This notebook will be a collection of thoughts, links and reflection on my work and others. It could also include complaints or remedies, depending on the mood.
16.11.08 Way back in February Fiona Wright wrote this text reflecting on the process of The Best and the Worst of Us. It is something we sometimes use in the program notes for the piece to give a little insight into the nature of our process. I am very fond of it as both an account of the process and a beautiful description that weaves together past and present group experience.
The Best and the Worst of Us
What did we say ? What did we agree ? We said: no more Lone Rangers, no more solo missions, it’s up to us - we do it, we do it together...
Together we know what to do. We make an early decision to cultivate a practice of doing everything together, finding our good patterns. Rather than insisting only on strict unison, we are interested in being something more like a hive perhaps, a shared consciousness. We seek togetherness as a group body, as an organism that finds its way, not through scenarios based on investment in conflict, but evolving through a shared endeavour. We integrate everyone into the work of building the whole, recognising that our pleasure at finding togetherness and balance is often strangely contingent on the constant failures to cohere.
We are interested in how the movement of the group becomes shaped through a collective knowledge. How does this dance go? We see new movement created by the singular - rising up as a kind of brief dissident, the individual in doubt, speaking out or dancing out - playing out a solo moment, but just for a while.
We said we were going to look after the past. To keep it true. We should know what to do. But how could we be expected to know what to do? Let’s tell our own stories.
These stories came out of being together. History is appropriated and re-invented. Stories are re-told as “group myths” - as much for the sensory experience of the sound as for real sense-making. The group voice forms as a plurality, interrupted yet co-existing with a solo voice, marking time differently in counterpoint.
This all began some time ago now, the group meeting for periods of research throughout the year. I remember early discussions of the idea of discipline. How does the primary group of the family give us the tools and conditioning to learn and to control our own behaviour? How do we arrive at a feeling of knowing what to do?
They let go of any deliberate preoccupation with psychological disfunctions in contemporary relationships, encounters and power struggles. They see an audience being allowed to observe something rather than being told something. Here is an invitation to observe this stuff that we do, these ways of being.
There is a proposition for research into what it means to work in unison but soon the focus changes and there is an agreement, in principle, to emphasise ways of doing everything in harmony. Methods of investigation emerge. They start with “flocking”. This takes time and this takes space. On a good day the energy transforms into inspiration, a light in the eye. The differences between the bodies shift and so does the space, like the gaps between words, affecting the reading.
How do we listen to each other - on or off stage?
They learn to move and sing together, this is what they do now.
The five performers are becoming a sub-culture. We find this in the invented languages - so particular to any group - necessary for the shared understanding of the internal logics specific to the world of making this performance. The actions of the physical body need to be demonstrated, described and named in order to gain currency for use in the local context of the studio. This seems especially evident in movement-based work where any existing formal systems of notation have never really taken hold in the working practice of most choreographers.
Many methods emerged in the time of making The Best and the Worst of Us. To perform this we first have to find ways of inhabiting this space and this time together. Strange tasks were created and performed for hours, for weeks, with the intention of researching, testing and playing out a particular idea. I remember now the one that we called the “oxymoron”, the improvisation of impossible gestures or presences, which are double, ambivalent and contradictory. These were like dream images, often child-like, hysterical, tender or delicate and eventually were left behind but traces of these qualities are there still, perhaps even in the recurring tension of performing a self in a group, discovering a contribution, being a presence, not disappearing.
Fiona Wright February 2008
10.11.08 Below is a text I wrote for the internet magazine, Corpus. This magazine for dance, performance and choreography recently made a focus on Ghosts in relation to performance and performance practice, asking various people to contribute to theme. You can find whole collection here. http://www.corpusweb.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=983&Itemid=35
Ghosts as hosts
There is this propensity to reject the ghosts of past creative practices and constructions. Although in many ways an artistic practice needn’t be defined by any real beginning or end, that is to say it develops into a gamut of habits that are at liberty to shift and mutate as knowledge is produced, forming a continuum of processes that are both conscious and unconscious in manner, I still want to renounce my ghosts and expel them to some phantom junk yard of presences I have deemed inadequate or simply redundant in my creative practice. This expulsion (locking in the closet) is not from an ideology based on the necessary destruction of the old or established for the formation of something fresh but it may have something to do with this feeling that there probably won’t be enough space for everybody – that these ghosts from former patterns of thought will ruin the party of new and exciting ideas that are emerging. And yes, in some ways this does have to do with a capacity to integrate information over time: it’s anyway extremely difficult to identify the exact origin of seemingly contemporary thoughts and methods as so much is of what we intend to do to is a reaction or consequence of what we have already done.
My first three choreographic works all shared explorations in veiling, concealing and revealing a physical presence in image through the medium of video. Something of a ghostly practice in itself! However, recently I have inadvertently ‘banished’ video from my artistic practice with the exception of filming the improvisational sessions for easy retrieval of ‘precious material’. As I am writing this I begin to question how certain approaches to working with image, frame and penetration of presence that became the stable research and language in those early works could have enhanced my practice lately, practice that has been more concerned with group behaviour and strategies as well as a specific written communication method, without necessarily employing video as means of presentation. In other words, I could have introduced my ghosts to my new bunch of friends, creating more connections and the potential for a deeper exploration or multi layered research, not to mention opening a potential for unpredictable connections. Perhaps, the most promising of ‘ghostly meetings’ would be in the dramaturgical questioning and structuring of already developed material as I think this particular process solicits and benefits from a broad scope of perspectives and ways of observing. This kind of ‘cross-pollinating’ of approaches and questioning upon artistic material that exists in entirely different contexts could bring about a transformation of the patterns that haunt us, resulting in a loss of that irksome quality - becoming less scary in their familiarity and more inspiring in their ‘performance’. I must acknowledge that with regard to my approach to artistic practice and construction it is not fear of the unknown but fear of the all too well known that acts upon me. It is a case of negatively anticipating my various phantoms’ performance ability and not allowing them to also develop and transform within my practice. Indeed, I am sure it is quite the opposite for other artists, those whose ghosts become shadows that walk with them along their artistic path and imbue them with confidence and assured strategies for producing work.
With an artistic method and an artistic object being so intimately involved, the object being a kind of response from the method’s questioning it’s probably no great wonder I feel the need to consciously push away the tried methods in an effort to assure the next project doesn’t too closely resemble or become a repetition of the previous work. Still, it is a slightly futile effort as you can’t choose your own ghosts and to rid yourself of their presence would be quite a feat of alteration. On the contrary, to treat one’s ghosts as part of the sum of artistic experience and allow them to remain present in the working environment might also invite the growth and transformation of your ghosts with you – reducing the need for an imposed separation and facilitating a fluid continuum of artistic practice. If we can think of our ghosts as an important part of that which constitutes the working method rather than a neglected other who hangs around unwanted, the integration of artistic method can only become more rich and layered or at the very least less haunted.
In itself the idea of discarding something because ones’ desire or focus is directed towards the development of new experiences is not wholly bad but the benefits of recycling what remains, of repairing and re-using ideas and concepts in new contexts is appealing in contrast to our contemporary culture of consumption and the all too desperate search for the new and original. Maybe there are no new spirits but just the reincarnation of old ones. A challenge would be to improve the ability to recognize and articulate ones’ ghosts - to welcome their presence in the studio or work space allow them to make a little noise from time to time. The notion of having short dialogues with lingering presences during a ‘new’ process could enlighten and develop modes of thinking and go someway to keeping us out of the dark.
In the same way our body is not ‘in space’ so much as inhabiting and haunting space so must the ghostly remains of our actions and thoughts be ever present in the development of new patterns of thought or methods of artistic production. I’m coming to the conclusion that expressing ambivalence towards the remnants of past work can only lead to blockages in communication with our various selves, younger and older. To persistently ignore, or not articulate what has gone before can result in a sense of something missing or lacking. If, however, we offer and invite to invite; to switch the roles so that all ones’ ghosts become hosts in the practice and act as constant reminder of possibilities for both tried and experimental exploration one might feel slightly more at ease in their presence.
09.12.07 Here is a text I wrote for the 100th year anniversary of Hebbel-am-Ufer which will be celebrated in January 2009 with a dictionary of 100 words chosen from dramaturgy manuals from the time the Hebbel theatre was founded. (around the 1900's) 'Deception' was the term I was given to reflect on.
Deception suggests something quite ominous to me. It’s not a notion I like to employ in approaching the mechanics of performance with regard to the exchange between audience and performers that transpires there. Perhaps it’s got something to do with the harshness of the term, with its determinacy and intention to manipulate. To be ‘truly’ deceived is frustrating, painful and annoying. This kind of deception happens much more outside the theatre than within its walls or frame. However, engaging in a game of illusion with a specific (and playful) approach to time and circumstance in performance can make potential truths and hidden profundities visible. And this is where it gets exciting.
There exists a kind of implicit agreement when entering a performance event to be overtly deceived as opposed to covertly. Although I think beguiled might be a more appropriate term here. In any case the audience are aware and consciously involved with the trickery: asking on what level is this performer acting now? Or can I read the authentic being beneath the guise? Or what do I recognize and relate to within these layers of sincerity or lack thereof?
The “trick” is in not assuming the audience are deluded by their sensual, visual or mental perception but endeavouring to make a space available in which the audience can be involved in processing the complexity of the real and the fake in performance and more generally feeling out the mechanics of the act.
Often I like to engage in a process of unpacking the illusion, of finding out where the performer gives something away and then accentuating that. Asking again where the ambiguities lie and on what level one can perceive authenticity or realness beneath. The paradox is that performance deals with a language of truth by in some way employing the means of deception. Agamben writes, “…truth is revealed only by giving space or giving a place to non-truth – that is a taking-place of the false, as an exposure of its innermost impropriety.”
Thumbs Up
01.10.07 Working here in Rotterdam on the best and the worst of us is for the most part without too much stress. That is to say no more than usual. We are trying to recover all the "being together" that we had developed way back in June and it's beginning to creep back into our bodies and body. Driving in Rotterdam is something else all together. A simple trip to the bio supermarket only 4 blocks from the studio, besides having to negotiate the one way, dead end streets and endless road works, we are also faced with a bizarre harassment from local drivers. There is this weird and nervy phenomenon where unfamiliar cars come sidling up beside us and the passengers begin to perform determined and drawn out thumbs up signs. I don't know what it means but it's rather incessant and kind of scary. Something wrong with the car? An acknowledgment of good driving? Strange thing is it doesn't stop, it's very needy and the cars keep following. When you finally manage to ditch one the next pulls up alongside and like crazed animals in a motorized cage the passengers are doing it again. Pulling far to close to the car, swerving in front, pulling dangerously close, breaking and speeding up again and always producing this simultaneously optimistic yet very suspicious thumbs up sign. They've got the good stuff? Should we complain? What would we say.....They kept showing us their thumbs?
Whine
22.09.07 We are giving the last push till the end of this creation phase of TONIC. It's all becoming more urgent than before as it invariably does when you know you are going to be parted from the flesh of the work, from the practical and (sometimes) lively doing of the material. I have the feeling of trying to cast it in some kind of semi-permanent cement even though it's not a structure I intend to reside in. But just so it's protected from the time passing in the hope that when I return in three weeks I can take residence there without too much rearranging and questioning about why I wanted to live there in the first place.
Blue
17.09.07 Not that I am especially blue but today I desperately want to be. Here is a link to some very moving photo documentation of a performance which took place in Bern 2 nights ago. Unfortunately I didn't see it. In the meantime I am staring into some makeshift vistas we have constructed in the studio and writing in our chat room program: I'm blue da bo di ba ba da ba da bo di da ba da da bo di ba do da