Other Pieces

Bodily scores and virtual traces that provide the patterns and circumstances whereby notions and doings such as reading writing speaking sounding listening etc. can be recurrently traced and perceived.

reading

Time to lie down

A scrolling text is projected upon and behind ten deck chairs lined up along the sidewall of a large room. Audiences lie on the chairs and rest under a transparent blanket, upon which they catch the scrolling lecture. But the text travels fast and only occasional words or fragments of sentences can be grasped – thus, in spite continued reading, the full content of the text remains undisclosed. Still, the laying down readers do read, now in a multiple sensory way, whilst submitting to the bypassing illumination. Outside spectators on the other hand, are able to read the text in its entirety, and may enjoy this inadequate yet enlightening reading event.

Time to lie down argues that language is a motion traveling towards and quickly past us, therefore, which meaning we can neither read nor grasp, yet are always enveloped and affected by. Furthermore, it sustains that if we lie down still, that is, if we ourselves do not move as quickly as language does, language will remain out of our reach.

Time to lie down also ponders over the word understanding, whether it literally means ‘standing under’, and if so, what it would mean in terms of hermeneutics, most importantly in terms of gender and power politics…(1) Likewise, it wonders over the Swedish words submission (‘underkastelse’ – to thrust oneself under) and entertainment (‘underhållning’ – to keep under) – whether they are words that refer to a pleasure in non-understanding, by unequal participation (!).

Finally, Time to lie down argues that neither transparency nor a quiet submission to the text – that is, to read through, see ‘under’ a text, or placing/thrusting oneself under a text – are a guarantee for clarification, to instead suggest that the most comprehensive reading of a text is to be achieved from a distance, from the ‘outside’, at best by a ‘third’ party. In turn, it therefore sustains partial grasping as a reasonable way to ‘understand’ a text by, and ‘laying down quietly under’ as a satisfactory way to (not) under-stand/stand-under a text’s production of meaning.

(1) The Swedish word for understanding is ‘förstå’, literally means to stand for (in front of? be-fore?) – which widens the scope of this pondering.

sounding

COCKPIT

Someone lies still in the cockpit of a (fictional) spaceship travelling inside a text which is racing in outer space and past the alleged spaceship and someone’s body. (S)he tries to speak the text by capturing it on a visor and other see-through surfaces. But the text travels too fast and (s)he can only grasp a few partial words or fragments of letters. Reading out loud turns into a bundle of incomprehensible incoherent outcries, whilst the imagery of the sounding begins to speak. Outside spectators, on the other hand, read the text effortlessly whilst perceiving the image of the speaker’s failure, hence realizing that a familiar language may look and sound differently than expected.

COCKPIT stages the written language/text as a motion coming at us at great speed and quickly passing by, therefore as something no someone (no one) can read yet is always compelled to speak out loud. In turn, it argues that no reader can speak out a text, and at the same time that any someone may sound-navigate the wording particles scattered in space by the text, as it travels past you as fast as a shooting star. In other words, it assumes the incomplete, incoherent, incomprehensible outcries as a fair way to both read and speak a text by – moreover, it claims that the image these soundings expose is a fair way to dwell into the becoming of meaning.

tracing

TAILS

Several someone engage in rewriting a text with a tail-like prosthesis, here functioning as ’writing pen’. The tail is attached to their hips or other body part, here acting as the ‘writing hand’. Instead of the usual, fairly simple hand twists, writing here requires movements far more difficult to coordinate, never mind achieve. Writing turns into a peculiar dance what goal-oriented moves nevertheless appear arbitrary, whilst the text is re-presented by a ragbag of cluttered graphs that, although meticulously drawn, as text considered are impossible to read. Instead of the original text, what TAILS brings to display is a remarkable dance and an intriguing drawing, both ungraspable, yet well worth perceiving.

TAILS stages the chain of transferences between body, pen and graph needed for a text to be written and read. It also exposes the effects this chain has on signification. Core argument here is that whenever rewritten, that is, when travelling a chain of transferences, language unavoidably shifts in signification, thus gains different meaning. Hence the importance of what tools, prosthesis, traveling modes, and graphs are employed for writing (and mediating) signification.

Finally, TAILS argues that, although unable to produce a replica, rewriting always provides for proliferation of signification within which the incomprehensible is included. Thus, it sustains that (this) rewriting moves like, or rather is a choreography which is several. Consequentially, it sustains that choreography, when understood as this rewriting, can neither replicate nor be replicated, therefore never gain universal value, but rather that it always multiplies meaning and thereby provides the re-engrafting of singularity.

writing

WRITING22

Each participant is provided an earpiece and a pen. Then they are all invited to real-time re-write the text spoken in their ears upon the surfaces covering the walls of a large room. They are asked to write with their left hand (right if left-handed), which they hold behind their backs, whilst walking along the perimeter of the room. Writing what one hears whilst walking, more so without being able to see one’s own writing, is a disorienting coordination-challenge. Writing turns into a messy clutter, what intended meaning is impossible to decipher. The writers fail to reproduce the text, but as it turns out, also bring to display a graffiti-like scripture what ungraspable yet remarkable graphs progressively re-inscribe/re-describe both the text and the room.

Once in a while, some writers interrupt their wall-writing and step into the room, where they in bundles of three co-write a sentence in the air, one letter at the time, each one using a bunch of three meters long rubber tubes. The tubes sway adrift, bend afar, deviate path, resist fixation. Coordinating a simple word becomes the hardest thing you’ve ever done. Obviously, the writers fail their task. Instead, a nest of swinging graphs comes alive, which undisciplined choreographies draw an invisible scripture upon the unwritten page of the air, a fully visible yet undisclosed scripture, definitely there for us to perceive. After the event, each participant is welcome to take home a bit of wallcovering surface, now fully inscribed by the collective writing. As for the tubular scripture, it will remain for no one to keep (if not as former sensation).

WRITING22 describes choreography as the listening, walking, drawing, graphing, scratching, swinging, and ultimately failing activity of writing, whereby language self-withdraws from appearance only to re-write itself. Hence it sustains choreography as an optimistic project, whereby language submits to its own traces only to trespass itself onto other traces. Even at the cost of turning into a nest of incomprehensible incommensurable yet meaningful (and beautiful) air-borne motion.

spelling

type2

Two performers write a text by placing (spelling) it on each other’s bodies, whilst dancing a previously recorded duet. The spelling interferes with ongoing dancing, which in turn interferes with the spelling, either consenting, or else resisting each other. In order to fulfill their double task (spelling and dancing), the dancers must negotiate the writing with the dance, the dance with the writing, and the both with their own writing and dancing, and all in relation to their partner’s moves and writing. Territories are rearranged. Likewise assumed hierarchical orders (who leads, when and how, what move supports or resists what outcome, what should be ascribed highest priority, the word or the move etc.). That’s when the two begin to dance a choreography that is challenging the implicit power structure of their relation, in turn allowing for different configurations to emerge.

type2 stages the difficulties arising when different bodies and languages dwell into (interfere with) one another. Moreover, it exposes the need for, and benefit provided by reciprocal response (negotiation) when a challenging collaboration has to be performed. The intention is to expose choreography as the rearrangement of predetermined territories and relations, in turn as an order that is able to uphold internal dynamics.

typing

TYPED

Three dancers listen to a text in earpieces and type it on a computer. At times, they leave the typing, step onto the floor and perform a preset dance sequence, whilst adjusting its former phrasing to a piano sonata by Domenico Scarlatti that is playing in their ears. Typing a text whilst listening to it is difficult and brings about misspelling, loss of words, faulty rendition, thus disorder of meaning. But it also opens the text to a weak (1) production of signification that dares the sharpness of immediacy. Performing a preset dance whilst adjusting it to Scarlatti’s sharp and speedy cerebral music is difficult, bound to entail a rearrangement of form, phrasing and intensity. Yet also to coerce a different, ‘weak’ dancing that abandons herself to the sharpness of immediacy.

Audiences read the typing as its fails, in real time, on their smartphones (via Google-map). And they are encouraged to contribute with their own writing (the text proliferates from the outside). They also watch the dance but cannot do the both (watching and writing) simultaneously. Either way they choose, the dance or the typing, they will unavoidably miss one or the other.

TYPED brings to display the repercussions of simultaneous listening and writing, that is, when dealing with transference of means. Such as when a dance is real-time adjusted to a new score, that is, when dealing with the rephrasing of means. In turn, it argues that these kinds of detours allow text as well as dance to gain the nerve ‘weakness’ requires.Thus, it claims that this choreography’s inclination to adjustment is crucial to a production of signification that is both ‘sharp’ and ‘weak’.

TYPED challenges audience attention, forcing each spectator to choose between reading/writing the text or watching/sensing the dance. In order to follow the one, you must pass on the other, therefore, it calls for a gaze that actively selects its object/subject of interest. In turn, it poses the question of whether reading, writing, dancing and looking/watching all are activities that require, or rather deserve specific, if not sole attention? … perhaps even exclude one another?

TYPED also deals with issues of impact and keyboards (computer and piano, more so, it reclaims the triple time of the quick waltz, a romantic one… and is intrigued by the Google-map proliferation skills … But these are things to be talked about elsewhere…

(1) The word ‘weak’ refers here to the concept of ‘pensiero debole’ (weak thought) as formulated by philosopher and politician Gianni Vattimo. His philosophy can be characterized as postmodern with emphasis on his concept of ‘pensiero debole’ (weak thought) which is neither demonstrative nor aggressive, but directed towards the ‘pietas’ with respect to the historic values left to us in legacy. This ‘weak thought’ is therefore a ‘soft’ (morbido) transformative process still disposed to the comprehension of the traces of the old values. What this ‘weak thought’ requires is that the foundational certainties of modernity with its emphasis on objective truth founded in a rational unitary subject be relinquished for a more multi-faceted conception closer to that of the arts. Edited from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianni_Vattimo and http://www.filosofico.net/giannivattimo.htm