tip for change -N

It is not a bad idea to krump it all out, before midnight and after, possibly even in the early morning of 1.1. when everything seems really fucked up and distorted. Old year’s krump / new year’s krump. We can always give it a new name as well, since we anyway can only do the fake version, and since the real thing has been totally commercialized already, as everything else. Krömp? 

quickly before 08 – N

Imagined situations: Situation 1: invite a limited number of people to freely play the chair game as we originally did, buy up all theater tickets with production budget so that people can enter for free. Situation 2: set up chair field in squares of 4×90º, fill the entire space with chairs, try to get as much audience as possible, add theatrical lights, durational light changes and import sounds from other neighboring spaces that are located in the same building (via mics). Situation 3: perform irregularities and rhythmic intensities in walking, possibly add modulated version of the chair field but distributed so that audience does not form a singular pack but stays multiple. Situation 4: be radical, for one evening fire the cast (so sorry) and perform irregularities and rhythmic intensities in walking with a tall guest. Situation 5: perform irregularities and rhythmic intensities in walking outside on the street in front of the theater, one hour before the performance is announced in the program (free and available for everybody), then let people buy tickets for situation 2. 

29.12.07 nora

I had this idea – since we are left with 3 now – to possibly invite a different person each night for the performances, a guest performer who always adds something new. At least it’s an idea…

[n]

wow!

[d]

I´m krumping at home

n

“Stable spatial ordering and disruptive eventness. Intensity of experience and extension of it. Perception and action. Object perception and perception of perception. Site-specificity and dispersion. These are not dualities. They are polarities, dynamic orientations in an abstract qualitative map of potential experience.” (Massumi). I was thinking of chairs, positioning, observation – and of walking, irregularities, tripping, rhythmic parasites, disruptive viruses. 

n

good one!

22.12.2007 (pablo) shava

in the article “The activist commandments for the new millenium”, Guillermo Gómez-Peña writes a great post-script:
“PS: And one more thing – don’t make the mistake I am making in this text and take yourself too seriously. If you stop laughing, you are dead.”

21.12.2007 (pablo) intermodality

these days, the city of Amsterdam can be gorgeous if one manages to cut off intermodal perception. that is, the snow-white city looks very beautiful as long as one manages to forget one’s extremely cold ass.

21.12.07 shortest day of the year, n

From observation to intuition. (From chairs to walking.) To stand despite all possibilities to fall. (That seems to be an actualization). This comes from a book by Paul Klee. This and that that this. 

Getrude’s quotes

“I say this I change this I change this and this. Now think of the difference of not yet. What do I think when I feel. I feel I feel they feel they feel which they feel.” – Gertrude Stein

rhythm rhythm wall rhythm

20.12.2007 (pablo)

while many of the things we’ve been exploring around perception seem to relate to some sort of “external” stimuli (like the float or the anechoic chamber, or the meditation, which seem to cut off stimuli; or messing up the sense of balance by distorting some sensory input), I feel like when we move we behave in a similar way but being stimulus and stimulated at the same time (or stimuluator and stimulated).
in a sense, these two parts that take place in a communication (me and something else) seem to relate in a different way in both scenarios: in the first one, is more hyerarchical; in the second, since it’s all people and there is a two way feedback, the communication is more horizontal. in this second scenario everything, stimulus and stimulated, belong to the same layer/system, because everyone is both at the same time.

then, as usual, the question that remains is: how to make the audience also part of this same layer/system.

20.12.2007 (pablo)

though I don’t need to imitate stepping/movement to synch up with sound rhythm, it does feel that I can’t be too far away from the others in terms of energy or intensity.

20.12.07 nora

I have the feeling we are moving towards a mix between Bruce Nauman and Krumping… I like it! Boots have to come next. Stomp, stamp, walk, trip, stumble, skip, jump, suspend, hopp, shuffle, kick, land. I especially like the newly developed horse movements! In the new year I will present you some Nauman and Krump videos.  

19.12.07 nora

When does tripping (rhythmic irregularities, rupture of flow) become trippy (drugged excitement, affective engagement), when do we trip together (or trip out of sync), when do we go on a trip (collective togetherness, performance event)?

18.12.2007 (pablo) nog eentje

rh thm rh thm rh thm rh thm rh thm rh thm
tripping in the studio.
stuttering on the blog.
tripping in the process.
stuttering all over.
tripping backwards.
tripping.
stuttering stuttering stut-tering stuttering
rhythm stut-tering rhythm stut-tering rhythm

18.12.2007 (pablo)

when walking backwards the moment the wall comes into the field of vision it is already going away from us

18.12.2007 (pablo)

I don’t think I understand the idea of the Relation being the Potential anymore… I think there are also relations that are actual, or that there is an actuality created through relations and another one created within oneself (or something like that)…
Maybe I would even think of things the other way around: relations are actual, and there is a potential for different actualities… but fuck, this sounds like potential doesn’t exist at all.
Maybe is something more like relations express potential, or are the actual expression of potential: relations are lively because they don’t mean one thing but all the possibilities in between more things. But then relations are still there, actually.
Today I felt clearly the actuality of relations, and how they take space/focus/attention, and how difficult it is to layer. To keep up with many simultaneous relations is, obviously, difficult. And tiring. Some sort of basic (or previous) agreements seem to support better the communication. I also like the idea of some structuring/degree of setting.

(nora)

Stuttering (‘verbal non-fluency’) is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds. The term stuttering is most commonly associated with involuntary sound repetition, but it also encompasses the abnormal hesitation or pausing before speech, referred to by stutterers as blocks, and the prolongation of certain sounds, usually vowels. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttering

tripping

trip v 

1. to stumble or fall as a result of catching the foot on something, or to cause somebody to stumble or fall by making the person’s foot catch on something

2. to move, run, walk, or dance with rapid light steps

3. to experience the effects of a hallucinogenic drug (slang)

4. to go on a journey, tour, or excursion

irregularities (n)

tripping  . stuttering .

tomorrow /n

Will be a very bad day

relations /n

I was thinking that there are actual relations and virtual relations, that there is also a total field of relations. Maybe relations are not very graspable. Are they of matter? But I do think that there are actual relations. This is at least how I understand it. We have to ask a relational expert!

18.12.07 n

Today was a better day

18.12.07 (m)

Really enjoyed watching the 3 of you moving today.

I didn’t know / didn’t care what you were busy with…

It was (just) about play.

suddenly [d

I came yesterday from Berlin direct in the middle of the rehearsal. Landing suddenly in the process I could see all of you with the sufficient distant to get an external point of view, and necessary to ask myself things like: what´s going on? what are this 4 people doing in this room? And I would really like to stay longer with this questions. After a while different information of the process came to my mind: I was already inside.

Somehow I like this kind of distance when all the things around are not clear at all and I can imagine what the situation around  is about. Thats why sometimes I don-t like to talk/discuss a lot after the improvisation because then I lose what was pushing me away from the language. I miss sometimes that nobody could talk during the rehearsals.

17.12.07 (m)

Today was a good day, indeed.

In relation to the different degrees of setting the piece, I just remembered a discussion with Katie Duck. She said that depending on what you want to play with/study, you set all the things that are not really part of this game/study.

17.12.2007 (pablo)

I think I understand the idea of The Relation (with caps) being (in) The Potential (with caps) but then, does it mean that at the moments of actuality there are no relations anymore?

17.12.07 n

Today was a good day 

16.12.2007 (pablo)

I thought of and brought up (social) dancing not in terms of the event of the performance (and I agree on the fact that what we are working on totally relates to the problem of social events and art products/processes), but in terms of a working tool. When I spoke of energy feedback and focus, I was thinking of physicality as a focusing/motivating/self-manipulative/inspiring/triggering/etc tool for the rehearsals.

by the way, the high pitch sound is still with me…

about dancing / n

For sure dancing is a great activity, especially in a club to or against or in-between the beat and with other people. I can only agree on that. Dance other than social dance can sometimes affect through empathy or its relational movements, though mostly there seems to be a rather big gap between performers and audience. Gap could be bridged by a concept that brings it all together. Gap could also be bridged by participation – I mean, if the devision is not treated as a devision, than the gap wouldn’t be there in the first place. Of course I love gaps in general, but maybe not the hierarchical types. Prefer for example time ruptures. I think social dances and art products/processes are still two different stories, and in a way we are dealing with this very much if we consider the chair game. 

15.12.2007 (pablo) club situation, observation at a 90º angle through friends

15.12.2007 (pablo)

going back to movement research sounds good, despite your plans of not going there this time… I’ve been dancing tonight, quite a bit, and besides the high pitch sound that remains with me (and that will probably stay until tomorrow), I also keep this sensation of how movement feeds itself back and how it can facilitate a stream of energy, a certain kind of focus… and the difference that Sher pointed out last thursday between our moving in relation to each other and moving the relations in between us sounds like a good clear starting point and an issue to research that might show what kind of events/movements/actions could have an important role to play in the performance.

I was also having a conversation a few days ago with a friend, telling him about the experience of the anechoic chamber, and we talked about how this experiences seem to be some sort of projection/extreme scenario of what the artistic practice often provokes in us – bringing back to ordinary life a new perspective, a new awareness or attentiveness, a new proactiveness in relating to the world

15.12.07 (m)

relative or relational? (n)

I would like to investigate the difference between movements relative to each other /or/ moving the relation (moving the interval, the in between). We are definitely lacking relational collective movements. Seems like we will soon be back at movement research, despite my plan to not go there this time. 

14.12.07 n

Hearing about CUE was quite interesting in relation to the frame we are working in right now. I am wondering a lot right now about all those production structures that we enter when receiving governmental funding. Do I want to work in those structures? Actually not at all. But at what point do they become restrictive? It is after all not a bad thing to be able to pay yourself and the dancers and still have space and time to create something together in a participatory way. I have always tried to consider it that way: I enter those structures and they are restrictive, they impose patterns, they impose certain expectations of playing in theaters and having income through tickets, presenting a ’something’, touring that something… Can we still approach that space and time that is given to us in a shared, participatory and playful way or do we let the expectations invade on the process? Sometimes it’s a very edgy situation, other times it works. How can audiences become players and participants of that process instead of visitors to a product? How much will the fact that visitors pay for a ticket invade their freedom of being playful inside that time and space given to them in the theater? Does it all always come back to the question of money being a limit factor, or can we interact on another level? 

s to m

I’d love to hear more about where this came from! also a tour of the diagram would be great. I also doubt the possibility/desirability of a common perspective/view.

m to n

common perspective …. no, I believe that it doesn’t exist.

how would the meaning change if I said common view? that was the first word that came in mind…

tomorrow, if we all feel like, I will explain where this question came from. it’s rather confusing the way I put it and the words I chose to use.

Thanks for the response…

sentence

I have asked myself how relation and participation can become the main content of the work.

everything . something . nothing . n

When I sat down to simply observe space I realized that ‘nothing’ does not exist, just as silence or stillness might not exist, if you investigate the issue closely. This nothing seems to be in fact an overfull potential of everything. Something is being pulled out of the soup and actualized, let’s say a perceptual landing site. I was really quite curious what you meant with common perspective? Does it exist?

n to m

I wouldn’t say that we want to show possibilities of different perspectives. I have an interest in creating awareness of negative prehensions. That would neither be possibilities nor impossibilities but a potential field of the in between in a constant process of becoming. By becoming aware of what your selected conscious perception is (or let’s better say prehension), you also somehow create this awareness for everything minus your positive prehension, and that would be not just the possible but really an overfull potential. 

…maybe this is completely irrelevant (m)

…maybe this is completely irrelevant question, but I was thinking:

Do we want to show the possibility of having different perspectives?

or…

The impossibility of having a common perspective?

to avoid the “this or that” way of thinking I made this.

12.12.07 n

TASK. This is your chair. At any given distance, place yourself in relation to another person and observe. Change your position in space whenever you feel like it. The performance is over when you decide to leave. 

11.12.2007 (f) you and whose army

11.12.2007 (pablo)

patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns
patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns
patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns
patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns
patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns
patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns
patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns patterns

look at the pattern

extremes? n

Is emptiness an extreme? Emptiness? It seems overfull. Empty-overfull. I don’t have a need for extremes or sensory deprivation or saturation patterns. I would say, it all comes out as it does because (probably) I am getting older – ha ha! I wanted to say, I am actually feeling content with the idea of nothingness. Let’s say, nothingness in relation to others. Is that our piece? That type of thinking in my life makes it impossible to create anything other than a simple togetherness as the content of the work. If we would show anything other than this relational togetherness, we would weaken the concept. What the process might need right now is this contentment, and then curiosity to enter deeply into the details of nothingness. Of course I mean: relational becoming. Nothingness is a strange word, since there is clearly something. 

silence and on /n

I wonder what John Cage did next after he had done 4:33?

in what context

We sat on Dam square to observe (each other observing), and of course the police stopped by. They asked me, what are you doing. I said, sitting and watching. They asked, in what context. I said, in no context. They passed on. 

11.12.07 • n

5 – 25 – 250

A draft for a text inspired by Nora’s saturation/deprivation (to be continued, re-arranged and re-thought) m.

Maybe the point of putting ourselves into extreme situations is because we had the need to re-experience and re-think the “normal daily life situation” (from Nora’s text “saturation/deprivation”).

A possible thinking pattern appears on the surface:

A situation- saturation of the situation- need for change- change- new situation- saturation of the new situation- need for change- change- new situation and so on and so forth.

I ask my self:

-Why do we need this pattern?

-Maybe this pattern is in itself saturated and asks for a change.

-But, on the other hand, a need for changing this pattern just re-confirms the same pattern.

-Is there another way to think of change?

-And is there another way to think of “form”, of a “situation”, or anything that appears (relatively) stable in our perception?

“But still those actual forms should stay open-ended and changing and unstable in order to re-become all the time. If they don’t re-become they arrive again to the point of saturation and we will feel deprived of change.” (from Nora’s text “saturation/deprivation”)

saturation/deprivation [n]

Actually we have only done 2 sensory deprivation experiments (floating and anechoic chamber). Though we could probably add meditation as another. But something makes us feel that we are dealing with extreme situations continuously, no? I think the sense of saturation comes through this navigation along the edge between virtual and actual. Tending towards the total field-ness of anything (sound, vision, tactility, thought, observation, concepts…) seems to come close to the disoriented-ness of sensory deprivation. I have a desire to tend towards those experiences, but they also make me almost car-sick, they produce an urgency to get out and away, to actualize form. They produce an urgent need for landings. I find that very interesting. I start to find another type of urgency for dancing. I start to realize that I have to constantly actualize in order to survive as a human being. Otherwise relations become impossible. Maybe even the act of going to the theater and sitting down on chairs next to other people is a type of actualization that produces relations. To participate in projects such as we do right now is another one. But still those actual forms should stay open-ended and changing and unstable in order to re-become all the time. If they don’t re-become they arrive again to the point of saturation and we will feel deprived of change. 

absolute reference to nothing

10.12.07 anechoic chamber (((n)))

Surprisingly a very tactile experience. Entering the space, I immediately felt a very uncomfortable pressure on my entire body, especially head and blood vessels. We were told that there is no pressure difference in the chamber compared to outside. Hearing was felt. I sensed the inside of my ears. Heard the sounds of joints moving. I did not hear my heartbeat, but felt the bloodflow. I heard my breath, however softly I tried to breathe. I heard other people’s joints moving and digestive sounds. A very dry space. No resonance, any action dies immediately. We all screamed very loud, but nothing stayed after, the sound cut off abruptly. The sense of relation between people was flattened, space in between was disappearing. I was hyper-aware of all the internal sounds my body is producing. If usually we close our ears for silence, closing my ears in the anechoic space produced noise (internal sounds), opening them I entered complete silence (except for a high vibration resonating in my ears and skull). Switched the lights off: complete darkness and silence. Hyper-awareness of gravity. Played music through loud speakers: sounded as sharp and clear as through headphones. After leaving the space, I was hyper-aware of spatialized sound. Quite wonderful to breathe fresh oxygen. This experience produced a need for the “normal daily life situation”. A need for something not extreme. Not even extreme thoughts or concepts. I am saturated with reflections and experiments. Wouldn’t mind just dancing around. Or eating dinner. 

wired conceptual chairs. m

10.12.2007 (pablo) what is tiredness

we go through different experiences of deprivation; we search for environments and infrastructures that allow us to explore the absence of sound, the absence of image, the absence of movement, the absence of time, the absence of verbal communication. we seem to be exploring deprivation, and invariably we end up in saturation: saturation of silence. saturation of observation. saturation of blindness. saturation of sensing. saturation of perception. etc. etc.

hope I didn’t sound too pesimistic or something… just wanted to point out how often we seem to end up in saturation, even when we are approaching it’s opposite.

I found also a definition that I liked. Saturation: a condition in which a quantity no longer responds to some external influence. Today in the anechoic chamber all this issues of relationality vs. isolation seemed to surface a lot…

(sure)

conceptual chair 01 

conceptual chair 02

conceptual chair 03

highly conceptual chair

audience member sitting on conceptual
chair and fields of potential 

100 people sitting on chairs
in Dam square (total field of
chairs in Dam square)
 

Pablo, will you…

…also make a diagram of a conceptual chair? -n

bad sentence [n]

This is about to become a game of which we do not know yet what it is.  

plan [n]

In the following two weeks we compose a one hour dance (dance? dance- whatever!) piece that can be intervened on by participants (observers-performers of the ’sitting on chairs category’). They can place and replace themselves relationally as they wish. That ensures re-composition all the time. In January we invite people. 

or… [n]

fieldings.  [field1]  [field2]  [field3] 

8.12.2007 (pablo) {fieldings 1, fieldings 2, fieldings 3}

Do you think that posting this thoughts about different performances every night is also a good publicity strategy? will you, dear audience-member-blog-reader, come to all the performances just in case?

8.12.2007 (pablo)

{fieldings 1, fieldings 2, fieldings 3}

sounds

very

exciting

8.12.2007 (pablo) in response to chair field

maybe the function for a doingmoving is in activating observation; maybe what is performed is what allows an audience to realize they are observing something, by activating this process and then doubling/redirecting attention towards the act of observation and not the observed act anymore… maybe the excitement (would that be entertainment?) can come from the movement from one layer to the next one or between layers, from moving from the (conceptual)chair where the performed is observed to one chair (behind/in front/under) where one observes oneself observing.

poem…ehm

per cept

per per cept cept cept

con

cept ion

anion kation

+ – plus minus

e f g h i j k l m n d

die dye

dimension

(hair ???)

in all directions ???

process of a potential performance [n]

I realize that despite Diego’s remark that I promised to not worry about the performance before Christmas but started doing it this week (not worry but discuss), despite being thankful that he reminded us of that, I keep thinking about the performance. I realized that this is the research: from the first day on we have been busy to take the audience perspective instead of the traditional performer perspective, but we have also realized that this duality as it is often presented and perceived is indeed as little a duality as are body and mind. We are all observers-performers (=participants). This is exciting!! I actually want to fantasize a hundred or more possibilities out of the potential field of becoming observers-performers=participants. This is precisely the research. We are doing research on the relational movements between all participating elements (including objects, space, situation) instead of researching human anatomy. I think this last week has been turbulent. I have experienced the void-ness of potential, that we cannot become or be potential, of course not. We can hardly think it. After all, it is potential and not actualized. But this turbulent week has brought about some fantastic concepts I would say. Concrete conceptual landing sites. 

chair field [n]

I would think that an audience looking into an empty space would imagine possibilities/potentials of a performance. They would partly-actualize it in thought. I would hope that an audience in the chair field would instead be guided towards reflecting on the very act of observing, a perception of perception. 

a wish [n]

I have a wish for a ‘real’ performance today. It must be that the absolute zero also requests change and something like a vital confirmation. The joy of movement play is to me as profound as the contentment with nothing to do. I am thinking of a product-process performance situation: 3 different pieces, fieldings 1, fieldings 2, fieldings 3. The dance piece would have to be 2 or 3, and the premier would have to be the most radical disappointment of general expectations. I also want to interview important people (such as the festival directors and programmers) on what they think this work will be like. I think there comes a point of saturation when we cannot ask more questions. We should also still be able to look at our questioning with a sense of humor. After all it’s just art, hell! It is serious and yet it is really not so serious. I love that about life: that sense of nothing to do and yet everything to do. But it seems to be a good thing to confront oneself with that total nothingness or emptiness. Maybe this is really why I wanted to visit the float and anechoic chamber. Just to see if I could be ok there. Even though my previous work has really been anything but entertainment, I still have to admit that any action performed on stage is of course providing information and maybe entertaining to some degree. For that reason I would say: all out! Is it making us nervous, bored, uncomfortable, sleepy? Or can we just hang in there? It also becomes an exercise to detach from form, any form, any action. Can we then access form newly again? The wish to make ’something’ came to me in a moment of silence and stillness, just sitting there listening to the silence, not an anechoic silence but pretty silent and still. As if in that nothingness (potential field?) any performance is also already included. 

6-12-07 the chairs in circular patterns (m)

I put myself there as if I was the audience going to see a piece and I let that expectation affect me.

I imagined myself going there alone after a long day at work, sitting in between unknown and partly known people, waiting for a piece to start.

That expectation made the need to observe what is there stronger. The need to find a piece made me start creating it with any information that was there.

I made a piece as I wanted it. Full of random unedited information that made sense only for me or didn’t make sense at all. It was just fun.

I experienced a state of high excitation, sometimes nervousness. After some time I wanted desperatelly to move and never sit down again.

I imagined an audience in the same state of mind. 100 people excited moving around the space, observing every detail, watching a piece that they created for themselves as they wanted it- a piece without an end- a piece that would last after they leave the theatre, knowing that everyone made the choices that were important for them only for this particular moment in time.

The thought of giving space and time to people to do that  seemed more important today than showing them how we link information together.

the pattern of the chairs and the time given for the task seemed to be enough information for an event to occur.

of course i like performing…i like seeing people moving….i like seeing pieces and I like the theatre.

I just experienced something amazingly unsettling today… that’s all

6.12.2007: to Do or not to Do, das ist die Frage (pablo)

I keep thinking there is something to do (to perform), not because I have an idea about what is there to do but because I think there is time and space to find it out, and I feel like it. I enjoy doing.
And I do think that it brings into the piece (this moment of interfasing with the audience) a different input: all our process rehearsal history. Even if what we do is taking the same position as the audience members, or if we hand out the flyers and greet them at the door of the zaal.

I think the attentiveness that we or spectators can have while observing someone do something is different from the other one. I think it anchors it, or something like that, in reality, or somewhere like that. I think it makes it pedestrian and thus observable.
I like what Nora said of movement exposing how the mover perceives and relates to perception. To observe someone moving is also to observe someone observing its environment. Maybe our practice can be about becoming aware of this process while we do it, being able to keep connected or to even amplify our awareness/perception while moving. Not that it has to be seen, anyways…

And, of course, I keep wondering if I am defending this position just because I came into this process under the role/tag of a performer, and how much do I feel like I am at stake when we discuss if there is something for performers to do in the piece. But I trust myself enough to still be able to think without that getting in the way.

6.12.07 [n]

• How do I perceive myself perceiving?  • How do I perceive another perceiving?  • What is potentially perceptible but not selected (though still there)? • How do we concretely land on the doubling of perception?  • What is there left to do if we shift from the level of internal logic of a performance towards the level of considering that which is taking place as we observe (observation not being limited to the visual)?  • How can we come to terms with the fact that there might be nothing to do?  • Can we be content with nothing to do? 

5.12.2007 (sorry)

5.12.2007 (pablo)

          communication  communication  communication

saturation saturation saturation saturation saturation
saturation saturation saturation saturation saturation
saturation saturation saturation saturation saturation

          communication  communication  communication
saturation saturation saturation saturation saturation
saturation saturation saturation saturation saturation
saturation saturation saturation saturation saturation

          communication  communication  communication
total fields total fields total fields etcetera bla bla bla

5.12.2007 (pablo)

disorientation – cooperation – alienation – saturation – paralyzation – contradiction – disruption – cohabitation – deviation – diversion – distraction – discussion – capitulation – perception – decision – observation – communication
coexistance – cohabitation – cooperation – contradiction – communication – compromise
process – thought – ambiguity – sharing – uncertainty – dialogue – coexistance – poetry – phenomenon – experiment – derive – history – compromise – movement

5.12.07 [n]

I really started liking the project just now. As absurd as that seems. I also really like sharing it with all of you. As long as you bear with me… it’s not really going the conventional way (at least in my terms) and I am extremely happy for that. It’s also not going the conventional  dance way. Seems like dealing with the virtual is an impossibility. We can only ever move on the edge between virtual / actual. There is always the need to land on something. How do we land on the concrete. How does that landing take place. I am fascinated by the speed with which I disorient completely (in thought) and also soon after land again. I think we should playfully disorient and playfully land. Strings + 4 corners were a good finding today. I want to find out how we can make this perceptible: perceiving yourself perceiving, perceiving somebody else perceiving. Regarding different senses for now, maybe later it will be all inseparable. 

golb [n]

I am taking back my remark that the blog is an autonomous work of art (though in some cases it is). Right now I would say: it is our rehearsal studio for thought. 

 

chairing [n]

Play chair game • (1) in large building with several floors (did it) • (2) in a boring studio space • (3) in a public space (street, library, train station) 

we need folding chairs [n]

Do you have folding chairs at home, camping chairs, something easy to transport? Next week I want to go to public spaces: try all audience set ups that we have come up with so far. Also create architectural planes with strings. Observe public space and movements of people through it. Imagine we would just do that for a performance. Broadcast a video of the public space performance into the empty theater and let the audience play the chairing game. Record a video of the theater and broadcast it on a small monitor out on the street where we are. 

4.12.07 [n]

The only thing that makes sense to me at this very moment is observation of space and presence. I like to be audience, and that’s it. There seems to be no need for any type of performative action besides just that, being audiences to each other. But since I am saying: any situation becomes saturated simply by duration and it will ask for change: I do desire movement play. This play I am approaching in the same way as observing space and presence when seated on a chair. Only that I speed up the shifts (I speed up shifting to an extreme) and I amplify micro movements into macro movements. It is only a matter of speed, scale and volume, otherwise dancing is the same issue as observing space and presence from a chair.  My best movements still happen in the kitchen, bathroom, in hallways. I think I will give some homework tomorrow: kitchen-bathroom-hallway movements. About spirals I can say: affect seems to spiral. If we can create a collective spiral, that would be not so bad.  

chairs as performers (m)

the wooden metal chair- a heavier performer, gives me a clear sense of direction in the space

the grey metal chair- very light, almost airy, seems unable to ground itself and mark a space with its presence

this very last prolonged nothingness (m)

something happened in this very long moment of nothing happening between the 4 of us

a potential of spinning around my own cetral axis -  (maybe the creation of a potential center in the periphery?)
it was an internal rotation, only felt but not acted out.

a prolonged moment of suspension

the spin had the potential to pull me down and at the same time make me fly (that was only my sensation of course)

the space became dense, none of us could break the silence, none of us could make even the slightest step

at the same time nobody could leave, nobody could say its all over now

something was still happening and also not happening -what was it?

3.12.2007 partial fields (pablo)

peripheries create alternative centers

mapping attractors, boundaries, suggestors,
imposers, coactors, reminders,
memories of space

3.12.2007 total field of blog (pablo)

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3.12.2007 chairs

chairs are little by little, rehearsal after rehearsal, losing their condition of objects to seat on (function) and gaining a presence as performers/observers (role)

3.12.2007 (pablo)

  the idea of a total field is for me still about bits and pieces put together from rehearsals-proposal-talks-preconceptions-etk (I haven’t finished reading the Massumi text )…
  at the moment I’m experiencing total fields of reading and writing, and of tiredness, and today we imagined a total field of audience, and a total field of games we were playing, the last and ultimate game we played being that one of not knowing what the fuck were we doing(playing), and just seeing who would drop out first… or snap, or loose it, or something…

3.12.07 [n]

Another type of saturation happening today: too much  ”about to happen” over too long a time also kills the potential. Nevertheless a good thing to come all the way down (down?) to a total nothingness. I am desiring form. Wow.  

[n]

Duchamp image: shared center of gravity – shared center of thought

what a body can do? [n]

I went to see a mime performance. It was very interesting to see work from another discipline, how it works on space, timing, body, movements and the production of meaning. However, the performers were behaving very proper, I mean precise, and within predictable clear and simple patterns. Mostly walking and placing objects. After a while a realized how much I had the need for chaos and surprise, for the unstable, for an accident, for playfulness and disorientation. On the one hand I have a need for clarity, simplicity and emptiness. On the other hand I search for the overfull, disoriented perceptions, constant information shifts, constant new. Can we stretch the comfortable borders of what a body can do? Can we really test capacities? Isn’t it known to us that dancers do it all, smoke drink drugs party healthfood yoga breathing sleep a lot don’t sleep at all relax push center jump off balance. I think to a degree my body is its own lab experiment and I want to see what the hell it can do! I know it can produce other than just a walk. Play seems to be key. However, I like walking very much. 

Shared Center of Gravity [s]

Duchamp 

That Becoming-This [s]

From Arakawa&Gins Mechanisms of Meaning, 1988

total field of thought [s]

interesting notion. perhaps it could be something like “intuition.”

01.12.07 Football [diego]

to be conscious what kind of patrons (backgrounds) I carry with me. Playing football during 20 years I could learn a way to think about the space in terms of centers of gravity, trying to find holes and projecting lines to send the ball. In that time playing football we were also learning “rotations” and now I realize that it was choreography too.

total field of thought [n]

The task of meditating brings me to an awareness of the total field of thought. The rhythms in which attractors constantly become new, coming towards me as I am coming towards them, co-attractions. Instead of landing on thought I try to satelite by, tend towards and pass. I could already drop my engagement when a tendency is being regognized in its very “about to become”. Already letting go of pre-accelerations. But sometimes I surely land on the site of thought. I would even say: often I land. Have I ever been aware of that total field of thought before, and had I ever considered the possibility of ‘thought becomings’ being perceptions?

1.12.07 [n]

Realized that this project is also a landingsite. We all land on it from a different angle. I do not expect that anyone will land the same way I do. It requires much trust from the performers to navigate with me through the field. What might appear as a misunderstanding is in fact just a different type of landing.

Out in the streets: bikes-buildings-vehicles etc. all hotspots in motion. As they are landingsites to me, I become a landingsite to them. All is doubled.

29.11.07 [n]

Saturation: When does a thing exhaust itself and require change, if not a radical shift.
Thresholds, limit fields, field limits.

Our task for meditation is to bring 25% of our awareness to the breath, keep the other 75% on the senses perceiving, meanwhile observing how thoughts actualize and pass, re-virtualize, similar to the changes of the weather.
I was wondering if we can work that way in an improvisation: 25% autonomy, 75% relationality, actions actualizing (becoming form) and re-virtualizing back into a field of potential, changing like the weather. Not holding on.

Indeterminacy and emergence as method. When does a creative process become form and composition, how can composition still be emergent, creative process. That seems like a very challenging challenge.

I have been observing the patterns and issues arising out of that which has so far created itself. I have been observing tendencies towards architectural attractors which I call hotspots and which Arakawa and Gins call ‘landingsites’. Perceptual landingsites seem to behave differently: some are stabilizing, others disturbing or dispersing, others repulsing. They seem to have different types of polarities, they also radically change polarities.

From what has emerged so far, I have made new relational movement games. I am perceiving dynamicly moving architectures.

Tasks given to group:
CENTER OF GRAVITY
1. Between all 4 people in space, find the shared center of gravity, go there.
2. Between the other 3 people in space (triangle), find the shared center of gravity, go there.
3. Consider 2 chairs also as people.
4. Disperse out and away from the center whenever you think it is needed in order to keep composition from collapsing into a hyper-dense super-center.
5. Define one center of gravity (Diego), keep him the shared center of gravity and all keep moving.
TENDENCIES
1. Pick a number of perceptual landingsites/hotspots/attractors (1-2-3) and tend towards them as a +pole, never land on them but let them repulse you as soon as you approach -pole, passing by. Rotatations, elipses, planetary motions.
2. Keep one hotspot (or several) for a while, keep tending towards them and between them until another attractor comes in strong enough to make you change passage.
3. Steal hotspots from others and make them your own.
4. Instead of refering to landingsites with your eyes, tend with the back of your head.
5. Instead of tending visually-proprioceptively, tend towards sonic sites.