PRACTICE

A new project by Peter Stamer

Work still in progress in 2010. Research residencies at WELD Stockholm in March and September 2010

Between November 10 and 23, Friederike Plafki & Maria Scaroni have spent two weeks to work on their PARALLAX proposal. Here’s what they are coming up with to sum up their residence:

Intro
Looking for words – theory – blah blah to mobilize thoughts – thoughts to find images. In another time, hundreds of years ago, I would have simply said to inspire the creation of the work of art. But nowadays these words are funny dismissed objects.
“So, who or what is tickling the ticklish subject?” The answer, of course, is : the object – however, which object ?  The difference between subject and object can also be expressed as the difference between the two corresponding verbs, to subject (submit) oneself and to object (protest, oppose, create an obstacle). The subject elementary, founding, gesture is to subject itself – voluntarily of course […].
If, then, the subject’s activity is, at its most fundamental, the activity of submitting oneself to the inevitable, the fundamental mode of the object’s passivity , of its passive presence, is that which moves, annoys, disturbs, traumatizes us (subjects): as its most radical the object is that which objects, that which disturbs the smooth running of things.
Thus the paradox is that the roles are reversed, (in terms of the standard notion of the active subject working on the passive object): the subject is defined by a fundamental passivity, and it is the object from which movement comes  - which does the tickling. But again, what object is this? The parallax object.

STANDARD DEFINITION OF PARALLAX: the apparent displacement of an object (the shift of its position against a background), caused by a change in observational position that provides a new line of sight.
[…] It is rather that, as Hegel would have put it, subject and object are “inherently” “mediated”, so that an “epistemological” shift in the subject’s point of view always reflects an “ontological” shift in the object itself.
from Slavoj Zizek  - The Parallax View

We found this book “The parallax View” and bought it on Amazon, in English and German, because it had the word Parallax in the title and in the online blurb it mentioned the subject/object question and we assumed it could somehow had to do we the perception of reality.
It partly does and also has nothing to do with it. Finding out about Slavoj Zizek hallucinatory stile and speech pattern, the perverse guide to cinema, his questionable reputation as a thinker, the schizophrenic public character he is, his carnival of thoughts. The fascinating aspect of this reading is how he proceed. His practice. The use and abuse of things he likes and admires, thrown in to use this objects to say what he has to say. From Francis Scott Fitzgerald, to Marx to Hitchcock and Lynch and Rilke and Brecht, and a lot of Lacan and his friends.
Cultural or personal objects, to create this object that is a book that is called The Parallax View.

Refrains
Things we like. Recurrent things we, individually, adore, are obsessed with, subjected to. They came into our life, fell into our hands and pulse like a neon light. We recognize them coming back over and over again. Repeating their presence.
Sometimes I think they come from a previous or future life. Fragments. But returning fragments.
Objects I put my eyes on and they hold my heart and breath tight. They have different nature. And connect with each other.

WORDS

Mediation
Media television message Mc Luhan the medium is the message
The body is the medium
The body is the message
HOWISTHEBODYHOWISTHEBODYHOWISTHEBODYHOSISTHEBODYHOWISTHEBODYHOWISTHEBODYHOWISTHEBODYHOWISTHEBODYHOWISTHEBODYHOWISTHE
{How are you? Tired most of the time. How is it dancing? Secret and unnoticed. Feels like a conspiracy. Why? Just curious. Thank you. Keep doing that. Thank you keep doing that.}
Media are kept alive by electricity. Electricity, electric guitar, vibration. Heart beat. Heart transplant. See Tim Etchells’ THE DREAMS in “Certain Fragments”. What moved me? The body finds its strategy to save itself. And if it’s not the body saving itself the it’s its dreams.

Transmission
Trans-mis-sion n.[L.transmission-, transmissio, fr.transmissus, pp.of transmittere to transmit fr. trans-across, over + mittere to send] [1765, used to speak of electronic signals. 1869, telegraphic signals.] Transference of a physical phenomenon or of its effects when this transference implies one or several intermediate factors capable of affecting the phenomenon.
Put me into a trance. I ask my collaborator. I ask my body. I ask my body to treat me as an object.

See Joy Division.

Radio, live transmission.
Listen to the silence, let it ring on.
Eyes, dark grey lenses frightened of the sun.
We would have a fine time living in the night,
Left to blind destruction,
Waiting for our sight.

And we would go on as though nothing was wrong.
And hide from these days we remained all alone.
Staying in the same place, just staying out the time.
Touching from a distance,
Further all the time.

Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio.
Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance, to the radio.

Well I could call out when the going gets tough.
The things that we’ve learnt are no longer enough.
No language, just sound, that’s all we need know, to synchronize
love to the beat of the show.

Expression
To press out.
A lot of arms.
A lot of eyes.
A lot of torso.
A lot of lungs.
And dreams and memories. The birds, the deaths, the teeth, the himmliche voice. The abuse, the organic, the hanging. The mystery man watching.
“Love, despite its toxicity and violence, can bring us closer to the possibility of expressing human tenderness.  If one is ambitious enough to want to create a shared history, then one must be willing to risk an impossible dance, one that pivots on a desire to outmuscle exhaustion, a desire alive to our wavering capacities to bestow and receive responses, and an apparently insatiable desire to question these capacities and what motivates and blocks them, repeatedly.”
In an article by Peggy Phelan

Do we stay in the gap, in the mediation, in the fragile space of attempting a signification? Can we pretend to make meaning?
Theater has always been about that. Life still is, somehow.
How does the drama look and sound? How does the container look, while it is feeling meaningful?

The meaningful objects
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
By Friedrich Ruckert, set to music by Gustav Mahler.
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,
Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben,
Sie hat so lange nichts von mir vernommen,
Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben!

Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen,
Ob sie mich für gestorben hält,
Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen,
Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.

Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel,
Und ruh’ in einem stillen Gebiet!
Ich leb’ allein in meinem Himmel,
In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied!

English translation
I am lost to the world with which I used to waste so much time, It has heard nothing from me for so long that it may very well believe that I am dead! It is of no consequence to me Whether it thinks me dead; I cannot deny it, for I really am dead to the world. I am dead to the world’s tumult, And I rest in a quiet realm! I live alone in my heaven, In my love and in my song!

Watching Blue Velvet by David Lynch (1986). The dance of the eyes. The over the top emotional state. The script.
PRETTY PRETTY
YOU ARE FUCKING LUCKY TO BE ALIVE
LOOK AT ME
DON’T BE A GOOD NEIGHBOUR TO HER
I WILL SEND A LOVE LETTER
STRAIGHT FROM MY HEART FUCKER
YOU KNOW WHAT A LOVE LETTER IS?
IT’S A BULLET FROM A FUCKING GUN, FUCKER
YOU RECEIVE A LOVE LETTER FROM ME
YOU ARE FUCKED FOREVER
YOU UNDERSTAND FUCK?
I’LL SEND YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL FUCKER
IN DREAMS I WALK WITH YOU
IN DREAMS I TALK TO YOU
IN DREAMS YOU ARE MINE
ALL THE TIME
SOUND
It all becomes a soundscape, an installation,
a limbic place for trance and parallaxing,
playing with the frame, playing with background.
Falling into images. An image is by definition the mediation between the physical and the metaphysical. It is the gap.
Throwing stuff in, moving the waves, Breaking the Waves.

Ulf Langheinrich GRANULAR SYNTHESIS
Hentschlaeger and Langheinrich apply and extend the primary technique of granular synthesis to transform the gestures and voices of human bodies, particularly human heads isolated by video from their bodies, into recombinant, alien screen-based creatures that move and express themselves through suprahuman performance.  By breaking down video recordings of human models into split-second frames of video and sync-sound audio, and then reconstructing these models from these fragments, making them whole again (but giving them a new range of behavior that dislocates them from their pre-granular nature) we witness humans evolving into machines.
Granular Synthesis’s performances isolate and dislocate appearance and behavior from the cause and effect logic of cinema, television, video, music and our perceptual experience of ‘full motion’ life itself.   Time-based technological media, film-video-music, are generally programmed to run parallel to and analogously alongside ‘full motion’ physical reality. While there is an extensive history of time alteration in film-video-music, the time-based arts–we’ve learned to read flashbacks, flashforwards, the instant replay and more and more variations of time/event compression and density Granular Synthesis’s machine goes further and is designed to totally shatter the ‘full motion’ status quo.

Coda

Practice is a place for being practical
For failure
For reminding ourselves that there is nothing to loose
That there are things we like
that other people are also failing and like their things.
The container is fascinating.
The content is vital.

Maria F. Scaroni and Jess Curtis would like to invite people with all levels of movement experience to join us as performer/transmitters in: The Symmetry Project/Transmission, an installation/performance/ritual at the Berlin Tanznacht 08, at the Uferhallen (Berlin, Wedding).

THE PROJECT

Over the last 2 years, we have been developing The Symmetry Project, a mutable performance-installation-media project based on our research witht a symmetrical (left/right homologous) movement practice. The project is conceived and rooted in our experience of the tuning and mediating of sensory information and energy in the body. We have been presenting this perspective on intercorporeality in the form of a structured duet, solo and group performances and installations.

LATEST DEVELOPMENT

Lately, we have been very intrigued by the idea of transmission, particularly how embodied cultural information is passed through communities). The ground idea for our most recent experiment is to transmit this simple score, or movement idea, and its meditative qualities to multiple bodies create a kind of ritual in an open space. The idea is not only to pass the information we have researched, but to instigate a sort of viral transmission, where whoever gets in touch with the practice, can appropriate it and pass it on to other people. This is an invitation to instigate this chain effect, in which bodiesreceive knowledge, process it through their own physical strategies, and transmit it to other bodies.

LOGISTICS OF PRACTICE AND PERFORMANCE

To begin transmitting the physical score we are organizing practice days for people who want to be part of the installation/performance. Participants in these initial sessions are then entitled/encouraged to transmit the score to people in their social circles, and invite them to participate in the final installation. People in those sessions are likewise encouraged/entitled to transmit the practice in their social circles, ad infinitum, et cetera. (We are aiming to gather 100 or more participants so hope to extend to several degrees of transmission.) After participating in at least one initial transmission/practice session, all the “transmitters” and “receivers” will take part in one final community practice session during the Tanznacht at 5pm on Dec. 6th at the Uferhallen, just before all will participate in the final public installation/ritual (duration of 30 min),
in the Hof at Uferhallen at 6pm.

In order to participate in the final installation all participants need to attend an initial session with a transmitter and then attend the final community practice session, however all of the practice sessions are open and free for people to join as much as they like to.

DATES AND LOCATIONS FOR PRACTICE TRANSMISSIONS

UFERHALLEN Uferstrasse 23, Studio 2
Nov 10th, 6-8pm
Nov 15th, 3-5pm
Nov 18th & 19th, 6-8pm
Nov 22nd, 5-7pm

TANZFABRIK Möckernstrasse 68
Nov 17th, 2.30- 4.30pm

K7, Kastanienallee 77

Nov 28th, 6-8 pm

For more information please call or email:
Maria F. Scaroni
mfscaroni@sbcglobal.net
+49(0)1732876244
www.jesscurtisgravity.org

From October 16 until 20, 2008, Rosalind Crisp, Renate Graziadei, Arthur Stäldi, and Angela Schubot have been working on how to look at and use performative and choreographic tools in a process of instant decision-making. The following text publishes notes, Rosalind has taken during the working sessions.

pRACTICE day_1.

berlin practice-place of sharing to question the preconceived of dance practice

how to share

performative research and choreographic tools in contemporary environments
= practice

choreographic research and performative tools in contemporary environments
= craptice

flat back against the wall
loose responses, not too close to them in focus difussed, warming up, fragments of rhythm of song
shifting between image, sensation, direction in space, rhythm, body part, effort
If we take away performative research and substitute it with choreographic research…
tools for generating movement, tools for relationship with others-close, far, on/off, not at all, peripheral, going with, going against, maintaining, changing

Time to notice in the doing or in between the doing
practicing what I practice anyway in this new environement-these people with me all the time

Why the shift from group to solo is big-love the extra demand of solo

What is renate following now? listening, shape, negative space

control-releasing it
could I add anything -r and a are so connected
how the parameters shift-going in because I need to move, going in to add something, going in for..to break the watching making frame
not to break their performance/focus but to use concentrating on breaking
my frame of watching/making a piece, not pyscological either
music is an entrance. I was trying not to do psychological

too many things changing too fast between solo body, breaking the frame of making a piece as a score
a reason to go in
can’t we set up a ‘piece’, when it arrives-a relationship between 2- then I can pRACTICE my new frame/score

so I tried it alone-this new score called  ‘not making a piece’

the issue for me today from this we did is:
is it a practice as piece making - performative research or is it practice as choreographic  research

attention on composing a piece or on researching movement
Arthur body decision , composing-response to others moving in the space

I have practiced choreographic tools for years, but for me my interest today is how to shift myself, to ‘loose control’. What came for me today by paying attention to (concentrating on) breaking the making of a piece frame/ to be NOT reading the piece from inside it (nor from outside)
I am  not interested in understanding it but the interest for me is in setting up ways of loosing control
watching actively as a choice how to position myself-parameters/choices in how to participate as a watcher- as further ways of destabilising myself

peter-what decisions on, how do they stay on, do they think, what are the habits and styles  If  there is no recognition

Renate what I saw- me connecting directly, first time she saw me do this

what do I want?
I want to pursue freely my interests as they emerge in this context
I want to hear what others see
Do we set up structures or go in open and find them ourselves?

the undecidedness of it
a dialogue between decided and undecided

following the feedback from my body and the ways of producing movement that I practice
new environment

Day_2:

Nopeter today

the need to reaffirm I am just warming up-time to not produce-rest in this pleasure/permission
joined with the breath, the falling, heaving of Arthur
he is on a roll, falling thru own body out via another joint, face/gaze suspended
Felt like I was performing/by this I mean felt I had one particular relationship to being watched. need to open up more ways to create space to  have diff textures in perf tools

renate starts with listening
knows all the parts of herbody all of the  time, incredible awareness

going in to contrast or going in to go with, and all in between

the full body limbs, or the dissected details

I’ve got into watching in a certain way-seeing/looking for what is being made out there-therefore my dancing will be also about what is being made-seen by me thru this frame(the one I broke yesterday)

how can I position myself differently?
Instead of evaluating/reflecting….

okay so just let go to performing then!!!!

Renate How do I enter?
Angela Can we agree on  limiting it?
concrete ways to enter
Renate a task on the movement research ‘move round’
Arthur textures, colours, tools , honesty
Ros My 2 interests: relationships; and  how to shift my paradigm to use not performing/performing- to have range in performing textures

studio cannot be on stage
But I think shifting my paradigm will open a texture/territory between stage and studio. I think its not about putting studio on stage but about being active about manipulating your paradigm..creating the strategies to have range in performing texture.

understandING  space for not knowing the answers, for not sewing it up

need the choreog tools to do the performance research—how  to move, how to use the body instrument . Angela’s inbetweenness is more of a state than a choreographic tool

I went into Angelas solo with ‘not performing’ focus - felt like i was in one of those berlin conceptual pieces, so the way to alter this was to have a reason to move- to dance- I used my most accessible choreographic/dancing tool ie. shift my attention around my body and initiate from diff parts-reason to move

clear simple, simplify
arthur went in off this simplicity - I loved the intensity of his ‘not dancing’
then he started dancing and I wanted to go in as a log (s’thing from a totally other paradigm). Clearly this ‘not performing’ is in a relationship with performing, this ‘not dancing’ is in a dynamic with dancing

renate went in  ‘against’ arthur-not duetting  NOW we have berlin dance meets berlin conceptual-so interesting this texture-and they can do not duetting because they can duet, can do this not dancing because they can dance
is she turning away from him, great to see her performing textural range so wide, pedestrian, dance, relating to space, ball, looking directly, taking moves, transitioning easily between diff performative textures, so clear- maybe its also easier to read (and for her to do) because arthur is maintaining (quality, speed, continous)dancing, renate creating the duet, it only takes one person. It seems to be getting quite black and white, she is either dancing with, or away in pedestrian, could there be something else between these, another third quality of performingness?

Day_3:

seeking/noticing a different relationship with my practice-one of not arming myself with it, not not doing it, still practicing it, but opening a new relationship

tool as a device

watching not in frame/mode of evaluating, rather in frame/mode of participating

techniques-quantify
approaches to the body-qualify

teaching a phrase is a skeleton pathway for certain principles - forgrounded focus and its supporting focuses

evaluating is easier-its passive, to stay as participant in the watching requires more effort

beautiful continuity arthur, I am listening to his dance continuous, plus angela rhythmic sounds plus the amplifier constant and rhythmic

generating movement is not my preoccupation-my foregrounded interest here because its always there and the ways/choreographic tools I have to generate movement are plenty. So I’m not looking for new ways to generate movement, but rather new relationships with my material/with my dancing. Of course these are interrelated and inform each other. I started from trying to examine/use/research my performative modes and relationships to my material, to my dancing, by taking permission to have gradations of forground, background while performing all the time, so, always on to some degree even when watching, or writing. This then became a way to solo by shifting my relationship to my material from forgrounding it to backgrounding it. This was great, more options in performing with my choreog tools/dancing, this then became a score for dancing in duet with arthur, a way to be in relationship, so finally a way to generate movement-full circle !!  Changing my relationship to my material (performative research) became a way of generating material!
(mk)

renate so beautiful open continuousness supporting her being present - less active today-another texture in her relationship to her dancing,
arthur also continuous and now after dancing he is doing echo to renate’s movement
on side, fragements, but still continuousness - the underneath support to presence

Day_4:

Rosalind Crisp, Renate Graziadei, Arthur Stäldi and Angela Schubot have been working on how to look at and use performative and choreographic tools in a process of instant decision-making. They open their doors

maybe we can talk about what our indiv interests/concerns are during the work-showing-time, just step out when you feel.

on Friday, October 24, at 14h

post-modern approaches to the body (as opposed to ballet or modern dance techniques) put the focus on paying attention to the body itself (following/listening to the body) rather than putting the body in service of something, some predetermined outcome/form.

My danse project has been about paying attention to listening to/ following, the body in intersection with intention to create/represent, by developing ways of creating movement that put the focus on paying attention to choreographic constraints, so whilst there is a shaping going on there is not a predetermined outcome expected, but an outcome is produced (trust)
(MarkT)

My danse practice is a not trying to get anywhere/somewhere in particular, ie. not in service of an idea, an image, a form. Noticing ideas, images, forms that arise.

the pathways are not the goal

J’entre avec un cadre, un filtre avec lequel je peux percevoir tous que je suis en train de faire. Pour moi cette semaine c’est un cadre de la ‘non-performance’, ou plutot le permission d’avoir le plus grand gamme de choix de texture de relation avec ma matière. Puis de cette concentration je puisse inclure l’autre facilement

Arthur est entré avec une beau simplicité, mais pourquoi la répétition arthur? trop systematic. la question tient la question toujours, la filtre pour la question permanante  in the doing, mais en même temps il propose un question pour la pièce! Dans le contexte de cette pièce, dans ce metta niveau, il offre/propose un rupture/question- comme moi je faire en relation avec ma matière. Donc ses questions/frames sont en relation avec la pièce/les autres, plutôt qu’en relation avec son corps chorégraphique et sa matière

If everyone is really engaged with perceiving what they do through a particular frame/filtre/question then wow what is created? - a community? need to share somethings as well-such as gradations of being one, plus ‘rules’ of attention/support to others

renate so open, listening , found my filtre a useful tool to be with her, lots of unknownness, and joy to find self in same pond
she is changing texture constantly, effort of body changing, but also and perhaps primarily effort of attention changing constantly
arthur is maintaining, thats what he does best, thats what he uses to support his engagement
thats why he is easy to duet with, he stays, I change
angela seems to be searching for something, a reason to move?, a way to move?,. Maybe she could try just going for a time and not observing herself. She seems to give up her focus when someone else duets with her, maybe she could try absolutely ‘ignoring’ the other, using it as an opportunity to increase her attention on what she is doing
these less on ons of renate are very elegant

I want to try renates method of dancing with another-open wide inclusive ‘white coat’

last solo response to constant change of performative aesthetic, - still danse !- a constant change/negotiation of .., danse principles for the production of movement transferred/used for performative range!

we are only, are we limited by our choreog tools??

chicken music-gave me a constant to vary my relationship to
inhabiting the space of the relationship

by paying attention to shifting my relationship to my material and the material of the others, I had more space to notice and make choices in my reasons to move, the how.

Day_5: Showing moment

maybe we can talk about what our indiv interests/concerns are during the work-showing-time, just step out when you feel.

full body/empty body for Angela

me no performative range today, too quick in presenting, no guts of concentration focus-ok then work with that-trust
obligation to be in relationship- squeezes time to bring attention to own body up to a hight of volume

push to feel
judgement, say it then, there is no voice, where is my voice, only june carter substitute
master stood up, feigning participation… I don’t believe him, he is watching from the elevated chair of knowledge
destabilised myself maybe now too much, ie too far from the referent of not destabilising
in context of showing

audience tasks

get a grips

audience makes me feel stuff

10 urges to go, hold back dont dominate, full of sensations when there is an audience

next time you read these lines think of not thinking of not being thinking

they go into what they know, a safe haven to protect themselves from the audiences? true or false

odd timing, time is an outsider, coming from those who watch

getting warmed up in front of the audience, warming up with them, warming them up

am I changing the performative texture/relationship of the piece or am i changing my performative texture?

i cant watch, i see, i see the need for composition, decisions that are directed to the outside, but not connected with the outside

giving time to it, to watch

pressure to shape

rosalind; please smile

After the 1st ’showing’:
We have been practicing findING, not presenting. Here is an audience and I find myself attempting to show my new tools/ to present the tools rather than to be in the practice of findING tools!  Giving voice to it/talking, presented itself as a tool/way to release this unsatisfying sensation I was noticing that my new practice is not foregrounded  here, because the audience is here. They are foreground, so deal with this in the best way you can, ie.work with the new and stronger environment (the audience), don’t try and hang onto the new tools/processes you have been finding since the findING was not an artefact but a process anyway. And here we have the practice of improvisational performing!

Giving voice to the words welling up in my throat is a performative device/tool in performance improvisation I already know a little, it came through to rescue me from my dissatisfaction with myself. I got a clue when in response to the sensation feedback from myself that constantly changing my performative range was loosing its fresh impact on me, I decided to stop doing this and do the opposite, so instead went WITH renate and arthur. (how to notice when a new tool has become a useless old tool?) The sensation pressure inside me to communicate how important our discoveries had been to this audience here was growing louder, and even louder since I had just given myself permission to take the previous sensation I was noticing as my focus to work with. I finally let the thoughts out of my mouth. Then began one of those wonderful performing times … the poetic disintegration of my control. I loved every moment of it, knew I had run away from the others, but wanted it, otherwise the whole thing would have sunk, and me with it.   Oh the exquisite narcissism of the performer!

“A tool is a device used to help accomplish tasks. It serves as a means to an end”
Day_6:

perversity
seduction?
Joy

going with/going against  score for today
we are connected as a group, probably because others are invading our space today-we stick together

Nik Haffner und Antonia Bauer sind gekommen und jetz Christina Ciupke

so we gave them the score:

peter sniffed it opening/closing, towards others/away from others
Antonia with spots on the floor, Nik with spots Antonia looking for stuffs. Peter selling the air. Nik going to Antonia and now with the activity
Peter going against then with . I didn’t know he had mime skills
Going with seems to be about agreeing
Its coherent because they are playing games together, objets, dramaturgy, copying, everyday gestures simple three jumping, Antonia smelling boot then going with rhythm

we should have said no objects
Its watchable because its simple. They use the body as an object in the composition, rather than the /a site in itself, except perhaps peter … even the movements are repeated action/gesture to create a movable object

ahhhh so going with or against they all interpreted as in relationship to the others, rather
than in relationship to their own body… except perhaps a little peter

to get interested in moving objects around I had to find means - use my choreographic tools to get interested  eg going then interupting myself, then noticing that… then
Day_7:

group agreed duet score ‘one goes in , another joins after some time, find a resolution’

Arthur holds a territory, I come in in my contre façon, me working with not going with him…stay as long as I want in my performative range/contra, gradually when I was ready, not before, I gradually (over a few minutes) transitioned from contra to with, there was a clear moment when I was with him, then I stayed with his traces even after he had left and came back with new stuff, then we resolved together.

the fall rebound connection to the floor essential to keep the old motor going

Scores for duo research
1.
A. developes and maintains a territory
B. enters and works in contrast to his material, stays as long as she wants, when she wants gradually makes a transition to join with his material, taking as long as she wants to join, with a clear arrival.
A. ‘leaves and re-enters’ with contrasting material
B. maintains her traces of his first material and then quickly transitions to join his new material
A.&B. take it to a resolution together

When I was in A. role I enjoyed the delicate balance between not being responsible for what Arthur had to do (contrast me) and also being transparent for him, ie; not making it dificult, not impeding him either.

2.
Ros developes and maintains a territory
Renate enters and proposes a contrast to what she has seen of me
Both maintain their contrasting territories in the space
……

its a mess with 7 different people working in the space tog

we like it!!!
2 pieces next to each other!!!

solid room//empty space
Day_8:

duo with Angela, like the challenge of staying with /establishing a contrast to her that had enough room for me to play inside its parameters.
Did she change territory. My feeling was that her territory was her.

A. need to take time to discover a territory, to find out what it could be, not to decide too early

renate established almost immediately her terrain- continuous, circling, on spot, arms and head, not legs, and stays on standing level
arthur enters with similar tempo but lumpy forms, changing levels, thru space,
grad he starts to pick up the circling off renate, but fast and lumpy

way of watching-not analytic but from body response lets one go in and not know what the response(contrast) will be; Find out

Day_9:

still finding the score hems me in. makes me lazy, stop listening

I think we should open it up, so I propose this score :

not more than 3 people, going with or going against (body self, own material , material of other , room, floor) changing (occasionally, constantly, gradually, quickly) or staying with, gradations of being ON

dont like having the new guy (reebock..addidas?) since we spent 2 wks tog practicing and now he gets the performance cream and there is no practice in that. And he wont get off, make space for us who have a practice going. Too psychological, thats where they always go when they are new. So selfish

……….

much later on day_9…..

The first week I took total responsible for my being interested all of the time. I believe this created a fantastically rich environment to meet the others in.

The second week was very dissatisfying because I stopped this ruthless engagement with my own interests.

What happened was that we seemed to start trying to function as a group, shit how boring when one considers how different our artistic needs are! Some kind of weird responsibility for the others took over, urghhhh. When we were 4 disparate individuals, the fun was in negotiating our rencontre. Now we took a position as an homogenised group, yet without years of practice together this homogeneity of course, simply reflected the lowest common denominator.

Why did I (/we?) accept this? How did this happen?  Why didn’t I try and change it?
Why didn’t I ask myself for the conditions/context I want to pursue my artistic interests/my artistic practice?

I think what happened is that I/(we?), became passive recipients of the demands of the other group (Nik). They changed the hours, the space, the whole thing was completely different, we were asked (so seductively nicely) to fit in with this. We were trying to act like it didn’t matter (since someone said practice is about cohabitating), but I think it did matter.  I think we no longer had the space and time to rip up as we wished which was part of the context we were developing our practice in. The context was changed, we no longer had the same freedom to scream and shout in an environment of shared and growing understandings of each other. The safe environment we were building was gone. I think we stopped giving ourselves permission - a kind of craptice set in.

On the 28th of September Peter wrote an email to Ligia saying that he just had „someone [resigning] at very short notice”, and that he had “a studio for [her] research in the context of PRACTICE from Oct 6 until 18. On reading this, Ligia called Peter to ask what this PRACTICE project was exactly about and said that she wanted to work with Thierry – with whom she had worked on most of her late solo project. After coming to an agreement, they hung up and Ligia, who was in Lisbon, Portugal, at her sister’s, immediatly called Thierry who was in Berlin, Germany, at home.

In the following couple of days, the idea to work on Ligia’s last piece “Birds and Wind” in the context of this program made its way and it became clear that it was a good one. PRACTICE was not offering rehearsal space; ideas that came in should not be too advanced, the vaguer the better, as what was offered was the possibility to research for two weeks in UferHallen.

The “Birds and Wind” idea for PRACTICE was first to take, on one side, the text of the piece which constitutes 85 percent of the piece itself, the performer being seated still for most of the time, and on the other side the perfomatic side of the piece, which is contained in 5 mn out of one hour, and to open them in order to rethink the whole thing. On the morning before Ligia’s arrival, Thierry sat down and wrote three pages about the concept that are now in the trash. But the discussion was open and its aim was clear. When Ligia arrived in Berlin late the same day, they discussed what could be the possibilities of rewriting and re-chreographing over diner, with much confusion (and a little bit of a delicious portuguese wine bought in Berlin).

The following day, they went to UferHallen and met Peter. The three of them sat down and Peter explained to them what his project, that he shared with Amy and Jacob, was about. It was something about Lolita written by someone else than Nabokov and a technic called Family Consternation or Constellation, which remained at the time quite unclear for Ligia and Thierry. For what they got that day, it was something about a pedophile, group therapy and theatrical tools. It had nothing to do whatsoever with “Birds and Wind” (BAW) retitled for the occasion “birds and Wind revisited”.

“Birds and Wind” is a piece about failure, the failure of the performative act in its confrontation with the spectators’ expectation. In this piece the theater becomes a sort of a tabula rasa, based on the perception of a theatrical reality from the zero point – without context, without past, without any other premise beyond the confrontation of the performer with an empy space, a length and the public.

Was the piece itself a failure? That question accompagnied them on the first day. But what was wrong in the piece that could have made it a failure? The text? The text was carefully read. The performatic elements? The performatic elements were carefully looked at. At the end of this first day, on the way home after leaving UferHallen, they came to realise that if a detail here and there in the text and in the performance could be reviewed, the whole thing didn’t really need a thourough rewriting. PRACTICE, they thought, was a place for research, not for corrections.

On the second day, they thought they could open “BAW” and push each of its elements as far as possible in its own direction – the piece was there, and could remain untouched. There was no risk in exploring it. What would come out could then maybe be included back into the piece. It is only after that that they decided to isolate the elements contained in BAW and to use them for other purposes.

The main element that they wanted to explore is the confrontation between a performer on a stage and a spectator looking and building interpretations. On one side, movements, actions, that don’t necessarily express anything – and on the other side the head of the spectator laid open. If it can be said that everything that is perceived on stage by the spectator is fiction, then every move is suggestive. In a theatrical or performatic space, even the most concrete action or presence of a body can be a target or a container for poetic projections from the public. After the experience develloped in BAW, they decided to revisit its premises by setting a series of execises where the speech can extrapolate significations over the action, trying to enact the perception of an imaginary spectator.

After Barthe’s “Death of the author”, they decided to look into the Art of the Spectator. The Art of the spectator is always an attempt. The interpretation is somewhat floaty, vague. A story never gets to be built. There are associations, one after the others, subjective. Pushing the coherence further would bring one back to an art of the author. Although the “interpretation” will be composed, the fact that the performance is always slipping away from grasp doesn’t allow a sense to come to completion.

On the third day, Peter, Amy and Jacob showed them a video of the familly constellation. What they saw was a semi-fictitious theater representation with therapeutical purposes guided by a gourou called Hellinger who seemed to all of them extremely ideological and somewhat unethical. This brought them to a discussion about the enlightning or manipulative powers of representation used in a therapeutic context.

And a few days later Ali and Krisana, family constellation practitioners, came and set up with them a constellation. This is how it goes : A and K set the participants on the field, the space of the constellation, giving them roles. A particular issue is going to be enacted. In this case, they wanted to explore the family background of a fictional character : Humbert Humbert of Lolita. Peter was the nympholept. Amy, Jacob, Ligia and Thierry were other characters. The participants know nothing of who they are the “representatives” of, nor what is the situation exactly. A and K stay on the side and watch. They have all the details, the who’s who doing what to whom. From watching the way the representatives behave in relation to one another, they are able to draw an interpretation. At the end of this session, they explained what the situation was, who was who etc. And the participants were able to see how they created characters, and a background story for a fiction, thus deepening the psychology of the actual characters of Lolita. This is a technic that Ali uses in his theater work.

After giving up on a sequel to BAW, Thierry and Ligia had constructed a method, taken from the element of BAW mentioned above, to produce interpretation. On the stage, Ligia would improvise, and Thierry, seated in front of her, was taking notes for a text, the “interpretation”, that would be composed later. And it came to them that, all traces of the family constellation system removed, what would be left to see on the “field” was what Ligia and Thierry were looking for. People on stage that are not performing, not trying to express anything. Only relating to one another in an intuitive way. The lack of expressed intention in the performatic act is replaced by the interpretative skills of the observer.

During a conversation where L and T explained the link they found between their work and Peter’s team work, Ali told them, after they had said that they were only starting with this method of working, that sooner or later they would find (or fall into) a system : and this is exactly where the similarity between their common works stops : in order to create the art of the spectator, it appeared to them that it was an imperative to be anti-systematic. Thus the subjectivity of the spectator would be kept.

Another thing that came up while trying to draw distinctions between the two works was the question of psychology. Thierry said, quite affirmatively, that he was not interested in psychology. Amy asked then how could one get rid of it in looking at anything – it was everywhere. Peter’s team had observed the constellation that Ligia and Thierry formed while working – one seated writing looking at the other improvising – and made funny analogies to man/woman and 19^th century artist/muse relations, maybe in an attempt of guessing Lígia’s and Thierry’s personnal involvement in this process. Ligia and Thierry are people. And their relation is personnal. But here, they defended themselves, what they were trying to do is to produce images. Not an image of a joyous or suffering person, but of a presence suggesting a set of transformations and half narratives. One could find psychology everywhere, but one could also decide to turn away from it – thus leaving space for other things to come up.

To the question : what kind of images? Thierry answered : images that touch me. With this unfortunate answer, Thierry triggered an unfortunate question : What images touch you then? What did she mean? The value of an images lies in its capacity to convey meaning. It can be a pieta as well as a toilet bowl. It might be that the personal Thierry, for reasons that can be found in psychoanalityc textbooks, would pick the toilet bowl over the Pieta. But one can also choose to leave this question unanswered.

In spite of Thierry and Lígia’s resistence to any prior logics or systems to interpret movement, they found themselves caught by a tricky belief: the conviction that representation will be there, behind movement or behind words, to come up and show itself.

Putting themselves in the positions spectator/ performer, they were sujected to a wide range of expectations. Lígia expecting Thierry to give sense to her improvised movements, and thierry expecting ligia to create images that would support a nice metaphorical language.

Lígia even got to express something as inapropriate as her wish that her presence on stage without even moving a finger would be already enough to produce a whole range of thoughts and significations if they could be seen by a very gifted spectator – Again the Art of the Spectator.

They were in great confusion.

Lígia talked about the urge, the need, the motivation, and other romantic premises of the artistic work. She said that the mere use of tools could never be suficient for a creation, and that it is rather a conflict and not the ability that gives the first push to it. “we’ve got to get to a problem to offer a frame in which the tools can act”.

This dialetic relation between speech and presence brought them to a possibility of dramaturgy.

They talked about how speech can swallow reality, but how at the same time reality can be sustained by words.

About how the speech can concentrate on the object at one moment and drive its attention away from it at another.

How to oppose the potential of representation of the speech on one side, and the movements on the other, as if they were in a constant war.

How to question the awareness of the performer about its representative potential

How to observe the language’s dependency of reality

All those questions would allow them to set the dramaturgical line of the spectator mind, or art.

Three years ago, Ligia and Thierry were in Portugal. One night, in the kitchen, Ligia was peeling an orange. And Thierry started describing the peeling of the orange by Ligia. From this, they imagined that they could present not only a spectator mind in front a perfomer, but also the ascendancy that this voice would have on the perfomer if this perfomer would hear it. Language, with its adjectives, its different times, is always able to contain what is presented to it. If one says : she is peeling an orange – and she stops peeling the orange, one can still say : she WAS peeling an orange. The perfomer is going to be bothered by this voice that chases him. Even when, obviously, what the voice will say is only a subjective interpretation, it is still a problem for the performer. No one feels well being categorised, explained, as arbritrary as the category or explaination might seem. From this stems a conflict of power between the performer and the voice.

Nietzsche said that truth were old metaphores that came, with usage and time, to be solidified. Bathes links this to the etymotlogy of the word ‘stereotype’ : in greek, stereos means “solid”. A tree is not the same from one moment to the other. A river neither. This is the limit of language : its inadmissible limit. It cannot gasp the stream. Language brings us to make of living things statues : dead things.

If in choosing the art of the spectator over the one of the author they apply for a subjective, therefore questionable, ephemerous and non-dogmatic interpretation, one still finds, because of the limits of language mentioned above, an agression. Things named tend to be dead things. This is what they wanted to add to the piece that was slowly being build. A denounciation, and the impossibility of escaping language.

By ways of conclusion, they would like to say that they have no idea yet where all this is going to take them. It is not excluded that the train on which they’ve boarded might never pull away. If you have any questions, they will answer to the easy ones. Or we could play football instead?

06.11.08 bis 18.11.08, Uferhallen Wedding, Studio 2

Klausur (von spätlat. clausura „Verschluss“ von lat. claudere „schließen“ und clausus „geschlossen“; verwandt mit Klause)
1. Einsamkeit, Abgeschlossenheit,
2. Bereich eines Klosters, der nur für einen bestimmten Personenkreis zugänglich ist.
(Duden, das Fremdwörterbuch)

Ein Wohnwagen wird während PRACTICE sowohl unsere Klause in den Uferhallen sein,
als auch der Ort, in dem wir in Klausur gehen.

„WILHELM GROENER in Klausur“ soll vor allem ein Erfahrungszeitraum sein, in dem es möglich ist, durch Praktiken wie z. B. Fasten oder Schweigen Veränderungen an sich selbst/Innen und am Gegenüber/Außen zu beobachten, zu reflektieren, zu dokumentieren und in performative Strukturen einfliessen zu lassen.

„WILHELM GROENER in Klausur“ ist auch ein Research für ein neues Stück, das sich mit dem Verhältnis von Glaube-Kunst-Gesellschaft beschäftigt und dabei speziell auf Ritual, dessen Mechanismus, Bedeutung und Wirkung fokussiert.

Ritualisierte Abläufe werden den Aufenthalt bei PRACTICE strukturieren und rhythmisieren. Themen und Praktiken werden bestimmten Tagen übergeordnet.

Protokolle und Dokumentationen von „WILHELM GROENER in Klausur“ werden im Wohnwagen/Klause als Spuren dieser Erfahrung während Tanznacht 08 (4.-7.12.08) sichtbar gemacht.

WILHELM GROENER in a retreat
from 06 -18 November 2008 Uferhallen Wedding, Studio 2

During PRACTICE, we will use a caravan as the place to go on a retreat and also as our home at Uferhallen during that time.

„WILHELM GROENER in a retreat“ is an experience phase in which we use practices like e.g. fasting or silence in order to watch changes at ourselves/the interior and the other/the exterior, to reflect, to document and to transform the experienced into performative structures.

„WILHELM GROENER in a retreat“ is also a research phase for a new performance piece that deals with the relationship between belief – art – society and focuses particularly on ritual, its mechanisms, meaning, and effect.

Ritualised processes will structure our stay at PRACTICE and give it a rhythm. Specific topics and practices will accompany each day.

The traces of this experience will be made visible in protocols and documentations.

protocols and documentations of „WILHELM GROENER in a retreat“ will be made visible during Tanznacht 08 (4.-7.12.08)

On SAT, 11 Oct, 14 - 15h

at Uferstudio 2, Uferhallen, Uferstraße 23, Berlin-Wedding

proposed by Krisana Locke and Ali von Stein

no admission fee

It is a social meditation in which you learn to master your emotions by expressing different states of mind, moving from one polarity to the other. It is a two-and-a-half hour structure in twelve stages, leading you through an intense experience of twelve aspects of human nature: hatred, love, stamina, life energy, chaos, dance, sadness, laughter, sensuality, chanting, silence and respect.

The Aum meditation was designed by Veeresh and can be seen as the culmination of Veeresh’s experience with leading the Aum Marathon, a five-day therapy group which he started in Pune, India in the seventies, under the supervision of Osho. Veeresh still leads Aum Marathons today.

The Aum is an intensive process that can only be offered by specially trained people.

The higher and lower are not two separate things, but two polarities of one energy. They are like negative energy and positive energy, minus and plus electricity.
The AUM is going to give you tremendous results, and the wheel will move completely.
No group is complete unless the positive and negative exist together and are joined together. No man is complete unless he has been to hell and heaven both.

Everyone who is interested is invited to join in!

Dear Friends,

this is our new project, kind of new, Ligia and Thierry are following.

PRACTICE wants to propose a shared space for work, thoughts, and most of all exchange, designed for choreographers and dancers whose workbase is in Berlin. In general, PRACTICE invites two different artist groups who are coming up with two different projects for about 10 to 14 working days. Some groups consist of artists that haven’t even been collaborating before. The groups would work together in the same space at the same time, thus finding out about tools for and of collaboration. Yet there is no need for a forced collaboration, since the projects are disctinctive, rather we are looking for protocols of sharing work in order to give the notion of ‘working together’ another twist. Thus, PRACTICE does not provide a space for rehearsals, to the contrary, it’s a platform where open research should take place, since rehearsals already try to materialize a preconceived idea whereas research tries to search for methodologies and mental pathways.

Since PRACTICE is an akronym that stands for ‘PERFORMATIVE RESEARCH and CHOREOGRAPHIC TOOLS in CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENTS’, the project advocates the scrutiny of the at stakes of the proposal itself:

1) what is PERFORMATIVE RESEARCH in contemporary dance?
The question of KNOWLEDGE in theory and practice

2) what can be understood by CHOREOGRAPHIC TOOLS?
The question of METHODOLOGIES

3) how can we conceive of space as CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENT?
The question of SETTING

to be continued …