 

A dusty trail before us and
bareback back there 

He
says something along the lines of improvisation

Is a conversation with the
past 

This is helpful 

This is happening but…

It’s the damned call to order
dance to dance 

Bye bye Bartok ! 

Levinas Lecture Lundis 

LOVE 

BREATHTAKING –

ABOUT:

WEEK1

WEEK2

WEEK3

Goodbye Note

Dear Lake Studios;

Here is the last night, last session in big studio.

The meaning of night, session, big, here are suddenly expanded now. Wauwww!

Thank you for holding space for my accordion heart for the last 6 weeks. My heart has been beaten here for 4 100 000 times approximately. Thanks for the fire, anger, love,incense can not lit in the studio,frostbite, ragas, ruk/root/kök, the fact that pandas have pancreas, closing, pattern, waltz with wounds.

Here is a gift for you by Nina Paley from Sita Sing the Blues.

Notes from Process

”Pain is a territory known by those who are in that land.” Sonya Huber

I have spent 6 weeks in Lake Studios to research on wounds, pain, speechlessness and propripception. This trajectory has evolved from my broder research on physical, philosophical and socio-political implications on breath and breathing. As researching on how breath heals wounds -not only tangible, visible, physical wounds but also energytical, intangible ones-; speech and discourse as contextually produced and articulated breath took my attention in the context of identity politics during the residency process. As speech and discourse have power to heal historical wounds; they sometimes overpass, exclude the inexpressible ones. I researched on this tension between the power of discursive expression of embodied socio-political and cultural experiences, and impossibility of delivering the all depth of these experiences through verbal language. 

I conceptualize wounds as bodily opennings (physically or energetically) allow not only urgent chemical communication to recover but also cosmic communication in which bodymind and environment pour into each other. Wound as passage, wound as message, wound as antennas allow another way for connection, communication, protection, reception, perception, action. Sometimes wound is an expression of the inexpressible. Therefore, it may be hard to look at the wounds, and pass through the pain.This residency gave me space and time to look at my wounds, stare directly at them. With my left eye. Through and beyond a microphone. I spent time to ”date my wounds”¹, care the wounds, name the wounds. 

I care them with fake eyelashes as my eyelashes protect my eyes. How eyelashes connect to sensory system of my nervous system, I use fake eyelashes to shield, protect my wounds; to integrate them to my sensory system, so to my nervous system. I name them with silence, with sound; with breath but not with voice. They are my voiceless void. I date them with touch, not with numbers; I date them in infinity of energy. 

I invited my long-term collaborator Ah! Kosmos to work on the sound and silence of touching on these wounds burried under my skin.Instead of working a long composition, we chose to initiate shorter sound patterns. We worked to create short sound patterns in various ways and starting to discuss and eliminate the distant ones. The intensity and sensuality of sound matched with my quality and intensity of touch. Silence occurred in relation to breaks in which breath took attention over the touch.

I also invited my long-term collaborator Derin Cankaya to work on visuals and videos in forest. From the beginning of the process, I was intended to spend some time outside because Lake Studios is surrounded by a very specific nature near lake and forest. When I spent some time in this imagery in public spaces, I had a sensation that the eyelashes became enegitical wings that my facial expressions flew away and wounds buried under my skin has wings. Wound with wings or/also wounds with wigs. We had some shooting in forest to observe what kind of expansions in context I would have if I install this body within nature. For the rest of the process, at some point, I chose to deepen outside trials and inside trials. Actually, I am looking forward to sparing some time in near future to develop the trajectories I discovered from outside trials.

This residency has been a process for me to discover an artistic language to look at my wound and the world through these wounds. This process has helped me to develop another level of artistic sensitivity towards people who created poems, proses, moves from their wounds; Mahmoud Darwish, Rukeli Trollmann, Sonya Huber and some others. They have helped me to carry ”butterfly’s burden”²in my eyes and release dragon’s burden in my breath.

1Inspired by Mahmoud Darwish’s poetic heritage; ”date your wound”.

2Inspired by Mahmoud Darwish’s poetic heritage; ”Butterfly’s Burden”.

RAINBOW research with Aleksandr Prowaliński

“Let there be light”; and there was light.

***

What happens when the light is pulled out of the darkness?
How does it differentiate forms and shapes?
How does it highlight unique qualities?
How does it reveal the hidden?
How does it propel the change?

“Rainbow” is a research into the effects of color and light on humans. It originates in a curious book of Darius Dinshah about Spectro-Chromo Therapy. At the turn of the XX Century Dinshah was testing the healing potential of light. He was exposing patients to differently colored lamps and noting improvements in their health. By some pronounced charlatan and imposter, he was seen as inventor and healer by others. No matter which perspective is true, his studies connected deeply to the practices of ancient Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, and other major cultures which made significant medical uses of light.

I plunge into unraveling and choreographing different properties of colored lights. How does a color in-form the body? Which movements, qualities, textures, emotions, imaginary realities and thoughts arise when being exposed to different hues? Can rainbow, by some perceived as a sign of deranged ideology, be a healing process?

The research will proceed systematically through each of the 7 colors of the rainbow. We will devote 5 days for each hue, leaving the final week for developing the presentation format. In order to explore the imprint of light on the body Aleksandr will design unique light spaces, differing from one another in form and character. Dressed in a matching outfit,
I will work using dreaming and improvisation tools to unfold and embody specific characteristics of each of the hues. I will derive from somatic practices and healing work to determine which tissues are affected by the light, and how the body responds.

These passages are taken from my application for the residency. I reread them now, at the end of my stay, and I find their wording accurate and precise. I feel amazed how much they actually led me through these weeks of immersive work. It has been a touching process of taking time to see, feel and know different colors, and to expand them through the body.

I started the residency alone, as the virus scrambled previously made plans. Each day I would dress in a different color outfit, and unfold its quality through movement. In the beginning, I would follow the chakra system, fascinated by its universal simplicity. And yet quite soon and quite unexpectedly I decided to go off track.

I returned to my inner images.

I roll in the green hills, sing on the blades of grass, explode in the warmth of the golden rays, simmer with blushing tongues, echo in an empty space, make friends with what is, turn 5 again, sparkle with joy, flow with an infinite change, become still and listen. Bathed in each color of the rainbow, I receive the gift of living it, here and now. It is a dream composed of many images: experiential, tangible, precise. They move my body and ignite a deeply embodied understanding of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. First I live it, then I read about it. First I do it, write my feelings down, then I watch the rehearsal recording. Reversing this order empowers me to trust my inner knowing. The words I read afterwards confirm what I know.

Aleksandr and I are in contact all the time, we brainstorm, watch and read together. Each of the meetings creates immense light within me, new possibilities shimmer and flicker, tickling my curiosity. We buy a prism to create an analog rainbow. We get an analog slide projector. We get theatrical filters. We get different sized plexiglass. We borrow special mono chrome lights. We are on our toes, ready to plunge into this technicolor reality. It is a treat.

We work at nights, when the studio is dark and silent. We don’t go to sleep before 3 a.m., watching the recordings and dreaming the choices. I am amazed, again and again, how well we work together. It is a smooth, easy, nourishing and joyful process. We eat healthy, we walk to the lake, we work hard and we still live with open hearts.

The movement material is quickly verified by choices of the lights. Each slide builds an imagery space for me to live in. It frames the body, and yet the body challenges the light. I feel it is a healing journey from being lonely, desperate, sinking in the waters of one’s emotions, to reconnecting to the mystery of the earth, regaining power over one’s image and unique perspective to finally bubbling with sheer joy of feeling one. It is actually a story my Father saw when watching us online. “Life is beautiful and we need more of this beauty,” he said, after the Unfinished Friday.

Derin was touched by the organic landscapes: “Although all the filters are square, I could really see the moonscape, sunscape, landscapes, it took me to natural places.” I realize we do work with square, angular, rough objects. It feels stunning how something so far away from being natural can still bring oneself to experience the nature. The light brings me back to nature.

***

We have a lot of ideas how to continue. We are grateful, excited and curious.

We will premiere the work on the 24th of June 2021 in DOCK11.

I hope we can all meet there, in this new reality.

Anna

Residenzpilotprojekt

IT WAS POSSIBLE

January 8, 2021

In an interview with Nicholas Serota from 2006 Gerhard Richter is asked how it at a certain moment happened that he started to make out-of-focus paintings. The interview is from a documentary and in this particular section Richter is sitting in an oversized totally fancy sofa. One can sense from the tone of Serota’s voice that he is looking forward to a juicy response that will touch upon art historical mysteries or secret conflicts nobody knew about circulating in the Cologne scene of the late 60s. Richter, dressed more like a Chinese worker than a stinking rich superstar touches his nose and changes position, says after a slightly too long pause.

– Well you know, at that time it was… possible, adding a very generous smile. I can’t recall what happens afterwards but it doesn’t matter, the answer is intriguing enough on it’s own.

What first comes to mind is that Gerhard Richter is just another asshole that obviously and under no circumstances would reveal anything especially nothing that in any way could smudge his genius. Gerhard Richter doesn’t get inspiration he is inspiration in it’s much pure form. If one Mr Richter ever gets inspired from somewhere else than himself it is from God and God only, but that is probably only when he has a headache or is haunted by a vague hangover after yesterdays opening party. Well, it was just some retrospective who cares where, really. Conclusion Gerhard Richter is a shit.

But what about a different interpretation. Perhaps Richter said something more than about focused or out of paintings but instead touched upon something central to aesthetic production in general.

It was possible. Doesn’t that mean that there were no reasons, or no no reasons. It was just possible and I, i.e. Richter did it, out of focus. Of course after the fact art historians or critics can make up a thousand feasible narratives. Do their detective work and track it all down to some childhood trauma, a revenge plot, technological development, a Marxist unpacking of a historical moment or why not just blame capitalism – neoliberalism was invented at the time so capitalism will have to do.

But what if there were no reasons or no no reasons for real. It was possible, proposes that contrary to other kinds of decisions or unfoldings aesthetic judgment or decisions doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with causality. Aesthetic judgement, what green colour to choose, is not a matter of probability, at least not in its entirety. You ask a painter or whatever artist why that one there and most probably the answer will be come across as a rather silly if not stupid. – Cuz, you know… yeah, or something about emotions, feeling, energy or inner necessity. – It could be no other way, and there was no negotiation or probability.

What Richter, the old modernist or not says, is that aesthetic judgement is beyond reason or rational. It can be analysed but some part of it moves beyond probability and measure. One could also say that aesthetic judgement is self-referential because it refers only to itself as itself and that the experience of taking such a decision, whether that is in the studio in front of the easel or in the exhibition space or museum, is not the experience of taking a decision but to make or generate a decision where there previously was not available to make. Since the aesthetic experience is self-referential the outcome of this production is contingent and thus is the experience not of making a decision but of making a Decision. Which since this experience by necessity is empty means to experience oneself as potentiality. Perhaps that is that underlying, that determination that all aesthetic production comes down to, that feeling of generating a decision for no particular reason and to be touched however gently by potentiality.

With a different set of words perhaps what Richter said is that in aesthetic production, just because it is formulated around contingent decisions, hope resides.

TRUTH DARE OR SOCIOLOGY

January 5, 2021

It’s great to visit art museums. To say hello and friendly with the ticket person who can from time to time be a bit grumpy. I can still be friendly. The coffee place has fourteen kinds of coffee and that doesn’t need to make me roll my eyes. It’s just a museum who tries a bit too hard.

The other day I spent the afternoon in one of those museums together with my new born daughter and had a handful of really lovely conversations with staff, guards, other visitors and the woman in the cloak room told me about her children and their children. It was nice to talk to a grand mother for a moment.

It was also brilliant to change on the baby in the ladiesroom being treated with a certain scepticism and then oh how cute and some other niceties. Involving all senses, so to say. Social is top dollar.

But nothing of this was art. It was social situations, encounters that will stay with me as much as the art that happened to be spending time in the exhibition spaces made an impression. Yet these social encounters were not art or generated aesthetic experiences, nor where those paintings, drawings, sculptures, video pieces or even installations social situations although they participated in those social such and such to take place.

It’s a significant mistake to confuse art with social situations and the other way around. But it is tempting. If art equals something social having encounters with art can be justified through bringing people together, especially different peoples and we can together create a loving and open minded society where borders (at least some) are made porous and nice. But isn’t it so that when art is confused with social the door is also opened to confuse art with culture which to some might be great but perhaps not to art.

Somewhere Jean Luc Godard proposed that culture is the stuff we eat. Culture is measurable and hence something that can be analysed and changed in order to make the best out of some or other situation. Concerning Godard, if I eat a lot of beetroots I will pee red. Deduction rules. If I drink too much wine, tomorrow will be disaster. The payback of consuming Brussels sprouts will be smelly. More causality. In other words culture is something that can be determined and installed in order to produce efficiency. If I look at too many Picasso’s I might become a bit (even) more macho but there’s certainly no causality. If I stare at a Robert Morris sculpture for a few hours nothing will happen, especially nothing that can be “found” in those geometrical arrangements or piles of felt.

If art was to be equated with culture art works would not be appreciated for what they were but for what they produced and what measurable “betterment” they would install, i.e. to say a drift away from aesthetics towards ethics. Never minds whose betterment? Arts gift to humanity is exactly that it’s not good or bad for anything. That’s up to you.

Although arts instumentality is a direction socially engaged engaged art is interested in, it’s also precisely the direction that neoliberal politics wish to emphasize. Art being equal to culture – that is social environments or situation – degrades art to be an instrument in the hands of policy makers.

When sociologists and art critics with a sociological agenda approach art and their institutions it can give important insight but it is important to negotiate that they also tend to reduced art to be tokens in networks generating social situations. The painting on the wall is equal in symbolic value to the bench in the middle of the room. Nothing bad per se but doesn’t it imply that the painting on the wall’s job is something else than to be a painting? Moreover, the sociologist obviously pulls the plug out of the possibility that an encounter with art in anyway is different in kind to any other experience. The sociologist analyses the global condition and the impact different entities produce and is so to say completely uninterested in art. In the eyes of sociology art is nothing more than a token that generates forms of behaviour.

It is especially important in our times to insist on forms of autonomy implicit in art. Is it perhaps crucial to claim the specificity of the aesthetic experience and stress the possibility that art withdraws from the social and that that is important?

If art is not just here to confirm society, social behaviour and identity. If arts responsibility is something else than to support or be helpful, propose an alternative way of living or relating but instead that it’s job is to generate the possibility for a different kind of change, a change towards something that is not yet thinkable, to something that is generated through the uncertainty of the experience and not by the experience’s decisiveness. Said otherwise, if art has anything to do with truth it can only take place as long as the experience is indeterminable or at least is carried by indetermination, i.e. that it is singular which means withdraw from the social, that is is non-relational. When art becomes social it can simply have nothing to do with truth or truth claims any more. Only and art that claims truth is daring or urgent, the rest is simply negotiation and policy documents. Remember only as long as art remains in relation to truth can it be admired and posses us. An art that isn’t granted, that doesn’t insist on the possibility to blow us away, to overwhelm us or make us change our lives is like a love relation kept a live because it’s convenient.

I’M JUST GOING PAINTING

January 4, 2021

When Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” was published in 1967 it started, and quickly, a total deflation of modernist ideals in visual arts. Art in general but most prominently in visual art and in New York. Over night the idea of an essence to art was made obsolete. An artwork pointing to itself as itself was history and instead, at least in certain circles – and powerful – art became a matter of language, clusters of references and the artwork a bundle of signs held together by the very lack of originality.

I imagine Jackson Pollock having breakfast in the house in the Hamptons and after rolling a cigarette and about to put on his stained jacket saying to his wife Lee, “Hey, I’m just going painting.” That was in the end of the 40s or early 50s but what about if Pollock would have had breakfast after Barthes’ essay was public domain? There and then I’m just going paintings might not have been such a good idea. I picture Lee starting to giggle slightly embarrassed, one of those laughs that won’t stop. When the attack finally comes to an end trying to explain to the heroic painter that “just” painting implicit a preserved understanding of essence, and that “just” simply is out of the question since there is no just in the first place. -Jackson, whatever you paint, however much it pains you, you and painting is always inscribed in a delicate network of references, skills, formats, conventions, you name it? You are not free neither is your paintings.

Had Pollock stayed alive what had to happen there in the end of the 60s was that artists and art needed to articulate if not invent some new way of justifying artistic production. The time of innocence had come to an abrupt end. Purity sailed away and spontaneity had become a laughing stock.

Come to think about it, one could also say that art in this moments, had it been a human being, that it passed from being a free individual to be an individual that had individual freedom. Art passed from being a domain carried by sovereignty to constitutional freedom which obviously has nothing to do with freedom but at best with liberty. From now on art had to earn also the illusion of its freedom.

Roland Barthes’ essay was perhaps not such a great contribution to artistic practice, not at all a welcome injection of who knows what but instead a few pages that opened the door to a huge amount of frustration. What if art couldn’t be just any more what then…

In New York in the late 60s, what could possibly offer justification to make art. Well, nobody, not even in the art scene was a communist – “they” had been made extinct ten years earlier – but everybody, at least in the art scene was a Marxist so where to start looking? What the art scene found in Marx was brilliant, critique. Marx first tool and nine years later the first issue of October came out and arts obsession with critique was consolidated.

Awesome, “Lee, I’m going over to the shed to engage in my critical practice.” Fuck “I am nature” this is critique 24/7.

But nothing says that art’s relation to critique in anyway is inherent. Art’s job since 50 years, in certain circles has been critique but it is certainly not arts calling. It goes without saying that an art informed by Roland Barthes in any case would deny the possibility for a calling. No, art is something one does and gets paid for, it’s reason, cognition and semiotics c’est tout, or?

It is this moment, this moment of crises, from which conceptual art emerges and it is tragically an unconditional surrender to arts departure from sovereignty, which means to the very possibility of aesthetic experience.

It is as easy to be posthumously clever, wise after the event as it is to be in denial but perhaps it was Pollock who was brave, devoted and faithful. Who dared go into the studio unprepared for the possibility of being carried away by sovereignty and not the conceptual boys. Were they in fact cowards, so afraid of that something unnameable in aesthetic experience that they closed the door and locked it with critique. Was conceptual art guided by a bunch control freaks so paranoid that they anathematized any form or trace of indeterminacy?

A LITTLE SOL IN THE END

December 30, 2020

I like these beginnings.

Not in the “Sentences on Conceptual Art” but somewhere else Sol Lewitt writes something like, the great thing with conceptual art is that you can always cheat a little in the end to make it beautiful.

Sweet words but perhaps not that easy to decipher. It would be a bit too cynical to interpret the sentence as market benevolent or simply sloppy.

It’s intriguing that Lewitt stresses the end. Why in the end and not in the middle or half way, beginning. It seems like his work is carried by an instance of insight and when he know, or have been able to navigate the insight, it’s not so important to state it. At that time, in the end, let it be beautiful.

Too often I wonder if that sentence or conceptual in art hasn’t been reversed into roughly, the great thing with art is that you can always cheat in the end by adding a conceptual edge – or even worse, adding some conceptual -, thus fencing the work from all kinds of attacks or viruses. You can always say it’s conceptual and that’s “Oh yes, I understand…”

Conceptual in art is like diplomatic immunity in politics. When conceptual is added in the end, like some icing, it might just be called smart ass, and it definitely inscribes itself in dominant, if not down right male discourse. Conceptual in the end is like a father who responds to the teenage child “Because I say so.”

Conceptual in the beginning, as departure – like Sol had it – instead unveil a desire for transparency or a kind of exposure, if not dissolving of subjectivity. Not in the sense of Duchamp or minimalism where the point was to erase the artist’s subject, the trace of the artist – a gesture that often has been read as humble and a kind of glorious stepping down from a romantic male heroic image of the artist, but in fact functions the opposite way around. When Andy Warhol proposes the he wants to be a machine, it’s not cool it’s quite romantic and comes out as a desire to manifest the artist as superhuman or to reveal the human/heroic/genius be denying it.

Sol Lewitt’s conceptual is not a matter of denying or obscuring the artist’s subject but instead of remaining and faithful to something that has been set in motion, a process that might iterate a completely different subjectivity. To something that stays open – which means that it cannot be closed through a solution – but requires the coming into being of something or an experience that has yet to be given or acquire a name, an ambivalence to gain stability.

With a bit of a stretch one could even ponder the possibility that – contrary to the conceptual guys obsessing with semiotics – Sol Lewitt’s work is queer. Queer not in the end, i.e. representation, but as or through a process that asks for nothing except devotion and that in the end is beautiful.

IN THE BUCKET

December 29, 2020

In an interview, I have forgotten where, Barnet Newman is asked what he wants with his paintings. This was long time ago and I don’t mean to propose that Newman is forever but his answer is still cool, or perhaps more sweet. He answers something in the direction: “You know I just want the paint on the canvas to be as beautiful as it is in bucket.” Personally I didn’t know he used buckets. Tubes would be favourable as that would keep the scale more modest. Modernists, omg.

In parentheses there’s for me something strange about this quote, something that has nothing to do with the words but rather that it feels really odd to consider a personal looking like Newman to say something so cute. Especially the older Newman, with a monocle, moustache and a lit cigarette. In my imagination somebody that looked very differently, somebody far less prominent or proud of him or herself, formulated that beautiful sentence or is it nonsense?

On the canvas whatever is there, whatever traces or not somebody has made on it, it cannot not be recognisable as something. It’s like with clouds if you look long enough they start to look like something. They certainly always look like clouds and that’s all great but then the shape of a dog appears or the three musketeers or, well it’s always something. What’s on the canvas is always something, this or that. It just can’t be… because even “I don’t know maybe it’s…” is already something. Probably this or probably that and when it is it is already a location, a position to which one can formulate a perspective, an articulation.

In the bucket however the paint is still untouched by probably this or that, it is all the possibly and all the not possibly. Even better it is also all that that is beyond what something can or not possibly be. The paint in the bucket is everything, perhaps one could even say that it is infinity. Not, really it’s after all paint and in a bucket in the studio of Barnet Newman, but still.

The moment the paint ends up on the canvas it passes from the realm of potentiality to the realm of possibility. To me it’s obvious that – that is potentiality – that Barnet Newman is referring to.

An impossible project certainly but – and it certainly had different implications in post-wwII New York – isn’t that exactly what painting or art in general must circulate around. Potentiality.

In recent years the proposal aesthetic experience has surfaced. Nothing new and one can wonder what it is? Something tells us that an aesthetic experience is different than other kinds of experience, but what is that? If aesthetic experience is the same as any other experience one could compare the experience of watching a Kippenberger and having an ice-cream. Having an ice-cream is also an experience, first or second time. If this was the case it would also not be any fundamental difference to stand in front of a “real” Kippenberger or a reproduction in a book, and each time the Kippenberger would be more or less equally excellent, good or bad, too this or that. Might there be something specific about aesthetic experience after all. Might it even be so that the same Kippenberger only generates aesthetic experience once and only in a certain individual? If so we would have to consider that aesthetic experience is not just individual but that it is singular. It is this experience and only this one, it is singular.

Which is perhaps also why one can when somebody asks, why this Kippenberger and not this or that one, answer: “I don’t know, I just love it”. Concerning art it is imperative to not love a painting for a reason – I love it because I love it. And we are back with Newman, the moment when you love something because because you don’t love it for this or that, for what it possibly is. You love it, instead for all what it is and not, and for all the what it is that one can not even imagine imagining.

It is no surprise why this idea of aesthetic experience has been silenced for quite some time and why it still resides is some sort of limbo. When Jacques Derrida proposed that language is the capacity though which we have access to the world it came with a price – along the lines of phenomenology – that only what could be accommodated by language could exist. In that very moment the only thing that could exist had to be probably this or that or, if you like, I don’t know which is still something. From Heidegger we know that nothing is also something and in that moment probability ruled the world. If there was something else that had to be put under a blanket and forgotten, hence aesthetic experience and potentiality had to leave the building. So if post-modernism was good at pronouncing the death of this or that, it certainly killed of art, not this or that art but the very essence of art, the specificity of aesthetic experience, and experience that carries the possibility of an encounter with potentiality.

Of course modernism got it all wrong. Aesthetic experience, the essence of art or potentiality can not be captured, put in a bucket if you like and observed. Well, even if one could capture it, the moment when it gains stability and is recognizable it has already entered the realm of the possible. There is no potentiality in a painting, non of them, but painting, as any other art carries with it the possibility for the emergence of that peculiar moment that some call aesthetic experience others potentiality and Barnet Newman called, “as beautiful as it is in the bucket”.

HUMAN FACE

December 28, 2020

There is something about paintings that I don’t like. From one perspective I like almost all paintings, they are after all paintings and that’s quite nice. There’s usually something to pick up and play with or allow to be reformulated, and if there isn’t then that’s even more interesting and something already.

Somebody might consider that a paintings responsibility is to tell the viewer something, perhaps even something important. I rather think that a painting that tells something also guides and diminishes the scope of what can be interesting, what can be picked up. It’s difficult to make paintings that withdraw from having anything to tell, especially that withdraws from saying something like “confirm me”. It’s not a paintings responsibility to convince me, neither is it my job to convince it but instead to let it be and that is a difficult and demanding undertaking.

Somebody might propose that to engage with painting is some sort of detective work. So wrong. Painting is not a matter of alibi, evidence, deduction or getting it. Detectives might be able to see the bigger picture. The problem is just that it’s that bigger picture and already there tant pis.

From another perspective I hardly enjoy a single painting. Almost all of them get lost and end up wanting to something way too much. The more paintings I see the more of them is a waste of time, the more of them appear to be painted in order to please the artist’s subject, and the easiest way for that is for the artist to aim at pleasing the viewer. It is really disappointing to look at paintings that are playing hard to get.

But there is something particular about paintings that I don’t like. In all of them, I think. It’s time. Time is the problem that painting has to overcome.

There is always time in paintings, in some or other way, always time and it’s always human time. It seems that paintings always look at back at us or me with a human face. It’s never the time of painting, it is our time. I don’t mean that there is a little face in the painting but that they always look back at us with a sense of confirmation. They tell us we are humans and good subjects. You look at me and I look back. In this way paintings become correlational. They tell us who we are and are at best probabilistic. Evidently a correlationist aspiration to art undoes the possibility for aesthetic experience, and doesn’t it even transform art into sociology where the art work has been degraded to a token for social behaviour and interaction.

Sometimes they (paintings) are just illustrations, too often –  and illustration is not bad but not in paintings that think they are not.

I want to look at a painting that looks back with it’s own gaze or whatever it looks back with. Or perhaps better I want to look at paintings that don’t respond, that are minimally interesting and at the same time suck me in like a black whole. I want paintings without identity but that still are paintings or not not paintings.

Things that look back, with a human face (most things) are great because they don’t ask any other questions than those to which you have an answer. It might not be a pleasant answer but definitely an answer. Those things demand little and what they ask for can be calculated. They ask questions and therefore they stay in the realm of the probable. The make a bit of fuzz, nothing more than a little bit this or that, and nothing is really at stake. We can pretend but as long as something is recognisable it will not change anything, not for real.

I like paintings that doesn’t look back, that doesn’t whisper its name when I come closer. The best moment: it’s a painting but what is that painting?

In a lot of paintings, or are they just illustrations, I can’t even half avoid time. It’s there, full stop. A group of people have a heated conversation over a meal, candle light. Aha – detective work, it’s supper or if not it’s probably winter and the people in the picture (whose age is always easy to depict) are having a late lunch.

Other paintings, maybe those are even worse, are paintings that abandon time in the sense of motif, what is in the painting so to say. These paintings speak time in respect of when a certain style or ideology was present. American modernism was the specialist. Newman’s kabbalah or Daniel Buren’s 8,7 cm. Please.

It is not a matter of erasing time but the painter’s responsibility is to give way to paintings time, but as that is a time that – at least initially – does not have representation one can never know what that time is and that’s why it’s urgent.

There is something about paintings that I don’t like. From one perspective I like almost all paintings, they are after all paintings and that’s quite nice. There’s usually something to pick up and play with or allow to be reformulated, and if there isn’t then that’s even more interesting and something already.

Somebody might consider that a paintings responsibility is to tell the viewer something, perhaps even something important. I rather think that a painting that tells something also guides and diminishes the scope of what can be interesting, what can be picked up. It’s difficult to make paintings that withdraw from having anything to tell, especially that withdraws from saying something like “confirm me”. It’s not a paintings responsibility to convince me, neither is it my job to convince it but instead to let it be and that is a difficult and demanding undertaking.

Somebody might propose that to engage with painting is some sort of detective work. So wrong. Painting is not a matter of alibi, evidence, deduction or getting it. Detectives might be able to see the bigger picture. The problem is just that it’s that bigger picture and already there tant pis.

From another perspective I hardly enjoy a single painting. Almost all of them get lost and end up wanting to something way too much. The more paintings I see the more of them is a waste of time, the more of them appear to be painted in order to please the artist’s subject, and the easiest way for that is for the artist to aim at pleasing the viewer. It is really disappointing to look at paintings that are playing hard to get.

But there is something particular about paintings that I don’t like. In all of them, I think. It’s time. Time is the problem that painting has to overcome.

There is always time in paintings, in some or other way, always time and it’s always human time. It seems that paintings always look at back at us or me with a human face. It’s never the time of painting, it is our time. I don’t mean that there is a little face in the painting but that they always look back at us with a sense of confirmation. They tell us we are humans and good subjects. You look at me and I look back. In this way paintings become correlational. They tell us who we are and are at best probabilistic. Evidently a correlationist aspiration to art undoes the possibility for aesthetic experience, and doesn’t it even transform art into sociology where the art work has been degraded to a token for social behaviour and interaction.

Sometimes they (paintings) are just illustrations, too often –  and illustration is not bad but not in paintings that think they are not.

I want to look at a painting that looks back with it’s own gaze or whatever it looks back with. Or perhaps better I want to look at paintings that don’t respond, that are minimally interesting and at the same time suck me in like a black whole. I want paintings without identity but that still are paintings or not not paintings.

Things that look back, with a human face (most things) are great because they don’t ask any other questions than those to which you have an answer. It might not be a pleasant answer but definitely an answer. Those things demand little and what they ask for can be calculated. They ask questions and therefore they stay in the realm of the probable. The make a bit of fuzz, nothing more than a little bit this or that, and nothing is really at stake. We can pretend but as long as something is recognisable it will not change anything, not for real.

I like paintings that doesn’t look back, that doesn’t whisper its name when I come closer. The best moment: it’s a painting but what is that painting?

In a lot of paintings, or are they just illustrations, I can’t even half avoid time. It’s there, full stop. A group of people have a heated conversation over a meal, candle light. Aha – detective work, it’s supper or if not it’s probably winter and the people in the picture (whose age is always easy to depict) are having a late lunch.

Other paintings, maybe those are even worse, are paintings that abandon time in the sense of motif, what is in the painting so to say. These paintings speak time in respect of when a certain style or ideology was present. American modernism was the specialist. Newman’s kabbalah or Daniel Buren’s 8,7 cm. Please.

It is not a matter of erasing time but the painter’s responsibility is to give way to paintings time, but as that is a time that – at least initially – does not have representation one can never know what that time is and that’s why it’s urgent.

It is not a matter of erasing time but the painter’s responsibility is to give way to paintings time, but as that is a time that – at least initially – does not have representation one can never know what that time is and that’s why it’s urgent.

BLOG ENTRIES

December 28. 2020

During the second part of the residency at Lake Studios I will post a series of shorter text that reflect the project I’m busy with during the residency, the conditions under which we practice dance today next as well as some thought on, well, dance choreography, art and politics. Those texts have been researched and penned down during the residency and a couple of months prior to the period.

During the residency my projects concerns relations between dance and anxiety, in particular respect of climate change and simultaneously researching connections between affect and anxiety. If dance has a particular and active relations to affect, which it has, it makes it interesting to consider in connection to anxiety, which is different than worry or trouble that is forms of turbulence that can be addressed vis a vis arguments – don’t worry, we will be back home before the rain comes – whereas anxiety is a sensation in the body that can not be dealt with through reason. “It doesn’t matter how much you try to explain, I’m still scared beyond words.” or “You can’t convince me, there is a giant spider under my bed however much you vacuum clean underneath it.”

The starting point for this on going research is how dance can be considered and practiced as a means to address climate anxiety, a phenomena that over the last years has become more and more common especially amongst younger people. Climate anxiety can obviously not be cured by argument or reason which is where dance comes into the picture. Can we dance together and practice our bodies, together as a means of proactively spending time with our anxieties. Anxiety is particularly complicated as it often comes with apathy. Therefore it is important to develop practices that empowers the participant, not in the sense of advice or result oriented tasks but exactly through affective stimuli, thus the participant develops his or her own agency, and agency gives way to active participation.

However, during the residency a new project has emerged that opens for a different approach, in particular in respect dance relation to internet and online dissemination.

Nina Simone will forever be a true inspiration to me, both in life and in my art. the way she fought for rights of black people with everything in her life telling her not to, is unbelievably inspiring. this song has been with me through this whole residency and inspired me a lot. thank you Nina.

i have been talking and interviewing some black artists during these weeks about their view on race and art, and how they feel about blackness, whiteness etc in life and in their art. one beautiful dancer send me a text that she wrote that is expressing the feeling in a way that we all know very well, and have been through or thought about more than once. thank you so deeply for your important and inspirational words.

I know I am talented, I know I can do this

But I can’t help but think – am I here because I’M BLACK ?

They don’t know me that well, haven’t seen me dance much really

But they want me in their cast, they want me in their show

And so I wonder – why exactly am I here?

I know they’ve worked with a black dancer before

That dancer is gone

Am I just a replacement?

Not a replacement for the skills but more of a fill-in for the diversity box that ‘needs’ to be checked?

It’s tricky 

If we want things to change, we have to start somewhere

So can I complain if I’m hired not only because I am good at what I do, because I have what they’re looking for, but ALSO BECAUSE I’M BLACK?

On the day of the video shoot, as they are teaching me the material that THEY have created together, that THEY have worked on together

The material that will be filmed and will serve to promote the project

I feel unnecessary, I feel like a prop, especially as I stand between two other white dancers

Not because I feel intimidated or less capable than them

But because I see that this video shoot, this project they are working on, could work perfectly well without me

But perhaps it just LOOKS better with me

Hey, it’s a job, it’s cash, it’s interesting work – so why should I care what the motive is?

For there to be 2,3,4, black dancers in a show, there must, at some point have been only one black dancer in a show

And so it is bittersweet

And so we endure this discomfort at the individual level, to pave the way for the change at the structural level

We speak on  and I mention how I felt that day, that I felt as though there was no need for my presence

She understands, she acknowledges, she empathizes, she apologizes

And yet, neither of us address my Blackness 

The role it plays in an entirely white room

She thinks it has to do with me being ‘new’ to the group (sure, that’s part of it)

Perhaps she really does not see the issue, though I consider her quite ‘woke’

And so I think perhaps it is in my mind , that it isn’t actually an issue

Also this is not something you briefly address in a quick phone call

And so it remains unsaid, undiscussed, unsolved

At that moment, I don’t feel that I have the energy to discuss it 

At that moment, I don’t feel that I have the courage to discuss it 

At that moment, I don’t want to discuss it, though I know I should, I must, not just for me but for all of us

But it remains unsaid, undiscussed, unsolved

Like a piece of cashew stuck between the back of your teeth

What a relief when you finally get the toothpick to get it out

But you can also go a very long time without getting it out

Somehow burdened but also used to it and therefore not really bothered

i believe that as a black person, to be joyful is a choice. it’s an attitude, a sign of strength and a sign of resistance. it challenges the stereotypes of what it means to be black because everything in this world tells us that we are not, and shouldn’t be joyful. you should only be joyful (or maybe more grateful) when x allows you to sit at the same table, but not simply in being who you are.

so the last weeks i have worked with that particular angle of joy. that it’s something that you choose, and even though it might seem like a simple thing, it can be a struggle to achieve. and i find it very interesting, and important, to see how it manifests in the body. how does the attitude of joy feel, look, express itself in me? and how can i find it even in the most uncomfortable positions and places?

how can i find joy in a place that doesn’t want me to be joyful and what does it mean when i do so?

therefore i have been putting myself in movements and positions that i do not feel comfortable in, and been trying to find ways to make them joyful. do i have to change the position? move in it? change my weight? or is it enough to just change my mindset? and when i change my mindset, does it change the position too?

i found that in my body it has a lot to do with tension and release. with holding on and letting go. with resisting and allowing.

i don’t like to stand on releve in 2nd position for 20 min, but if i have to, how do i make it a joyful experience?

inspiration for today

“surely there’s strength in being dressed for a storm

even when there’s no storm in sight”

– Yaa Gyasi

inspiration for today

“if you can only be tall

when someone else is on their knees

then you have a serious problem

and my feeling is

white people has a very, very serious problem

and they should start thinking

of what they can do about it

take me out of it.”

– Toni Morrison

inspiration for this residency

“when you are a black girl

everyday that you exist in your body

without apologizing

is activism”

– Raven Taylor

hello! my name is amie jammeh. i am a 27 years old dancer who originally comes from gambia and sweden.

i work with the body, with video and with voice and my focus as an artist is to bring awareness and visibility to black culture, black stories and black artists. i will dedicate my time here in this beautiful space trying to do that. i am specifically researching about black joy as a rebellious act, and i am trying to find ways to express this with my body.

i am interviewing and talking to other black artists to hear their thoughts and ideas on the topic and the topic of being who they are and the effect it has on their life and art.

peace&love

Residenzpilotprojekt

Hello! I’m Michelle Moura, dancer, performer, choreographer. At this residency I’m working on the piece Overtongue. I’m interested in bodily states, but in Overtongue I’m interested in words, in the confusion or inflation of meaning. So I’m creating a slippery language. But not only. I’m indeed working with bodily dissociations, separating voice from it’s facial movement. That means working with rhythm.

Maybe here at this blog I will share some references…

WORDS ARE NO INNOCENT

.:.

Some drawings done during the last days :::::

The fingers disappointed us /////

Forget this word ///

You’re the most complete success the universe has ever see. An animal being a mind ////

…THOUGHTS ON AN ENDING…

so that’s it, the residency comes to a close, Unfinished Fridays finishes and it’s time for me to leave

it was a beautiful evening

they were six beautiful weeks

they were autumn days cold and colourful

they were chatting outside with a cigarette or two

chatting outside with Naïma

we were chatting about rhythm

about how our work and our bodies and our selves leak into each other

how a conversation becomes a frame and suddenly

this thing

this thing you have been creating

this thing that you have dragged with you all the way from home

changes

what we touch we change

what we change changes us

by talking we touched

each others work and each other

we changed

we changed the work the work changes us we changed the work

through talking

together

so suddenly i feel that my work is also dealing with rhythm

the pulse of poetry

a queer heartbeat

body-rhythm

the drumbeat of change

in the end my film is a poem occurring through text but also image

it’s a game of rhythm

black screens beating out the beats between our voices

we are many bodies held in one film of skin

many voices singing collective harmonies of the self

many bodies dancing together in one container

we intersect with ourselves and for a moment are still

then the song continues

maybe this is what the film is about

maybe this is how our talks about rhythm have become manifested

in the black screens between images

in the criss-cross of voices

fragmented rhythms chasing each other round in circles

maybe you could call this work music too

so i end with one more image:

it’s just a shot of my editing desk

but don’t you think it looks like a score?

i guess it is

<FRACTURE> <FRAGMENT> <FRAME>

things change and are fractured. i thought i would be sharing a short solo in the next edition of Unfinished Fridays but the new light lockdown in Berlin means the event was cancelled. then i thought i would be sharing related research that i am working on with friends but our work is about touch so that too has been canceled. now instead i am going to create a short film for the upcoming (online) edition of Unfinished Fridays. things change and are fractured. things are fractured and change. we shift and move into new realities, new bodies, new relations.

fragments emerge and connect. the images i created for the publicity for the abandoned Unfinished Fridays have become inspiration for the emerging work:

these are overlays, images created from stills taken from my research and overlayed with each other as well as anatomical sketches from Blandine Calais-Germaine’s seminal work, ‘Anatomy of Movement’. now i want to take these images, spontaneous fragments appearing like found objects from the now dead space of an aborted sharing, and create a short film. why not?

my research and part of my practice here in Lake Studios relates to yoga. i have been doing an almost daily yoga practice in the mornings. but even as i thought about my queer body emerging not only from my anatomy but also through the fragmented and fractured process of living my life i somehow excluded the morning practice from this conception. it was disconnected, just something i do in the mornings, almost like a coincidence. so we frame the coincidence. why not include the self that practices in the morning as just one of the many selves that occupy this skin we call body.

from fractures and fragments comes a frame. the image of overlays becomes a skeleton, the morning yoga practice flesh; this new film i will create suddenly finds itself with yoga as a central theme.

______________________________________________________________________________________

<BIO>

as artists we are often asked to write a bio so here is a bio, or a bio-poem or an instant-bio – kinda like instant compostition but instead of composition it’s a bio.

…

fergus is

fergus is here today this week for six weeks here in lake studios

fergus is here

full of nostalgia, full of the other times, full of mermaids

with green hair this time, green eyes and a quiet room to dream lake-y dreams

this the difference, a resident, sheltered and homed not just visiting but

here

fergus is

fergus is listening to gwenno, a new favourite

favourite song from the album is this

this gorgeous melody and magic words sung in cornish, what a surprise

to hear cornish, dead language of my childhood homeland, what a surprise to hear

a celtic tongue suddenly spoken from spotify’s shuffle

tasting home in a new home

how strange, how lovely

cornwall is oceans

cliffs, coasts, rocks, waves, salt, salt salt salt salty saltwater kissing me

fergus also is oceans

is water and salt and saltwater

is still a mermaid swimming still rusalka still a sea weasel

is still all about magic and queer creatures reaching out and collective art-making and water and bodies and transformation and the tides and the richness of diving into it and holding your breath and this crazy world of sensation all around us just waiting to be licked and caressed and smelled and eaten up like a yummy treat and then being immersed in it and crying with your friends because it made you sick and you ate to much and crying with your friends because this world is so fucked up and its really not enough just to dance but it really is all we can do and all we can do is go to the sea and the water and let go and let it wash over us and just become it

an ocean

or at least, the imagination of an ocean

fergus wants

to imagine an ocean

to imagine new worlds into possibility

like ursula said

to find the radical political beautiful dangerous wildness in our imaginations

together

because if i’m imagining a new would into being then i want you to be there

so you can kiss me of course

or maybe so we can kiss each other

if we feel like it

fergus also wants to enjoy these six weeks

to dance and do yoga and research anatomy and phrasing

to meet new friends and invite old ones along for the ride

and cook and stare out the window and wear nice outfits and talk about sabotaging gender and patriarchy and capitalism

yes to that

yes to dancing and enjoying it

yes to this body moving in a new old space

yes to being here and seeing what happens

yes

Handcrafted Digital Morphing

This research is based on personal circumstances that became globally relevant.  In 2017 (i.e. long before COVID-19 outbreak) I and several of my close friends-colleagues started to travel a lot and became separated from each other. To cure homesickness we run the project ‘Kvartirnik of the 3d order‘, that was a series of monthly online dance meetings of four dance artists, and we practiced it regardless of our locations and time-zones. “In four different places, we will simultaneously make our dance happen. Dance, which we couldn’t even imagine. Dance enclosed in pour private rooms but unfolding and interweaving with others over live video streaming. This dance is our way to comprehend the potentiality of the Real in inevitable hyperreality. Beyond borders. Beyond money. Beyond images. Dance. In da flat. On your screen.”  Through the Pandemic in 2019, this format became routine of the whole world.

For more than 8 years I work in dance cooperative Isadorino Gore, that we cofounded with Dasha Plokhova. Last 3 years we live in different cities that provoke us to explore the potentiality of distancing and the challenge that the gap of closeness provides. This time we explore how we could choreograph movement and attention through the most popular conference platform – Zoom. We’ve named that way of communication ‘handcrafted digital morphing’. 
Being involved in the discourse of communication with non-human selves, we are questioning, if we are able to consider digital media as a non-human self as well? As humanity, we are looking for a possibility to build responsible communication with the environment and other species on the planet. Following this logic we would address the question, how could we build horizontal communication with the media we are communicating through – through the platform that everyone uses. Could we consider the labor of digital selves as invisible labor that is developed by the feminist paradigm? How could we show hospitality and invite digital media to collaborate with us? And who is hosting whom? And how would we co-build this process accordingly? 

www.sashaportyannikova.com

We mothers

We creatures

We who drink and who let drink

We who are weak and who leak sometimes

We mothers wiping asses writing applications reading news

Where our sons and daughters kill and rape each other

We the five stars hotel and 3 michelin stars restaurant the best environment , the best teachers for the new people

M & m & m & m & m

Come close spread your arms feel the warm feeling in your chest

Fall forward and let me catch you

Embrace you

Wipe your tears

Wipe your ass

Give you my breast

And we both dive into the nature

Inside of us

The liquid flows from me to you

You male creature suck my boobies

When was the last time you were standing on the roof of Radialsystem and peeing in the river

Making out with your transgender lover

And creating poems

Puking a little on the heads of pigeons, calling police, calling your mother, asking her to call her mother

Praying to the religious creature that you have just now invented

Created

Like a poem

Like a pigeon

Like I don’t know what

like this window

What do I must?

Why I must?

www.sonyalevin.com