Alive to Perception
A Practice in Four Chapters and a Coda
Coda: Inseparability
Let me start at the end (or perhaps the beginning, for I was reading books about brain, mind and self long before I first picked up a pencil). Twenty years ago I trained in Neuro Linguistic Programming (which can be defined as the study of subjective experience). Now I read books about Phenomenology. Is there really anything new here? Is it more about what I do with this information, how I process it, turn it into knowledge? That in a way I now share it rather than storing it and concern myself with what I am communicating, the act of communication itself and its failure.
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And what of dancing? I have been dancing in some form or another since my late twenties, learning to inhabit my body through belly dancing. These days I practice social tango, a highly intellectualised dance uniting musicality with non verbal communication between partners, and deliberate control of one's movements.
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In March 2017 I said: ‘At the moment, everything is a study, a circling around embodiment’. This is still true, that my practice is at heart a study that works best when I work organically, listening to what resonates, with a regular return to my foundations in Chapter 4 The Coolness of Looking.
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And when I make work I find now that somehow all roads are leading back to the occupation of space, to my corporeality expressed in that, moving in space, engaging with it through touch, knowing that it is there, the abilities that I use to operate within it that marry my interior and exterior worlds.
Then thinking further, and reading Chapter 4 of The Visible and The Invisible – The Intertwining (Merleau Ponty) (Analysis here) I find that the concept of intertwining speaks to me of inseparability, that there is a constant elision between the senses and their experience and none of this can be divorced from our constant operating in space.
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And so I call this Coda “Inseparability”, uniting the four chapters of my practice in an endless circling around embodiment.
Learning to Walk - Stills & Extract
Chapter 1: The Loss of Forgetting
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Being aware of the action of operating in space
‘the dilemma:
how to rely on the consciousness?
how to challenge the consciousness?
to be surmounted by the idea of consciousness as
Offenheit—— ‘
[Openness]
(pg 198 The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty)
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What does this mean?
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When I speak of the Loss of Forgetting I am speaking of an awareness of the body’s capabilities in their use.
I am looking inward, paying attention to the operation of the body in space. It comes from my conclusion (see below) that we truly occupy space in movement and that this requires the use of all our faculties in a way that we learn very young and that then slips beyond awareness except when we try something new.
Looking at...
Focussing...
How do I make work about this particular form of subjective experience?
To describe experience is to experience a description, a shadow experience (albeit that the imagination is a powerful tool). To enter into experience fully requires stepping into it. But how do I engage others in that.
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As I came into the new year I was reflecting on my failures at the end of 2017 and how to take forward the occupation of space. To say that Body Tetris had ‘gone flat’ would be quite an understatement but I concluded that the problem lay not with the material but with its passivity, it’s inertness.
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So I turned to movement, initially through photography of long exposures of the hand in movement, occupying space through movement. I have a large number of hand images (again), some of them quite captivating, but it was clear to me that the next stage was movement per se rather than a still image of movement….
This would be via its observation or its record, so the choices are: video; performance; or participation.
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Echo Test 3
Do You Know What I Mean?
Video?
An obvious place to start is video: if nothing else I have used this as a tool already in some of my investigations. Since I had started with the movement of the hands in space I continued with this but using a clip on video camera to obtain a fingertips eye view of the world. Whilst my playing around with the Echo Tests was quite fun and may be worth revisiting, there was no immediate mileage. So, I skewed my exhibition going more towards videos than normal and made one myself for the end of term critique in March: 'Do You Know What I Mean?', a first attempt to marry the record of movement with a narrative of being.
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When I watch a video I experience a measure of distance even when ‘in it’ or emotionally engaged in it. This is in measure the experience I am calling on when I talk about the desire of touch – that the visual distances. To me a video is still a shadow experience even when immersive. If anything it steals from me an opportunity for imagination.
As I reflected on this it seemed to me that for me, the only real way to express movement is through movement itself, rather than its record.
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As part of this consideration I went to ‘Somewhere in Between’ at the Wellcome Collection and reflect on the two videos here.
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Participation?
Reviewing my own writing I came across this from January:
To become aware of the body is mostly about being asked to move or change the body in ways that you do not want or where you are incompetent (or confined). If I am going to confront someone with their own physicality then I am going to have to confront them in some way, get them to move in a way they do not really wish to, confine them, reduce the amount of space available to them, or give them something to do that they can’t do.
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My only previous experience of participation is in the Touching Contract which I have now reflected on here. In the Touching Contract we were manipulated so there was a lack of spontaneity which made it a different experience, in a way it was a performance because as a participant I still felt quite incidental.
Although I would prefer to work with something participative there is no guarantee that someone will participate, in fact it is unlikely which is why I have chosen to start by experimenting with performance. The set up for the Touching Contract is that people were invited to apply to participate through Artangel which has quite a following anyway, a scenario that would not apply to me.
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A path through the installation
Performance?
When I see a performance I ask myself: what is it about this activity or action that tells me something? What is it I am supposed to be taking away or am I here to take from it exactly what I see? The fact is that most art is consumed not experienced which sets up a barrier to the things I speak of (I even do this myself). But one must start somewhere.
Lately I have skewed my exhibition choices more towards performance and I reflect on this here.
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Although observation is not participation I am thinking that the set up should be simple enough that people can imagine themselves doing it, creating a connection through engagement and empathy with the physically present body in space and time. And performance is spatial, even when observed, in a way that video is not which is compatible with my practice being about the occupation of and operation in space.
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Learning To Walk
‘Learning to Walk’ is about using my body’s ability to learn and to feel and to balance, proprioceptive skills I use all the time and normally take for granted but repackaged so that I must pay attention to them. So I will be walking backwards using the bare foot to detect a difference in the floor texture to navigate. At the same time there will be a few obstacles to take into account.
I wanted to keep this as simple as possible to avoid other connotations; its complexity lies solely in what I am asking the body to do (because this is actually a highly complex thing already). This is within the range of a normal healthy body; there is no need to be a dancer or an athlete or train for hours in gymnastics. The set is in black and white to unite it aesthetically but it’s not about being aesthetically pleasing. If the design has any connotations I am intending these to be an association with everyday materials, perhaps of the city.
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Having said that it is the case that I am drawn to the work of John Virtue and do have a love of visceral charcoal drawings (which in the past I have made myself and quite possibly will return to in the future). I think this has clearly influenced how I have developed the "camouflage" on my installation, a camouflage that requires substantial movement in space to create.
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There is a question too about whether I may learn the path through repetition, information I will gain from the degree show itself for use in the future.
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Practice Performance
Where Next?
Whatever I do here requires space and that means a studio or a residency or both plus further research and experiment around performance, and going to more performances. My preference would be to move into participation, possibly with a collaborator, but setting that up could take some time as I work on building up suitable connections. I would also like to bring back in an element of playfulness and draw more on my own experience in dancing.
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In the immediate term I have booked on a choreography course at Siobhan Davies dance studios on which: "participants will consider how we use choreography in our everyday lives drawing upon the social habits, structures and ideas that organise our movement. Participants will be encouraged to try out different methods for creating and structuring movement, and building choreographic skills."
Chapter 2: The Desire of Touch
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The reaching out with the hands for connection – the occupation of space through touch
Would anyone disagree with me if I said that I have an obsession with hands? But why do I have an obsession with hands? And where does it fit in my overall practice?