24 Sept:
Magda asks Diego Magda answers on behalf of Adriano a question posed by Diego
Diego asks Adriano Diego answers on behalf of Rui a question posed by Kasia
Kasia asks Rui Kasia answers on behalf of Lilia a question posed by Deborah
Chloe asks Deborah Chloe answers on Behalf of Diego a question posed by Magda
Quinsy asks Magda Quinsy answers on behalf of Chloe a question posed by Lilia
Adriano asks Quinsy Adriano answers on behalf of Kasia a question posed by Rui
Rui asks Kasia Rui answers on behalf of Deborah a question posed by Chloe
Lilia asks Chloe
Lilia answers on behalf of Magda
a question posed by Quinsy
Deborah asks Lilia Deborah answers on behalf of Quinsy a question posed by Adriano
KEYWORDS
So.
"I'm doing what I say I'm doing." Transparency. A game is a game is a game. Problems of transparency in language, filling out forms. A game is a certain protocol, an instruction. It's so clear there must be something opaque at work. A=A is a kind of redundancy, and bringing redundancy to the table feels closer to opacity. Systems of relations created through different kind of contexts - where is the contract established? How is it put to play? Invitation to participate Not related activity - a movie inside the movie - Manisfestation of another set of relations beyond the visible Collaborative narratives - using suggested systems to include the viewer Breaking connections to re-establish other connections > transformation > speculative Ghostly presence of words address, situation of the viewer, their position in the room, in relation to the work, what are the mechanisms that call us back to our position in the room, realising where we are, and can observe what happens to us. the mirror, someone putting on lipstick. we see that they see themselves, private moment. my feet/someone elses feet felt adressed. Writing biological, geological, theological, erotic stories into the feet, whose feet? Distance to how to engage Strategies of participation contamination, the desire to participate - once people are doing it. How do you come to know something? invitation to understand what is at stake to be learned Transmission Can protocols be other than words? The rain Labour Alienation by the impssibility of embody the story -
Questions:
Diego to Adriano Response by Magda
If the viewer/visitor/participant/spectator/partner (depending on the context of exhibition/sharing) is the one who is providing from outside, randomly and without knowing the structure to this practice, I wonder what does this "inside without knowing" mean, how the notions of breathing alignment and synchronicity could mingle with the notion of mirror neuronand how to engage the visitors in order to let them know that they are the practice's condition of existence instead of someone who is staring at something passively?
Lilia to Chloé Response by Quicy
How to give instructions without words and what can be overwhelming abbreviations keep coming back to my mind as potential grounds for critical view upon the way one reads, the way one writes the world. What has been said by the description of the the actions accomplished? Laying down. Staying up. Looking. What was said by the actions themselves? Laying down. Staying up. Looking. Saying and saying. Words and gestures. Conflictuous sayings that don’t contradict each other but question each other co-dependency.
Here an excerpt from a text in The time we share publication where Daniel Blanca Gubbay citates Levinas: “ Although the saying is undeniable necessary to the appearance of the said, the later in facts pre-existent to the activity of saying: I move my mouth to utter a word , and yet all the movements of my mouth are guided by the existence of a word that I already know and wish to utter, and this word pre-exists my own movements, it directs my saying and is, underneath all, its owner. I am the instrument of a meaning that precede my attempt to communicate , I do nothing but be an instrument of a said that I must bring to light, make visible.”
How do you see co- writing or re-writing or writing with manners of saying? What are the said’ you must bring to light?
Magda asks Diego. Chloe answers on behalf of Diego.
What you proposed made me think about the social and cultural capital one receives. And, also that sometimes it loses its value. I’ve been thinking recently about social privilege (how strong it still is; when one experience it; how one need to deal with his/her own privilege or its lack; and how system reproduces it or could deal with it differently). I’ve been thinking a lot of it in relation to us – people who engage in art. Who does and can do art as a profession and how does it influence the state of art as a discipline and its contents?
I read on Wiki that money (or other goods) become capital only when the capitalist invests it to gain income.
I’m asking: What do you make capital in your practice/ research? Can art nourish new directions and paths of social/ cultural capital redistribution/ production?
Rui asks Kasia (Adriano answers)
The impossibility to embody the story could be linked to the relationship between words and images. A system of signs destroys the possibility of a sky resemble a specific sky with all its incommensurability, it is “any sky”. In your presentation, the distance between words in squares seems intent on finding something in the gap. Is there something always unable to see? Gaps, ellipsis, interstices… Are they possible tools to create a presence rather than only a mystery?
Chloe asks to Deborah ( rui answers)
Dear Deborah, I was lying down, I was listening, I could feel my back against the floor, my spine resting in its curves, my feet opening, my shoulders hanging heavy, I could feel the small hollow at my neck , the back of my skull and the depth of my face. I heard Saint Teresa, a kiss, marble, the soul, the foot.
In laying down the visuality of the experience receeds, the sensory capacity of the front side of my body, that which keeps us facing foward starts to soften into the back. And then your voice, through the amplification, comes toward me without a body. It was interesting for me, to feel the expanse of your voice, and the edge of my own body. I wonder how you think about the act of listening in relation to what is heard and how the practice of listening you propose opens the work to not only what is heard, but something else as well.
I want to ask about the site of listening, about where listening happens, if its in a body or through a body. Is listening touch? In this shift of orientation, being horizontal, the body is activated in a particular way. What is activated depends on each persons history of laying down with others and in public. I think it is interesting for the social history it brings for each person. I recived an email from a friend who makes a magazine called stillLife the next issue will be on laydown or being horizonal in social spaces, he asks at the end of his email, why are dancers always laying around and does it say something about the dancers economy? not sure exactly where he is going with this question... How does laying down relate to, or resist the laboring body? Or, what kind of labor(s) is being asked of the audience?
Qu to Lilia, (Kasia answers)
Dear Lilia,
Here is something I wrote once https://www.plinth.us/issue07/birch.html
When I was taking part in your piece and when I realised something of the collective imaginary object we were creating—touching and enveloping the object, speaking our relation and echoing the others—I thought of this passage, particularly that an 'echo is the sound of silence, the silence of the room turned back on itself.' An echo is a measure of distance. It is tactile.
There is something about the intentional distance you asked for, something about touch, and something about the echoing.
I am asking about that, but there is no question mark. Or maybe there is. But it might be a different question. If duration is a measure, a tactile sense of time that brings us back to what we're doing, "and when I know what I am doing, I experience who I am" (Peter Handke): what kind of tactile-time experience is my imagination with objects ("I delight in it") fostering?
I do not like to face myself, and so I face myself turning away. That is all I can hope to be. A facing and a turning in the right direction.
I am a stance, but I am not a position. This is facing up to care. A facing and a turning. To what is hollow.
/
I must, I must.
I must not: this is myself. How can I destroy myself? Easy.
/
There is no Easy. Easy is a voice.
Easy is a word.
/
I am sorry for such empty hollowness. You will forgive me now.
I have betrayed myself. I have already turned away. I clutch at Easy as though it would stop me crumbling to dust. I turn and face Easy with all the fervour that I would turn and face myself. Easy is a foil. It is the winking eye of the portrait on the wall that I pounce on saying, See! You moved. Because I am afraid that I am not the only living thing. Because I am afraid of the animism of objects. I am afraid because I touch objects as though they were alive. Each of them is cheek and chin and bone. Hi, I say. Ohhhelloo. I coo. I stroke and coddle my objects. It is shameful how I degrade them. I delight in it.
/
I parse and prod Easy. I abuse Easy to prove that it is just a word. Because I am afraid it is more or less malleable than myself. That it is more hollow and more substantial.
/
I am afraid of the substantiality of the photos on the wall. Each photo is a voice. They say what is there, they say what can be said. It is not enough. An echo is the sound of silence, the silence of a room turned back on itself. Why is it that a cathedral has such a loud echo? Because it is a house of silence. To communicate with a God is the space of the self turned back on the self. The measure of the silence of a man.
/
And what is a woman? A woman is a man.
And what is a man? A man is also a man.
Kasia asks Rui, Diego answers
Dear Rui,
In your film I saw a situation of a meeting, a gathering of people who are listening to a story shared by a woman. The camera was rather zooming in than out, creating a sensation of closure, as if it were impossible to imagine that the story would ever happened outside, beyond this frame, beyond that room.
My question is: is there any 'the outside"?
Kasia xx
Adriano asks Quinsy Response by Deborah
Dear Quinsy
You cleared a table and asked who knows how to play domino. A couple of people said yes and agreed to play, me included. We played once, and then another different group played. You seemed to know the game well, playing fast and having a idiosyncratic way of holding and placing the pieces. I had fun playing and watching others play. Apart from or, on top of, that fun the simplicity of the proposal generated an absurdity for me, and the experience confronted me with my own expectations about what (art)work is at apass and what you might propose in relation to your research. So while the proposal was simple and enjoyable, it opened a range of questions for me. It made me think of the work of Krõõt Juurak in the sense that I always feel like I can explain her work to a five year old, and how this quality deepens the profound and complex nature of the work, rather than flattens it. Giving a lot of space, while at the same time challenging my understandings or presumptions of the situation, of what we are doing here and of who we are here. Me question is: Is it necessary in order to create that kind of absurdity and complexity through simplicity, that the proposal is performed by you and that its a single table, or could it be delegated and several?
Thanks alot, Adriano
Dear Magda and Lilia,
Apologies for the tardiness, but hereby my question:
A looming score. A score of interaction and collaboration. A score of improvising. Fred Moten appears. Rain drops encountering patterns. Structures of thinking become visible. We're sitting on a black runway. A stage for a ballet of sorts. The bass will follow. An answer to a question about desires. Answers centering on gaps of knowing. Filling pieces. Denise Ferreira da Silva. Together in corners in the middle of the space. Struggles against placelessness. We're silent. It's making me think of Singing in the Rain. Transitions. Voices consumed collectively. Hoarse throats and loud digits. A presence through the shuffling of messages. Sounds of paper between fingers. How do we improvise what we already know? How do we veer away from solitary references of knowledge and back towards the collaborative generation of wisdom? How do we disconnect hierarchy from sentiments of responsibility?
Sincerely, Quinsy