Before editing for the video, my reflections read as follows:
IRINA BALDINI
From thoughts UP
Body in Performance
A reflective Journal
a compilation of critical reflections on my artistic practice in relation to embodiment
October 2019
TABLE OF CONTENTS
De defining (my) Territory
Knowledge is a lie. Truth does not exist
Dance urges to emancipate
A dance that does not complete itself is alive
On judgement: an introspection
Un-roled body - One rule body
74 things I am interested in about the body
Thoughts on Staying: an introspection
A lifestyle of learning VS a lifestyle of achievements: a reflection on education
--------------
De Defining (my) Territory
My own fiction is believing that the tasks or rules I give myself are real. I truly commit to them in order to transport public into a journey I designed.
Believing that there are shelves in the room; making spatial references tangible by moving; remembering and re-presenting sensations.
By moving away from the center of the dance-medium through the lenses of Spectatorship and Documentation and looking for what it is that (my) dance is not, or what it is on its edges, I find in fact the essence of it. I sympathize with the seed planted by Deridda (1988), where the context of a work is unreliable, it morphs and changes and cannot be held accountable for the judgement of an act (it being fictional or not). It is based on impermanence. If I apply his thought to the dance I want to see, I perceive no fiction and all fiction simultaneously. I perceive the coexistence of multiple possible parameters, and their instability and vitality. Context, which in Austin’s eyes (1962) is the key to a work, its stable ground, is for me the unreliable frame in which events may or may not happen, and therefore what makes the work alive.
By moving towards the corners of dance, towards a hybrid place on the outer edge of this territory I can see my territory. I see in today’s art shows a form that exists in the encounter. Of what? It cannot be defined ones and for all, but it is a form that spreads out from its material. It exists in the formation VS the form, in the frame and not on the canvas. Thinking around the theme of embodiment, I confirmed my interested in the encounter, the work meeting both the interpreter and the spectator, and how this happens – whether through direct contact with the embodiment or through a curated number of element that delineate an entry point or a portal into the work.
Knowledge is a lie. Truth does not exist
Constructionists would say that we are victims of circumstance, and also have responsibility and agency. This applies both to the artist and the audience. How do we, as artists, prime for this to be possible? How do we prepare (someone) for a situation and supplying them with the relevant information?
For me it is about adaptability and fluidity of the means of communication. Everything is changing, constantly: the dancer, the context, the movement. I dare to ask: What leads us to want to know, to possess, to fix things? We need to know because otherwise we do not exist. We tell stories to save our lives. We claim we know, to get approval. We invent and share to confirm we are worth something, at least for a moment. It is about power.
Knowledge is constructed through interaction with others, whether direct or indirect. We take influences from our field and others, operating within certain confines but hoping to push the edges and potentially get to a new beast.
Let’s roll up our sleeves!
Are we so commanded by the market that we forget to give agency and entitlement to the work? In the meanwhile, we get busy justifying its existence with intellectual foundation on which we hope it will stand. Shall we give a chance to Plato and acknowledge that that the concept exists before the object, so we can relax a little and trust we are doing alright? What if we were the sign in our work?
We owe our work respect more than anybody. Do not humiliate your work by attempting to possess it. Instead, serve it, listen to what it needs in order to arrive.
Perhaps it needs changing form, perhaps it is the trace it leaves that does the job instead, and not the ‘thing’ itself. Perhaps it is a memory of it, or a document that performs, and we should be open to that.
Observe your interests because you cannot but have interest in what is relevant to today. You are a product of today and your work is both response and impact on today.
Dance urges to emancipate
It is stuck, it is gooey, it is a victim of its own habit and, so in love with itself, it does not even recognise where its limitations are.
It is even self-seduced, self sufficient, and self indulgent.
Dance is not afraid of change and new, yet it is lost and oblivious, unconscious and mono-directional.
It wants to wake up, get down there to where its guts are and listen for real.
Not listen to what it already knows and masturbate itself on the satisfaction of being good, but listen deeply and carefully until there is something to reveal. Or we will be nothing, and the dance will go nowhere.
Dance needs to have a little check in with itself. Make an attempt at least, to get up to date with its most recent idea of its dream. It will not catch up, nor understand itself, but it needs to go back into the source and far from the representation of its lover.
It is absolutely appealing, and at times even necessary, to rely on one’s history and one’s own success.
If it becomes a condition and not a choice, it is then time to either quit or wake the hell up. Listen, with all given senses (come on!). What are we here for, if not discovery of the yet-to-be-known, the misunderstood and the potential.
Why are you even still there, transported into a world of second hand experience? Not even doing it for real, but pretending to yourself that you are not pretending.
“My statements are paradoxes in which this is a waste of time:<. I invite you to waste your time and wait, instead of wasting and covering the guilt by falsely entertaining yourself, looping into believing that fiction is reality and truth is a construction. Time is a construction. Truth does not exist.
Our dance is a conformist form no matter what we do to it. It is buckled up and silent. It has no voice of its own because we have taken it and made it ours. We have colonised the dance and claim that we know enough to have rights to perform it. When all we do is shine the bars of its cage, reinforcing the identity we gave it because it made us feel good and proud.
The dance I want to be talking about is opinionated. It comes if it wants and cannot be domesticated. It is a wild dog that gives you warning if it does not like you. Not because it was taught to, but because it is intelligent and knows. Intuitively, knows. It leaves when it finds no purpose; it grinds to prevent you from being hurt. It might bite if you do not leave it be (what it is) and certainly will if you try to command it and master it.
But it is loyal, if you are loyal to it.
I do not know how to see it. I accept I may never learn. I wish that it may hear me and dare to come close.
I adore it. But it does not deserve to be adored. It would be possessive. It deserves freedom.
You are wonderful, exactly because you are the way you are.
I hope not to condition you, or everything would change.
I would no longer desire you. Not because you would suddenly be ‘possible’, but because you would be something else. Not for me.
Remain, loyal, to yourself.
It does not mean that I do not desire you, but I desire you as something I respect. A beautiful thing, to treat with delicacy.
A fragile thing I do not want to break. So I handle you with care as you are most important.
Nothing, yet
everything, does change.
(Perpetually).
You need not know, yet
you, motivate me
In challenges unplanned.
A mediation, between
A self undiscovered
And one longed for.
In fact, because unknown
Desirable.
In fact, because un-had
Reliable.
In fact, not you
But it.
A portal, to
Things I would not
And those I ever wanted.
In fact, because too scared,
Un-acted.
In fact, because surreal,
Attracted.
Lucid from dream
Reminiscent of memory
I fade in and out of waking.
To stay.
A dance that does not complete itself is alive
I was inspired by reading Lacan’s Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire (1960) to think about an ideal dance that is incapable of representing itself. I am looking for a dance that like a baby, realizes it exists as other than the mother, the milk, the warmth. It is an entity of its own, becoming sovereign and subjugated at the same time.
I am interested in this mirror stage of the dance, the phase of misunderstanding / misidentification. A dance of misunderstandings, of active attempts to find possibilities which do not ask for explanation in other words, because they are self-fulfilling. It is meaningful but has no obligations nor needs backup explanations. It does not walk around with a simultaneous translator because it can eventually speak its mind. Its mind is clear, unmistakable because of its very nature. Irreproducible because of its very intangible presence. Alive because of its existence in the paradox, the space in between extremes, in motion towards the next possible event.
On judgement: an introspection
I truly have a problem with language, appropriation of meaning, association of a context to it, and forced clustering of words into signifiers.
Judgement is conventionally set aside with condemn, guilt, accusation and earns consequently a heavy annotation. The judgement of judging itself makes the accused feel deprived of their own voice, takes away the right to have opinions and therefore to have a critical mind of one’s own. If we all would give up on judgement, we would live of soft edges and unclear territories.
It sounds like I am contradicting myself. I have previously said that I am uninterested in definition, while now you will read me write that if there would not be opinions and clarity, we would have indifference and passiveness. If you see a paradox in this, I would be very pleased.
It is in the paradox that we exist. Not at each extreme and absolute opinion (this is where we form ourselves, grow and confront), but in the intersection of more voices (which can co-exist at times and even conflict to produce new meaning).
Could I make a comparison between the intelligent and the intellectual, or would that be criminally judgmental?
The intellectual relies on quotes, references, backups, and rationally tries to make its proposed theories work. Proves them to convince us they are worth spending time on and is flirting with its own ego who falls in love with the words and their hopeful universal sense, which will give peace to our thinking, putting it in its place to rest, satisfied with accomplishment. It arrives to a conclusion, a thesis that can be leaned on, stable and reliable. Consistent.
The intelligent on the other hand, breaks things down until they no longer support one another. Self-standing ideas with no sufficient ground, but rather based on air or even wind which changes direction before it is mentioned. It converses with nature as it progresses in its unreasonable search. It does not try to justify what already exists. It tries to uncover what does not apparently exist. The impossible. That which makes no sense (yet).
So, some of us value reason, as it gives peace of mind through possessing an idea, making it one’s own and delivering it as a product ready to be consumed by others. These will not have arrived at the same result through process, but rather through acceptance of the convincing and undoubtable proofs. This is one form of control.
Un-roled body - One rule body
A question that keeps reoccurring is: what is my body?
The very fact that I am a body has immediate implications in any relational context.
As soon as I am who I am, I have to deal with the fact that it has consequences.
What does it mean to be (a body)?
According to Butler (1988) “gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.”
Ever since I was a teenager I have tried to avoid identification with roles, as I found it uncomfortable to be classified as 'one thing', with the expectations that came with it, the implications that it involved, and the freedom that being unclassified had the potential to give me.
At some point soon after adolescence I started to be interested in the body. With dance practice I learned that the body we inhabit is a beautiful tool, an instrument, an organ capable of many things, and has a functionality that needs to be explored. Being gendered, I though, limits the possibilities of this organ, it de-naturalizes it.
I do not have to be a mover because I can, I do not have to be a woman because I can, I do not have to be what others think I could be or am. Very easily, I just am, and I want to be free of expectation.
Something that I experience as allowing room for this freedom is life-drawing and life-modeling: Looking or being looked as “a body”.
74 things I am interested in about the body:
It
its composition
r hy t h m
aesthetics
actions
the way it occupies space
what IS there
shapes
efforts
qualities of movement
how it relates
nervous system
organs
eyes
how body-mind collaborates
its habits
its presence or absence
who’s body
changes of density
its solitude
the emotions it contains
how it responds to situations
its training and un-training
the person it portrays
its history
skin
intimacy through it
as a container of systems
the unknown possibilities.
what it is for others
weight
speed
clarity of direction
unconscious behaviour
neuro-cellular patterns
the sounds it can produce
-stillness-
its proximity to other bodies
if it responds to contact, its availability to change form, when it refuses to collaborate
when it takes over from the mind…
how it responds to loud sound
its internal needs
how it gets what it needs
carnality
its possible distance from reality
its intangibility, a ghost body
when it is forgotten about
how It registers feeling
when it does not know
what there is that I don’t understand
its similarity to other bodies
the traumas it collects
its reasons to do
its involuntary actions
how it knows better
how uncomfortable it can feel
fear that runs through it
the structure that carries it
its nervous system
when it resists instructions, when it resists instructions,
when it resists instructions, when it resists instructions,
when it complies
its restrictions and limits
how it creates illusions
how it fools the mind
its memory
the associations it collects
how it can give pleasure
how it can receive pleasure
when it shuts down
when it speaks up
when it lies
when it speaks up.
when it is confused
if it loses sense of time
its specificity.
Un-translatability
I dare to think that anything that is represented not only is not “the thing”, but I would like it to even try its best not to be it. This issue of the “not being” and “not being defined” is entangled with representability.
There are things that can never be expressed in other mediums but the one they were born in, and those are well far from being conceptual. Perhaps they are concepts themselves, as they might not be “about” anything. Concepts and aboutnesses are born in words, concept and thingness are born in things. Neither can represent the other, but the use of either can function as both. We can make work in a representative manner, that is, work which illustrates, or we can make work that IS the very thing and cannot be other.
What is the difference between describing and performing, representing and presenting?
As I analyzed the work Yours Truly by Janine Antoni (2010) for the purpose of an essay, I found myself being quite deeply resonant and fascinated with the idea of Simulacrum, something that substitutes reality with its representation.
In the opening of Simulations and Simulacra Jean Baudrillard barges in with the following words: “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” (1981, 1.)
We can write about something or use other mediums as the representative means for a work, which is the thing in question. Representability implies potential for failure; it implies already a question: is it representable? and it is the question in itself which creates the work. The question in itself finds food in the search for presentation that will not represent the unpresentable.
Thinking through performance now, -and brainstorming for a prototype of my research as I go- I would like to see instructions for a work which is never to be realized. Interestingly enough I have written this before, one some old notebook. This I see as one way of not allowing the work to die. It has a very lively existence in the words which describe it, and if it were ever to be realized according to precise instructions, it will lose its magic and potential for infinity. Playing the game of making something exist only in the mind of who accesses the work. The work is perfectly planned and constructed but it cannot ever happen, therefore it is the task of the viewer/reader/listener to create for it one of the infinite potential outcomes of the work. A trick in believing that the “thing” is much bigger and has potential for distribution more than it actually would if it were materialized. It only exists in its potentiality, and each possibility exists in a different time. A collision is to happen. The one between reality and ideality, where ideal is impossible, therefore never tangible now but projectable in our own present. There is no stable IT to which any practical outcome can refer. This is where a work should stand for me, in the ITness, not the ABOUTness, evolving, expanding signification without ever defining IT.
This brought me back to ponder about a work that I made in 2015, What it is, is not it.
Part of a collective exhibition, it consisted of a room in an occupied building, to which the door had been plastered in bricks, and a hole in the wall about 20x20cm was the only peek into the space. It was dark inside. A recording of the sound of my steps was coming out of a CD player inside the room, pretending the performance was indeed happening, but nothing could be seen. It had not happened before nor it will be happening anywhere but in the phantasy of the visitor. Someone from the hosts of the exhibition would announce the performance on a megaphone, to gather public to the adjacent room, where the recorded sound could be heard but nothing else would change. I was not present; I had left for another country on the day. Could not control the show.
Now I see there are many unexplored layers to this work which I would be quite intrigued in unpacking…
In fact, because unknown
Desirable.
In fact, because un-had
Reliable.
In fact, not you
But it.
A lifestyle of learning VS a lifestyle of achievements: a reflection on education
I find myself thinking about the difference between an approach to life colored by fascination and curiosity for the wonders that we can experience, witness, hear or tell about, and one lead by a desire for result, achievement, confirmation, conquest. I believe we should want to be surprised and aspire at never being satisfied. I hope never to be satisfied. (Careful what you wish for). If I am not satisfied, I obviously have reasons to keep on investigating. I hope I never know what is happening. Only then I will be presently living VS knowing and trying to be smarter than the circumstance.
The mission we have is that, again, of creating a space in which this wondrous and ponderous attitude is possible. Not only possible but safe and stimulated by challenging inputs. We could be living a lifestyle of learning where each unexpected turn of our thought is not a reason for doubt, but an exclamation for potentially new perspective, unmastered skill or yet to be defined knowledge.
How appealing is that? Continually learning and never having learned. In this way there is always room for more. It is all about the fluidity of information, to which one absolutely can’t point the finger at, as it changes form in our perception when we mature a relationship with it. But how do we mature a relationship with it? I like to call that dynamic temporary knowledge: information that is not static, archived in us, done with once presumably understood, swiped once consumed and never reconsidered again.
I want to keep the edges loose, the boxes without a lid, to allow contamination and mingling. For that to happen we also need to give things time. Things, thoughts and feelings need space and time to take courage to crawl out of the box and feel safe familiarizing with other.
The oblivion is in fact the only place to live in, as it is not possible to know anything at all of what concerns future facts and it is almost impossible to be completely objective about past facts. Ultimately, we cannot know, so why try at all?
Nothing, yet
everything, does change.
(Perpetually).
IRINA BALDINI
From thoughts UP
Body in Performance
A reflective Journal
a compilation of critical reflections on my artistic practice in relation to embodiment
October 2019
TABLE OF CONTENTS
De defining (my) Territory
Knowledge is a lie. Truth does not exist
Dance urges to emancipate
A dance that does not complete itself is alive
On judgement: an introspection
Un-roled body - One rule body
74 things I am interested in about the body
Thoughts on Staying: an introspection
A lifestyle of learning VS a lifestyle of achievements: a reflection on education
--------------
De Defining (my) Territory
My own fiction is believing that the tasks or rules I give myself are real. I truly commit to them in order to transport public into a journey I designed.
Believing that there are shelves in the room; making spatial references tangible by moving; remembering and re-presenting sensations.
By moving away from the center of the dance-medium through the lenses of Spectatorship and Documentation and looking for what it is that (my) dance is not, or what it is on its edges, I find in fact the essence of it. I sympathize with the seed planted by Deridda (1988), where the context of a work is unreliable, it morphs and changes and cannot be held accountable for the judgement of an act (it being fictional or not). It is based on impermanence. If I apply his thought to the dance I want to see, I perceive no fiction and all fiction simultaneously. I perceive the coexistence of multiple possible parameters, and their instability and vitality. Context, which in Austin’s eyes (1962) is the key to a work, its stable ground, is for me the unreliable frame in which events may or may not happen, and therefore what makes the work alive.
By moving towards the corners of dance, towards a hybrid place on the outer edge of this territory I can see my territory. I see in today’s art shows a form that exists in the encounter. Of what? It cannot be defined ones and for all, but it is a form that spreads out from its material. It exists in the formation VS the form, in the frame and not on the canvas. Thinking around the theme of embodiment, I confirmed my interested in the encounter, the work meeting both the interpreter and the spectator, and how this happens – whether through direct contact with the embodiment or through a curated number of element that delineate an entry point or a portal into the work.
Knowledge is a lie. Truth does not exist
Constructionists would say that we are victims of circumstance, and also have responsibility and agency. This applies both to the artist and the audience. How do we, as artists, prime for this to be possible? How do we prepare (someone) for a situation and supplying them with the relevant information?
For me it is about adaptability and fluidity of the means of communication. Everything is changing, constantly: the dancer, the context, the movement. I dare to ask: What leads us to want to know, to possess, to fix things? We need to know because otherwise we do not exist. We tell stories to save our lives. We claim we know, to get approval. We invent and share to confirm we are worth something, at least for a moment. It is about power.
Knowledge is constructed through interaction with others, whether direct or indirect. We take influences from our field and others, operating within certain confines but hoping to push the edges and potentially get to a new beast.
Let’s roll up our sleeves!
Are we so commanded by the market that we forget to give agency and entitlement to the work? In the meanwhile, we get busy justifying its existence with intellectual foundation on which we hope it will stand. Shall we give a chance to Plato and acknowledge that that the concept exists before the object, so we can relax a little and trust we are doing alright? What if we were the sign in our work?
We owe our work respect more than anybody. Do not humiliate your work by attempting to possess it. Instead, serve it, listen to what it needs in order to arrive.
Perhaps it needs changing form, perhaps it is the trace it leaves that does the job instead, and not the ‘thing’ itself. Perhaps it is a memory of it, or a document that performs, and we should be open to that.
Observe your interests because you cannot but have interest in what is relevant to today. You are a product of today and your work is both response and impact on today.
Dance urges to emancipate
It is stuck, it is gooey, it is a victim of its own habit and, so in love with itself, it does not even recognise where its limitations are.
It is even self-seduced, self sufficient, and self indulgent.
Dance is not afraid of change and new, yet it is lost and oblivious, unconscious and mono-directional.
It wants to wake up, get down there to where its guts are and listen for real.
Not listen to what it already knows and masturbate itself on the satisfaction of being good, but listen deeply and carefully until there is something to reveal. Or we will be nothing, and the dance will go nowhere.
Dance needs to have a little check in with itself. Make an attempt at least, to get up to date with its most recent idea of its dream. It will not catch up, nor understand itself, but it needs to go back into the source and far from the representation of its lover.
It is absolutely appealing, and at times even necessary, to rely on one’s history and one’s own success.
If it becomes a condition and not a choice, it is then time to either quit or wake the hell up. Listen, with all given senses (come on!). What are we here for, if not discovery of the yet-to-be-known, the misunderstood and the potential.
Why are you even still there, transported into a world of second hand experience? Not even doing it for real, but pretending to yourself that you are not pretending.
“My statements are paradoxes in which this is a waste of time:<. I invite you to waste your time and wait, instead of wasting and covering the guilt by falsely entertaining yourself, looping into believing that fiction is reality and truth is a construction. Time is a construction. Truth does not exist.
Our dance is a conformist form no matter what we do to it. It is buckled up and silent. It has no voice of its own because we have taken it and made it ours. We have colonised the dance and claim that we know enough to have rights to perform it. When all we do is shine the bars of its cage, reinforcing the identity we gave it because it made us feel good and proud.
The dance I want to be talking about is opinionated. It comes if it wants and cannot be domesticated. It is a wild dog that gives you warning if it does not like you. Not because it was taught to, but because it is intelligent and knows. Intuitively, knows. It leaves when it finds no purpose; it grinds to prevent you from being hurt. It might bite if you do not leave it be (what it is) and certainly will if you try to command it and master it.
But it is loyal, if you are loyal to it.
I do not know how to see it. I accept I may never learn. I wish that it may hear me and dare to come close.
I adore it. But it does not deserve to be adored. It would be possessive. It deserves freedom.
You are wonderful, exactly because you are the way you are.
I hope not to condition you, or everything would change.
I would no longer desire you. Not because you would suddenly be ‘possible’, but because you would be something else. Not for me.
Remain, loyal, to yourself.
It does not mean that I do not desire you, but I desire you as something I respect. A beautiful thing, to treat with delicacy.
A fragile thing I do not want to break. So I handle you with care as you are most important.
Nothing, yet
everything, does change.
(Perpetually).
You need not know, yet
you, motivate me
In challenges unplanned.
A mediation, between
A self undiscovered
And one longed for.
In fact, because unknown
Desirable.
In fact, because un-had
Reliable.
In fact, not you
But it.
A portal, to
Things I would not
And those I ever wanted.
In fact, because too scared,
Un-acted.
In fact, because surreal,
Attracted.
Lucid from dream
Reminiscent of memory
I fade in and out of waking.
To stay.
A dance that does not complete itself is alive
I was inspired by reading Lacan’s Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire (1960) to think about an ideal dance that is incapable of representing itself. I am looking for a dance that like a baby, realizes it exists as other than the mother, the milk, the warmth. It is an entity of its own, becoming sovereign and subjugated at the same time.
I am interested in this mirror stage of the dance, the phase of misunderstanding / misidentification. A dance of misunderstandings, of active attempts to find possibilities which do not ask for explanation in other words, because they are self-fulfilling. It is meaningful but has no obligations nor needs backup explanations. It does not walk around with a simultaneous translator because it can eventually speak its mind. Its mind is clear, unmistakable because of its very nature. Irreproducible because of its very intangible presence. Alive because of its existence in the paradox, the space in between extremes, in motion towards the next possible event.
On judgement: an introspection
I truly have a problem with language, appropriation of meaning, association of a context to it, and forced clustering of words into signifiers.
Judgement is conventionally set aside with condemn, guilt, accusation and earns consequently a heavy annotation. The judgement of judging itself makes the accused feel deprived of their own voice, takes away the right to have opinions and therefore to have a critical mind of one’s own. If we all would give up on judgement, we would live of soft edges and unclear territories.
It sounds like I am contradicting myself. I have previously said that I am uninterested in definition, while now you will read me write that if there would not be opinions and clarity, we would have indifference and passiveness. If you see a paradox in this, I would be very pleased.
It is in the paradox that we exist. Not at each extreme and absolute opinion (this is where we form ourselves, grow and confront), but in the intersection of more voices (which can co-exist at times and even conflict to produce new meaning).
Could I make a comparison between the intelligent and the intellectual, or would that be criminally judgmental?
The intellectual relies on quotes, references, backups, and rationally tries to make its proposed theories work. Proves them to convince us they are worth spending time on and is flirting with its own ego who falls in love with the words and their hopeful universal sense, which will give peace to our thinking, putting it in its place to rest, satisfied with accomplishment. It arrives to a conclusion, a thesis that can be leaned on, stable and reliable. Consistent.
The intelligent on the other hand, breaks things down until they no longer support one another. Self-standing ideas with no sufficient ground, but rather based on air or even wind which changes direction before it is mentioned. It converses with nature as it progresses in its unreasonable search. It does not try to justify what already exists. It tries to uncover what does not apparently exist. The impossible. That which makes no sense (yet).
So, some of us value reason, as it gives peace of mind through possessing an idea, making it one’s own and delivering it as a product ready to be consumed by others. These will not have arrived at the same result through process, but rather through acceptance of the convincing and undoubtable proofs. This is one form of control.
Un-roled body - One rule body
A question that keeps reoccurring is: what is my body?
The very fact that I am a body has immediate implications in any relational context.
As soon as I am who I am, I have to deal with the fact that it has consequences.
What does it mean to be (a body)?
According to Butler (1988) “gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.”
Ever since I was a teenager I have tried to avoid identification with roles, as I found it uncomfortable to be classified as 'one thing', with the expectations that came with it, the implications that it involved, and the freedom that being unclassified had the potential to give me.
At some point soon after adolescence I started to be interested in the body. With dance practice I learned that the body we inhabit is a beautiful tool, an instrument, an organ capable of many things, and has a functionality that needs to be explored. Being gendered, I though, limits the possibilities of this organ, it de-naturalizes it.
I do not have to be a mover because I can, I do not have to be a woman because I can, I do not have to be what others think I could be or am. Very easily, I just am, and I want to be free of expectation.
Something that I experience as allowing room for this freedom is life-drawing and life-modeling: Looking or being looked as “a body”.
74 things I am interested in about the body:
It
its composition
r hy t h m
aesthetics
actions
the way it occupies space
what IS there
shapes
efforts
qualities of movement
how it relates
nervous system
organs
eyes
how body-mind collaborates
its habits
its presence or absence
who’s body
changes of density
its solitude
the emotions it contains
how it responds to situations
its training and un-training
the person it portrays
its history
skin
intimacy through it
as a container of systems
the unknown possibilities.
what it is for others
weight
speed
clarity of direction
unconscious behaviour
neuro-cellular patterns
the sounds it can produce
-stillness-
its proximity to other bodies
if it responds to contact, its availability to change form, when it refuses to collaborate
when it takes over from the mind…
how it responds to loud sound
its internal needs
how it gets what it needs
carnality
its possible distance from reality
its intangibility, a ghost body
when it is forgotten about
how It registers feeling
when it does not know
what there is that I don’t understand
its similarity to other bodies
the traumas it collects
its reasons to do
its involuntary actions
how it knows better
how uncomfortable it can feel
fear that runs through it
the structure that carries it
its nervous system
when it resists instructions, when it resists instructions,
when it resists instructions, when it resists instructions,
when it complies
its restrictions and limits
how it creates illusions
how it fools the mind
its memory
the associations it collects
how it can give pleasure
how it can receive pleasure
when it shuts down
when it speaks up
when it lies
when it speaks up.
when it is confused
if it loses sense of time
its specificity.
Un-translatability
I dare to think that anything that is represented not only is not “the thing”, but I would like it to even try its best not to be it. This issue of the “not being” and “not being defined” is entangled with representability.
There are things that can never be expressed in other mediums but the one they were born in, and those are well far from being conceptual. Perhaps they are concepts themselves, as they might not be “about” anything. Concepts and aboutnesses are born in words, concept and thingness are born in things. Neither can represent the other, but the use of either can function as both. We can make work in a representative manner, that is, work which illustrates, or we can make work that IS the very thing and cannot be other.
What is the difference between describing and performing, representing and presenting?
As I analyzed the work Yours Truly by Janine Antoni (2010) for the purpose of an essay, I found myself being quite deeply resonant and fascinated with the idea of Simulacrum, something that substitutes reality with its representation.
In the opening of Simulations and Simulacra Jean Baudrillard barges in with the following words: “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” (1981, 1.)
We can write about something or use other mediums as the representative means for a work, which is the thing in question. Representability implies potential for failure; it implies already a question: is it representable? and it is the question in itself which creates the work. The question in itself finds food in the search for presentation that will not represent the unpresentable.
Thinking through performance now, -and brainstorming for a prototype of my research as I go- I would like to see instructions for a work which is never to be realized. Interestingly enough I have written this before, one some old notebook. This I see as one way of not allowing the work to die. It has a very lively existence in the words which describe it, and if it were ever to be realized according to precise instructions, it will lose its magic and potential for infinity. Playing the game of making something exist only in the mind of who accesses the work. The work is perfectly planned and constructed but it cannot ever happen, therefore it is the task of the viewer/reader/listener to create for it one of the infinite potential outcomes of the work. A trick in believing that the “thing” is much bigger and has potential for distribution more than it actually would if it were materialized. It only exists in its potentiality, and each possibility exists in a different time. A collision is to happen. The one between reality and ideality, where ideal is impossible, therefore never tangible now but projectable in our own present. There is no stable IT to which any practical outcome can refer. This is where a work should stand for me, in the ITness, not the ABOUTness, evolving, expanding signification without ever defining IT.
This brought me back to ponder about a work that I made in 2015, What it is, is not it.
Part of a collective exhibition, it consisted of a room in an occupied building, to which the door had been plastered in bricks, and a hole in the wall about 20x20cm was the only peek into the space. It was dark inside. A recording of the sound of my steps was coming out of a CD player inside the room, pretending the performance was indeed happening, but nothing could be seen. It had not happened before nor it will be happening anywhere but in the phantasy of the visitor. Someone from the hosts of the exhibition would announce the performance on a megaphone, to gather public to the adjacent room, where the recorded sound could be heard but nothing else would change. I was not present; I had left for another country on the day. Could not control the show.
Now I see there are many unexplored layers to this work which I would be quite intrigued in unpacking…
In fact, because unknown
Desirable.
In fact, because un-had
Reliable.
In fact, not you
But it.
A lifestyle of learning VS a lifestyle of achievements: a reflection on education
I find myself thinking about the difference between an approach to life colored by fascination and curiosity for the wonders that we can experience, witness, hear or tell about, and one lead by a desire for result, achievement, confirmation, conquest. I believe we should want to be surprised and aspire at never being satisfied. I hope never to be satisfied. (Careful what you wish for). If I am not satisfied, I obviously have reasons to keep on investigating. I hope I never know what is happening. Only then I will be presently living VS knowing and trying to be smarter than the circumstance.
The mission we have is that, again, of creating a space in which this wondrous and ponderous attitude is possible. Not only possible but safe and stimulated by challenging inputs. We could be living a lifestyle of learning where each unexpected turn of our thought is not a reason for doubt, but an exclamation for potentially new perspective, unmastered skill or yet to be defined knowledge.
How appealing is that? Continually learning and never having learned. In this way there is always room for more. It is all about the fluidity of information, to which one absolutely can’t point the finger at, as it changes form in our perception when we mature a relationship with it. But how do we mature a relationship with it? I like to call that dynamic temporary knowledge: information that is not static, archived in us, done with once presumably understood, swiped once consumed and never reconsidered again.
I want to keep the edges loose, the boxes without a lid, to allow contamination and mingling. For that to happen we also need to give things time. Things, thoughts and feelings need space and time to take courage to crawl out of the box and feel safe familiarizing with other.
The oblivion is in fact the only place to live in, as it is not possible to know anything at all of what concerns future facts and it is almost impossible to be completely objective about past facts. Ultimately, we cannot know, so why try at all?
Nothing, yet
everything, does change.
(Perpetually).