chance (nora)

Set up chair field in any case. When audience is seated, throw coin to decide which version will take place (chair field only or walking). My proposal for tomorrow. 

30.1.08 nora

It is a very interesting discussion on those potential proposals for different nights. I have to think about what Marcel said, some ideas are nice ideas but maybe they don’t really produce much once you try them out. So I question: when is an idea more exciting than its actualization, when is the idea itself enough (we could also think of an idea as a piece), when should you actually try it out in order to be maybe surprised by the result. We can never know (fortunately). One thing I can say: indifference is not what I am looking for. “What does our doing do” is in the end what we take responsibility for. I wonder if by now we also just simply have an obsession with chairs and lost all objectivity (that anyway). Chair field with lights and sound I find too easy, too romantic and too smooth. And as we already mentioned today, we actually have no time to work it out properly. It’s a piece on light design, and that would require a research of its own. We can always save it for another time. If the walking works with the chair field in the middle is to try out (tomorrow), though I also think that our set up so far is the best we can have. What is nice about chair field set up for walking is, as soon as we leave, they are left to the chair field. On and on. I feel as I am speculating on the stock market! But I enjoy this activity of juggling ideas a lot, it is an exciting activity and definitely a type of art practice.  

29.01.2008 (pablo)

though, now that I think about it again, what you propose is more coherent – it draws a clearer line or a kind of progression from one evening to the next one…

29.01.2008 (pablo)

just to say that I prefer as an order:
1- footwork
2- bare field
3- ‘cinematic’ field

experiment / nora

Yes I like it, 3 different night, taking risk, experimenting, not arriving, testing, observing, learning, continuing. We start more or less conventional and then strip down bit by bit, night by night. Night1: footwork. Night2: chair field with decoration (with past feeding into future). Night3: chair field stripped. 

29.1.08 nora

Thank you my dears for being such nice collaborators, I just wanted to say that. Maybe I am getting a bit moody at times now, but don’t take it personal. It comes out like that as part of my concern towards our work. You are fantastic to work with and I am enjoying a lot getting closer to some real performances – sharing things on a bigger scale. It’s exciting!

28.01.2008 paraphrase Hans-Thies Lehmann (pablo)

“
Out of the gaps of language emerges its feared adversary and double: stuttering, failure, accent, flawed pronunciation mark the conflict between body and word. (“”) … since Gertrude Stein’s theatre texts -if not earlier- we have the example of language that loses its immanent teleological temporality and orientation towards meaning…
“

our stuttering brings our movement out of our bodies, in between our bodies.

28.01.2008 structure (pablo)

I’ve been thinking about structure for the rhythm piece. I think sometimes what I struggle with is with being in between no structure and structure, that is, setting some things but not a full score. I feel that then, when we exhaust previously set materials it becomes very difficult for me to jump out of that mindset… in a way, it makes all the rest seem very messy no matter what, it kind of changes the parameters…

I would like to try a run where we structure everything.

mosaic (nora)

Throw structure up in the air and see what comes out when it falls back down. This is how I would like to think about composition at the moment. I heard that Gaudi did it like that, let a big piece of glass drop and use arrangement of pieces as they broke to create a window. 

27.01.2008 money back (pablo)

it’s been said already, but I like to repeat it – it’s just such a comforting thought:
that’s the festival’s problem

27.01.2008 paraphrase (pablo)

To unfinish the work does not mean to leave the work unfinished, but a (coherent?) approach to the idea that a piece is not something presented to an audience but something (co-)created by an audience. To leave the work unfinished does not mean that it is incomplete, but that it goes on existing only in dialogue with an audience, and in dialogue with its next performance, and in dialogue with its next audience, and in the dialogue in between its audiences.

i want my money back (nora)

Are we going to get mad about having had to pay a ticket to endure a non-art crap? Are we getting mad about paying for the military on a continuous basis? As soon as the laundromats will be free of charge, art can be free as well. 

a love for product (nora)

Fieldings: chair field. The process of fieldings has brought about different forms of material within a similar interest of investigation. We would like to insist on the opportunity for experimentation and difference, even as we start to present certain situations to a theater audience. To leave the work unfinished is not a sign of laziness but a wish for the open-endedness of the performances in relation to each other, and in relation to the participation of the visitor. We are asking ourselves how much the presentation of an art product, any type of planned art product, will create a detour around the proposition that participation in the event and our mutual coming together could be the only content of the work. This is an empty spectacle, where emptiness is simultaneously over-full. We would like to resist the pattern of art having to be great in order to satisfy the art market and its selling-buying-consuming machine. How much product do we need. We are experimenting with degrees. 

sexy loops (nora)

What I just wrote about the chair game also applies to sex. It is such a wonderful doubling. And I think we can all refer to it easier than to chair abstractions. It is quite simple: when you touch the other not as another, also not as yourself, but as felt together… when you are able to feel what the other feels as you touch the other, and you feel how the other feels what you feel touching you… I find this endlessly fascinating. It completely fucks with our idea of individual and a physically defined body. It’s a really funky loop. And it is more than just a recognition of relation, or a recognition that the other one is somewhat busy with the same thing you are. It is feeling shared. I am not trying to get at an illustration of relation through sex. I am also not trying to propose this ‘losing yourself in the other’ thing. It is the doubling of perception as relational movement I am interested in. Just imagine you could feel that in everyday life with anybody, not only your lover. Maybe the Dalai Lama can? Wow, now I am sounding like such a love-promoter. Eh, why not. 

temporal relational togetherness (nora)

I am trying to think how I could write anything concerning the chair field. Hmmm. So it is a temporarily framed relational togetherness. It is participation and relation as the only content, no other slightest bit of entertainment, be that just something happening, anything happening. We are synthesizing the commonly accepted roles of performers and spectators into a doubled role of performers-spectators=participants. We are all watching, we are all being watched, we are all relating, we are all watching somebody else watching somebody else… as an endless network, and we are all aware that we are being watched by somebody who is being watched… as an endless network. We are all responsible towards the event because any action of any participant makes the situation become what it wants to become. What interests me most is the doubling of perception: I am attending to another who is also attending to something, be that space or another person or her own being there present with own personal thoughts. I am perceiving through another, something. But I cannot be sure of the how, how that other person perceives and what. I am somewhat sure of my own perception of that very moment, it seems like an actualized something out of a big soup of potential perceptions. The other has the same. But me perceiving the other perceiving brings it all back to an uncertainty. This is how I imagine wave potential, super position… 

off dance (nora)

Ha, that’s funny. To me it gives a lot of energy, dancing off, or let’s say, it keeps the dance going. Otherwise I get bored, just hopping on the beat. 

26.01.2008 (pablo)

I’ve been once more practising rhytmic displacements while dancing in a party, and it seemed a bit easier. it still seems to require a lot of energy, though. there were also moments when the music itself proposed displacements of its own, breaking and re-establishing its own rhythm, and then I felt completely at a loss, not capable to break with nor to participate of it.

25.1.08 n

together off

today this tomorrow that .nora

This is change. I am changing my mind every day. Today I think this thing urgently needs structure and more specificity. Tomorrow I will say it has to be open improvised play. Oh! But I do think I have to introduce more composition. There are specific games that require specific duration, specific use of space, specific number of people and specific engagement of feet (details of footwork). I get frustrated with myself that I am having a hard time to give it a form. Of course, to resist form is something I generally am supportive of. Nevertheless, I do not want to stay random or unspecific. Clear form conveys clear information, that is something Steve Paxton once said, and others have said in relation to hands on /manual body work. Clear form is really not so bad – especially if everything else is reduced to a nothing. I am glad we start to show things to people. My slight frustration makes very clear to me how to go on working, and what needs to be done. Monday we continue!

something Noha wrote about our visit to the anechoic chamber

The anechoic chamber got me thinking about an idea of ‘autonomy of the senses’. How interdependent or separated they really are. The lack of reference in the chamber created such a strong link between sound and body – a direct link with no interference. Watching and hearing Pablo talk whilst turning in a circle was really cool – because it was like watching the sounds, and hearing the turn.  These happened simultaneously with no third element (reflection/refraction). We did talk about this – the idea that you can never be bigger than you are in a space such as that. There is nothing extra to tip the scales of perception. I enjoy this idea of not being bigger then myself, it reminds me of the desire to ‘do’, rather than ’show’ which is interesting, and which for me at the moment seems to hold far more radical/revolutionary/evolutionary potential than anything else i can think of these days. Action, rather than reaction could be another way of putting this. In the anechoic environment to walk away from a fixed point while talking created a perfect disappearance. By this I mean an exactly 45 degree line on an x, y coordinate map which marks a decrescendo. Or again, a precise relationship between x, y, or in this case between movement and sound, or between space and sound. It makes me wonder about the possibilities for setting up such clear relations, in order to then disturb them. What other relationships could be established in a different kind of sound environment? Like a surround-sound environment where interferences (reflection, effects)  are used but in a logical way by setting up clear relational parameters. One day I want to play in an intelligent sound environment, but being in the anechoic chamber was a great way to strip back to the most direct relationship between body and space that could be a great way to start working towards this. So I wonder… are our senses autonomous and if so how? Why is it that I expect the architecture of the space to resemble / or visually represent the experience? Why do I have this need? Perhaps I assume some kind of organic integration of the senses, where what I see (the walls of the chamber – textured, uneven) relates somehow to what I experience (sound as textured or uneven). I actually found myself searching for a visual connection, by blurring my eyes and then the walls started to look like fuzzy black and white dots (visual white noise). The connection is completely mystical and irrelevant but i was still looking for it. Another strange behavior I noticed in myself: when in the dark alone in the chamber, I found myself sitting and staring at a tiny little hole in the wall where light was coming through. I had to consciously change my position and look away, because it seemed like if i didn’t think, if i just zoned out, i had some kind of of natural inclination towards the only light source. And this in itself was quite an emotional experience (although I realize I was having a quite emotional day). It gave me many associations. To the sensory deprivation used as torture in prisons,  where extra maximum security prisoners are kept in darkness and isolation for 23 hours a day for punishment, only one hour of exposure to the outside or to people or light a day. Why is it that sensory deprivation is so psychologically difficult for humans? The lack of interference or relation to anything else completely skewing or disfiguring our own sense of self/place/time. (But then I wonder about the intentional practices of people who use sensory deprivation as a practice towards some kind of enlightenment – but i do not know much about this). There is definitely something about relations, need for relation that is interesting. It refers to the ideas that we only have a self in relationship to others or in the sense that we are encountered, or met by others or objects. And that this encountering is what provides content and context, rather than an individual definition, which could be thought of as dogma. Where dogma is something that stays internally fixed even in the face of changing external conditions. Even in the isolated and un-interfered environment of the anechoic chamber, sound can be seen as space and vice -versa. These are relationships. I just watched a documentary on animal perceptions and the ability of animals to sense things we can’t usually place within the human understanding of 5-6 senses. I also recently read an article called ‘Empire of the senses’ which argued that affecting people through media manipulation (with fear being the main example_ has become standard political/social practice of control. We live in times where the control of affect is a primary tool of social control. Here again I am referring to things I do not completely understand or have a handle on theoretically, however something about the idea of Empire of the Senses can be interesting for performance which deals very directly with affect and sensation. I am challenged but do not want to be stuck by the idea that any affect is manipulative. It seems tempting to move in direct opposition to what is happening in dominant repressive culture by moving altogether away from creating affect. Wouldn’t this be reactionary? And anyway, whatever proposition one makes, no matter how stripped back or neutral will have some affect surely? So I would rather have a clear responsibility for what kind of affect then to deny the production of affect altogether. … what am i really saying here??? autonomy of the sense? autonomy of anything?

play .nora

The second session today made me really happy. Amazing how it all depends just on the state of mind. Open senses, listen, take time for things to unfold. I am glad to decide against structure and for a pretty open field of … potential steps and rhythms. Play. It is so unspectacular. A dramaturgy of comings and goings, growing and shrinking of intensities rather than a curve. Once again: this one will certainly not be a hot product for the market. In that sense very satisfying. I still would love to try it with a DJ. 

doubling .nora

There is a doubling of the sound (immediate past feeding into future). There is a doubling of the peripheral layers of space, a multi-deep periphery. There is an endless doubling of perception in the chair field. Walking in the theater as a non-functional activity feels as if it doubles street life. Anybody who gets up from their chair to leave the performance by walking away from it will immediately refer back to it. 

tribune .nora

I liked that comment today that moving the chairs from the tribune onto the stage is to displace them. 

20.01.2008 (pablo)

temporarily displaced from the internet…
I’ve tried to drop out of synch with the rhythm while social-dancing/partying (last friday, at the Karaoke party in the OT!)… it’s actually quite tough… I felt I only managed by moving like crazy, and it was quite difficult. music can be very imposing. at the same time it gives a clear reference to bounce to. clear reference seems very necessary to produce displacements… something needs to be displaced to experience the displacement.
at the same time, I think I had enough of displacing the displaced during the week, so at the party it also became very enjoyable to just dance to the music…

I’ve experienced also, in the rehearsals, the (amazing feeling of the) beat being displaced out of oneself, not knowing anymore wether one is producing it or not, and kind of losing control over what comes through.

temporal landing sites .n

Displacing the step is to land the foot in time. When this activity becomes relational rather than an individual independent choice, it then seems as if the landing site approaches me, rather than me approaching it. I thought I had control over the articulation of my legs and feet; however, once a rhythm between us is established, my coordination is being disrupted and I land differently than I had intended. This is the excitement: differences in landing, displacements in time. 

displacing .n

Footwork: we are scratching the material of a normal pedestrian walk. Displacing the landing of a step to just-before or just-after in time. The feet stutter. The mind is skipping and tripping over itself. Marching on the beat has been de-regulated into polyrhythmic play. We are not going anywhere, we are going with. At the point when I don’t walk anymore but it starts to walk, affective intensities of the in-between can be felt as real matter. 

15.1.08 nora

Order – mess – order. The arrangement of space is music. Today I was happy to play out other movements than just walking in the end, though coming from work on rhythm, those movements had a very strong rhythmic quality and connection in time. I enjoy any type of drift away from what we are “supposed to” work on. Always afraid to get bored or overdo things. Conversations, music, play with objects and silly activities are welcome displacements of the walk. 

12.1.nora

I have been wondering if we every will be able to walk normal again? I am even doing it in the supermarket now. Do you think we are short of play? I didn’t have that impression. But we can surly emphasize it more. I would like to experiment with sound doubling this coming week (rhythm relates to rhythm, time relates to time), record and play back footwork sounds. Collected more text. Noticed that since last week I am actually totally looking forward to present something in a festival, to perform, something is starting to become interesting enough that it engages my attention…

12.01.2008 what to do with 3 (pablo)

create more relations, create actually more layers of relations: 1 relates to 2, 3 relates to 1 relates to 2, audience relates to 3 relates to 1 relates to 2, audience relates to audience relates to 3 relates to 1 relates to 2, audience relates itself relates to audience relates to 3 relates to 1 relates to 2…

space relates to space relates to space.

rhythm relates to rhythm relates to rhythm.

this is fun fun

12.01.2008 footwork (pablo)

I like the bursts of teenage energy that the stepping/stomping brings up every now and then… I think we need to seriously pay attention to the playfulness, and make sure it doesn’t get lost.

my favourite image for the footwork is the stuttering.

Dear Pablo (Nora)

I think I am thinking that you are writing almost as good as Gertrude Stein. Just wait until you hear her speak on the recording. 

audience placement ,n

Place audience on chairs, in a square around space, facing out towards the walls. Leave space on the outside (a corridor), leave space on the inside (an empty square). Use outside space as peripheral passage, use inside space only as circle. Work with 2 or/and 3 people: 2 outside, 2 inside, 1 outside/1 inside, interruptions by the 3rd. Seems like this way the spectator would have the in and out of the frame view that we have when watching the still frame video. And on top of that we can play with back space experience of presence-sound-absence. And the bicycle… It reduces the spatial work to peripheral passage, inside circle and maybe a diagonal crossing. 

footwork ,n

Footwork [displacing the beat, irregularities and rhythmic intensities in walking]. Inspired by break, krump, tap, walk, trip, scratch, stutter. 

to incorporate _d_

I didn´t say that the body doesn´t think. Only that through the process (5 weeks) a kind of physicality is being incorporated and in that way the (my) body reacts in a different way (intuition: also as a mind process)

11.01.2008 sinking (pablo)

me, I would still like to think that we think. and I do: I still think that we think. and we’ve been thinking a lot, and I think intuition is a form of thinking… maybe a little bit less conscious. maybe a little bit less conscious than the other thinking, that is.

thinking body_n_

I would still like to think that the body thinks, whenever moving, whenever playing. Without thinking: is that possible? Remember how impossible it was when we were meditating. 

Intuition _d_

I like to observe how the physicalty of Fieldings is coming from the bodies, how we are integrating every game of every day and don´t need to think, just action and reaction, a kind of intuition, ability of the body to know without  reasoning.

s<b spaces, n

small space < big space

composition/n

What is composition? Arranging relations?

object-subject.n

Sorry object. Of course you are a subject. More object-subjects: chairs, people of all sorts (including what we call choreographers, dancers, spectators), sounds, rhythms, architectures, thoughts. 

object.n

The object to be invited as a guest performer might very well be a bicycle. 

text – n

Volumes and intensities of spoken text. Rhythms of speaking. Meanings coming and going. Volumes and intensities of walking. Competing. Please stand still so that I can hear what is being said. Stamp and I will give up trying to make out words, my attention goes from double split (text-walking) to single focus (body)……. or maybe multi-mess (listening, seeing, feeling, thinking, becoming with, and so on……..

9.1.08 /n on space

Compose space: create rhythm (through space, in space, of space). P.S.: John Cage is my hero.  

8.1.08.n

Displacing the beat through irregularities and rhythmic intensities in walking – with hip hop music. Neither against nor with. Somehow with but not. In between the music and us. 

what to do with 3 |n

Work with accumulation (0)-1-2-3-2-1-(0). Work with 2 against 1. Work with duet 2 and at some point exchange the second for another second without giving any further explanation (cast replacement). 

walking on the street ||n

Start walking on the street in front of the theater at 21:00. Let people sit down for the spectacle of chair field at 21:30. Continue walking outside. Use wireless microphone to import walking sound at some occasions. Everybody who gets angry at chair field and leaves will still see us walking. Bring warm jackets and rum for survival. 

money ||no

If we would buy the tickets one night and people would not have to pay: how would it influence their perception of the work? Would they think it’s crap or would they appreciate it more, would they happily use the saved money to buy a drink for a friend and flowers for their lover or would they just invest it into their next AH shopping 3 halen 2 betalen? What’s the power of money? (I guess I am referring to Jefta’s title “The power of movement”).

nothing-spectacle ||nora

I do like the concept of making the chair field a spectacle, a spectacle on nothing. (And of course ‘nothing’ is not true, there is plenty going on to be thought about, but we know that.)

beat beat field . n

If I consider irregularities and degrees of intensities in walking, producing rhythm as a contageous viral spread… if this is not practiced to the beat of a music such as in disco dancing but simply in silence, then I would think that the regularity of the beat becomes the imperceptible which can be perceived. A rhythmic field. A total field of rhythm can most probably also be felt, all rhythms that could be but never will be(come, actualized), a wildly multiple chaos of excitements. As long as we keep stumbling / tripping, there will be no arrival but more and more of yet to come. It will keep moving and changing and producing. How is rhythm felt? It is surely a very complex multi-sensory process. It might be a passage in between all senses mixed mixed. A passage between all perceiving subjects (part-subjects, part-objects) intersecting. About to inhale, displaced in time. 

comments_D_

About the imagined situations, do we leave open the possibility to do every night of the festival something diferent? It would be also a way to continue the research. It sounds good “buying up all theater tickets with production budget so that people can enter for free”, I really agree with this. Anyway about the other material I suppose that in the coming weeks things will happen for sure, so we´ll see. I also like the idea of  inviting people (maybe also during the rehearsals). For “displacing the beat” I will bring my big heavy shoes.

1-1-8-N-displacing-the-beat

At yesterday’s/today’s party I practiced what I would call ‘displacing the beat’ in order to produce irregularities of rhythm. Or to just produce rhythm as a parasitic/viral displacement of the beat. If one steps always just a bit next to the beat, but not even clearly off beat, that’s a lot of fun! Suddenly party dancing becomes much more creative than a simple tuning in with the steady common bounce. A live DJ is vital. People think you might be very drunk. Irregularities and displacements of the beat in order to produce (contagious) rhythms should be next week’s practice.