Eliminating ignorance

“To me Production was a true example of populace.  The work took on a community that centered around knowledge which was shared through conversation, emails and blogs (that shared theoretical text as well as responses to the work and labor).  We constantly discussed the conceptual idea of discussion and in the inertia of it all we came out without any idea that makes a product but many exchanges of knowledge, cultures, and fits of expression.  I don't find it necessary to describe particular experiences because these then hold in our minds as moving sculpture, tangle products, but I think the overall tone is the path that choreography can take in the future.”

The above text is a response not to my own work but a work I am have been participating in for the past 4 months and it a/effects my own practice and how I see the spectators role in a performance.  I have been participating in Xavier Le Roy and Marten Spangbergs “Production” which was commission by the Hayward Gallery for the Move: Choreographing You exhibition. The work (if you have not experienced) draws the spectator in so they become an active participant in the performance which then alleviates the spectator all together.  By doing this the goal has eliminated product as spectatorship sets a formula that 1+1=2 (Performer + Audience= Performance which = Product which= commerce) 

What does this do for my work? I have not stop making work that eliminates the spectator but in a way I have actively consider where the spectator is placed in the performance.  And that spectator is an active participant not “ignorant people” sitting in a seat for entertainment.  I took on the approach to present research as a product so I can ask my audience to think and by thinking and diving into their memories and senses they are actively being entertain. (this being enjoyment or recalling an uncomfortable experience; all valid entertainment)  I have a passion against 3D for this exact reason; feed me feed me feed me and I have consumed without thinking, leaving me supposedly full but still hungry) I won’t digress anymore, but will explain what I mean.

“The theater is a place where ignorant people are invited to see suffering people.” (Plato)

He goes on to speak that these suffering performers are diseased and theater is the transmission of that disease.  I consider this a fine line to travel on in my work as I try not to use the theater as a therapeutic session but a place that connects humans with each other as equal bodies that have similar emotion.  I don’t ask for ignorance but for a quest by the spectator to tap into their own experiences to devise the answer to what is being laid out in front of them.  I found that the experience in Production of eliminating the spectator is similar to the experience I am doing by eliminating the passive spectator therefore eliminating ignorance.

So returning to my above statement, I think the path of choreography is to deepen the exchange of knowledge and push the realms of presentation.  Maybe an off topic statement but thinking that price doesn’t quantify quality but maybe the opposite I think.  As musical theater (my original passion and love) becomes more ready made food (jukebox musicals, remake of popular movies, etc) the price will go up and as the economical crisis tries to push arts out the intellectual based performance will become cheaper. (AMAZING! True class separation) I am seeing more and more free performances that were well researched and thoughtfully presented. In a way, I am ok with this as long as the funding is there to support the performers and collaborators.

Meetings Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teRbOg6KL_g

Let me begin with the end of 2010.

A year that was about new ideas and ways of seeing.  I learned to stay still and just observe.  So, what did I see? The research streams pass the books and pass the performances but the context was the important idea.  Living in London is possibly as important to my thought process as reading Berger.  This year I saw places that have put space, time and energy in to real context.  I want to take a moment to reflect upon the places I found this year and why they are important to my development. 


My most favorite place in all of London has to be the Wapping Project because it gives you an understanding of stalled motion.  It is the in between place within breathes.  If you were to elongate that moment this space is a capture.  I find the space allows me to register is intricacies and height.  I inspired to be the energy that makes the machines run again.  But this energy is always hidden in the back.  As you approach a large heavy green metal door you are then transported into a world that is completely inside the head of the presented artist.  There is no detail that is un-thought of and the capacity that it inspires a developing artist like myself to have this thought too.  Completeness.

I remember the first moment I stepped into the crypt at the Linger Whispers Exhibit.  It had this energy that expressed the festivity of death and the Golden Age.  The art create a wind tunnel that sucked you in and though it is a small place you felt hours  pass because of endless wandering in the catacombs of art.  For me this was the most successful exhibit of the year.  A usage of the space that gave relevance to the art within it, which usually is the vice versa in many exhibitions.  I felt the doors had swung open in this crypt and this art was found there.

There is something about summer in London; the temperature is rare and unpredictable.  But when the air is warm and the sun comes out I crave to escape the bustle and find serenity.  The Tow Path is a café coffee shop on the Regents Canal, a place I spent many hours writing my thesis.  But there is something weird when I sit there.  I forget I am in London or in 2010. I had a feeling of time slowing down which is something I feel is a necessity in order to think.  But the contrasts of my life taking on minutes are the bikes speeding by with intent.  The way the Tow Path finds simplicity in its delivery.  Toast comes in a basket accompanied by butter and jams all served on a motley of table furnishings. This gives me a comfort to feel and think. 

Those were just 3 out of many places I found this past year. 

Why touch : I am a single

“The most subtly necessary guardian of my life is the other’s flesh. Approaching and speaking to me with his hands. Bringing me back to life more intimately than any regenerative nourishment, other’s hands, these palms with which he approaches without going through me, give me back the borders of my body.” (Irigaray, L.  An Ethics of Sexual Differences. pp. 187)

Considering the lack of touch in my life I still have the vivid memory of the actions though there is no resonance of feeling. I am researching touch because I think it is now affecting my health.  I found my ability to handle stress or remain calm in desperate situations to be far less than before.  I notice couples more than I see single people.  Couples surround me in different stages in their relationships.  I find myself as an individual and find it hard to think I will share my intimate life again.  This is why I find it important to research touch as my new work.  My work has always been centered on human connectivity and as I find myself losing the sight of populace I don’t think I will understand what I am making work for. 

Movement has been a mechanism for me to connect and share. I am person who feels more comfortable with sharing my interest and thoughts physically with my body than with speech.  My skin is a narrator for my thoughts, interest and opinions.  In the work, I use contact improvisation as my form for exploring touch.  There is not an interest in choreographing the figures because if the movement becomes comfortable than attention and sensitivity is lost and human connectivity is as well.  This would make it a play and not an exploration or true meeting.  The work is entitled Meetings, which happened quite interestingly.  I chose the name for the press kits 3 months ago but as I started to develop the tasks for the improvisations and organizing the work more it truly was variations on the word.  You find the quick interactions that dissipate as quickly as they were formed.  The text is formed in conversations, which resemble arguments and therapy confessions but not inappropriate narcissistic emoting. A timekeeper moderates all these elements, which is the videos projected on the video screens at the back of the stage. Each text or improvisation is cut off by a video interruption.  There is a meeting of the figures on stage with the one on the videos.  The work makes me think about how quick touch comes in our lives and how we can be sensitive to it or brush it off.  

Seeing my body so I can feel

“It is hyperbolic, of course, to say that the perceiving body cannot be perceived" (Carman, T. 1999. pp.207)

We find ways to view ourselves in amidst of understanding our own bodies.  I started to explore touch in my daily life for a new work. What I came to realize was that I needed to have bodily self-identification for me to understand the resonance of touch and the localization of that feeling. This is why I perform showing my skin; it is a demonstration to be seen by viewers and for myself to understand my borders.  As I cannot truly “see myself seeing” I can view the body through devises and mechanisms that allow me to re-examine my image of self.  But the form I see is my perception and possibly is not the real or the perception of others.  I try in understanding what histories allow us to make a response to the body and how we view it.  I consider my histories or exchanges that make up my view of myself.  I find that I am more shocked by my image in pictures than in mirrors.  But I made a mental note of the image of myself and that doesn’t include my current state that is that I have a mustache.  The image is of myself with a trimmed beard as this is my usual fashion and has been for 6 years. 

I chose video to display my solo work because I can choreograph the image and present it to the spectator as the  possibility of how I view my body.  I think about the idea presented by Merleau-Ponty “as for my body, I do not observe it itself: to be able to do so, I would need the use of a second body, which would not itself be observable” (PP, 91).  I am not sure I agree that this is the way to discovery self-identification but I do like the concept.  I have chosen to film 5 short improvisations based on the same concept (“The body and feel itself feeling”) from different angles. In performance I will watch these improvisations all at once.  I am interested in what will I see?  I have found myself surprised by my image but the response of a fully dressed figure watching his naked image exploring touch.

        

Once I am on to certainty of self-identification I can explore feeling and resonance.  Touch is emotion, physical contact prempted by feeling.  The receptor of the contact is skin but the resonance of that feeling is stored within the brain.  Memory and proprioception work together I feel in a way that I must indentify the place of contact and the emotion exchange from the event.