1. Paradigm:
The paradigm I am responding to is the general area of body/mind dualism. Unaware moments of moving through space. Only noticing the things that obstruct us from what we want. Allowing the physical to be the means to the end- the end being us achieving a new mental space. The physical becomes a disembodied (by being so embodied) way of moving from a pre-decided point A to point B.
My problem worth having: becoming what pushes back against you- losing track, making patterns, forgetting signs. Allowing your environment to move you. Allowing your boundaries to expand or contract. A trail obscured, moving inward to disperse outward, falling into/becoming what pushes back.
Failed tracking devices, subconscious pattern making- the things that grab you, the things that push you.
2. Intentions:
Large scale: translation issues... the ways we inhabit spaces literally and abstractly (Physical movement and also through language/relationships) What does how we move mean? How could how we move change us?
Becoming what pushes back against you: self and space are fusing. What we used to call space is now “that which pushes back against us” and what we used to call the self is now that which pushes back against you.
This project: What speaks loudly in an environment when your natural modes of space meaning-making have been altered? What communicates back to you, how how? I intend for people's trajectories through space to snag, falter, and realign by becoming what pushes back against them.
3. Speech:
Becoming what pushes back against you: self and space are fusing. What we used to call space is now “that which pushes back against us” and what we used to call the self is now that which pushes back against you.
This project: What speaks loudly in an environment when your natural modes of space meaning-making have been altered? What communicates back to you, how how? I intend for people's trajectories through space to snag, falter, and realign by becoming what pushes back against them.
3. Speech:
I think there is something to be said for being pretty literal about this. I'm working on it. More to come.
4. Action:
In order to experience this work, people would have to participate on some level. The levels of mediation are important- writing about the experience, videos, pictures- all the methods of showing somebody else experiencing these things have the potential to be pretty interesting/valuable, but I think ONLY with in combination of the shared vulnerability of participating in making your own meaning. I think the individual experience is important. Also, it could start to feel counterproductive/hypocritical really quickly if I were to make a performance about the internal stage and its transformative potentials and ask people to sit in a proscenium arch theater in the dark, staring straight forward with their eyeballs. The modes of experience are what’s being experimented with, so I think that needs to happen literally.
Here's some possibilities I'd like to explore:
Group exploration: people will be guided through a series of exercises in some kind of unfamiliar location. Initially this will happen in an unfamiliar location to most (such as a remote wood or field), and then people will be taken to a gallery or into a crowded area to do the same exercises in different environments. The exercises will primarily be designed to interrupt normal modes of moving through space. Senses would potentially be altered somehow. Bag on head, etc. This would be done in a workshop style in a group, with instructions given by me.
Geocaching: this will be solitary experimentation, with instructions to complete some kind of "task" given on paper or potentially via an iPod or walkman or some shit like that. People will come to the experiment on their own, participate alone, and leave when they are done. There is no record or documentation of their participation.
Viewership: the ideas above, mediated somehow into a more traditional performance. This is potentially the most challenging. Interactive theater comes to mind. How can I move people to move through this traditional mode differently? Bribery. Flattery. Some desire to be included. Make participating more interesting and/or enticing than what they were doing before.
What habits and gestures do these things inspire/need?
What habits and gestures do these things inspire/need?
5. Livelihood:
Something really interesting about this project is how quickly it begins to necessitate a lifestyle. While trying to become aware of your body in space in a specific and focused way, my body has become more visible to me all the time. I am more aware of sore muscles. I am more aware of eating, and the ways different substances affect me. I am more aware of body alignment. I am deeply more aware of the tiny movements that make big gestures. I’m trying not to allow this to turn me into that annoying vegan who’s always talking about posture, but there is a deeper awareness that is impossible to avoid, and I think it would only continue to take root the longer I do these things.
I imagine these practices would begin to turn into daily or at least very often practices that would happen in the world at large and also in some kind of studio (whether its a dance studio, theater, or parking lot doesn’t really matter, but some kind of space where I can assure myself of relative non-interruption). I imagine using them as jumping off points into many different kinds of making....
* work with furniture makers. I’m getting increasingly interested in objects that hold weight, and the potential flexibilities they hold. How does tension hold? How are boundaries defined? What pushes back? What expectations are put on the body? On repetition.
* work with engineers. I feel like they would have interesting things to say about becoming what pushes back. How do different substances push?
* work with people who inhabit spaces I want to inhabit. Farmers. City park officials. Etc.
* work with people who inhabit spaces I want to inhabit. Farmers. City park officials. Etc.
6. Effort:
I want to create openings and opportunities for people to be surprised and led by their own movements. I want to muddy the waters of the body as a service object that facilitates higher planes of knowing. Perfection would look like finding ways where people can use their own bodies to confront their ingrained movement tracks and expectations. Perfection would look like crafting some kind of vehicle where people would be able to/be willing to participate in these things easily.
7. Mindfulness:
I want to create openings and opportunities for people to be surprised and led by their own movements. I want to muddy the waters of the body as a service object that facilitates higher planes of knowing. Perfection would look like finding ways where people can use their own bodies to confront their ingrained movement tracks and expectations. Perfection would look like crafting some kind of vehicle where people would be able to/be willing to participate in these things easily.
7. Mindfulness:
these are not all discrete pieces, but things that create a general trajectory.
I think the trajectory that begins to emerge is one of personal and public practices/exposures beginning to blur. Exploring these things is a highly personal experience, and the ways in which it moves out towards others seems to be most often an experience of asking other people to participate in highly personal ways, albeit sometimes mediated by other levels of experiencing through empathy (documentation or mediated performance). BUT! The real core of this territory demands experience, which is a difficult and exciting thing to ask people to do. WHAT A WEIRD TRANSLATION PROBLEM.
8. Concentration:
In regards to method of sharing this work: I think the more traditional modes of theater are not relevant to this particular trajectory. I would like to begin experimenting with combining the performative, the interactive, and the concept of a workshop all into one cohesive unit, which would be able to be create an unstable situation that would be instructive about what is effective. I think that this is a terrain that is asking for more inhabitants, and that flexibility will be key, as the population of the terrain is wildly variable. and the art begins when people begin to participate.
I think the trajectory that begins to emerge is one of personal and public practices/exposures beginning to blur. Exploring these things is a highly personal experience, and the ways in which it moves out towards others seems to be most often an experience of asking other people to participate in highly personal ways, albeit sometimes mediated by other levels of experiencing through empathy (documentation or mediated performance). BUT! The real core of this territory demands experience, which is a difficult and exciting thing to ask people to do. WHAT A WEIRD TRANSLATION PROBLEM.
8. Concentration:
In regards to method of sharing this work: I think the more traditional modes of theater are not relevant to this particular trajectory. I would like to begin experimenting with combining the performative, the interactive, and the concept of a workshop all into one cohesive unit, which would be able to be create an unstable situation that would be instructive about what is effective. I think that this is a terrain that is asking for more inhabitants, and that flexibility will be key, as the population of the terrain is wildly variable. and the art begins when people begin to participate.
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