HWD Not in the mood block 2021

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CAROLINA

About syrens - Carolina

Paranoid analyst Lilia keywords: captured after the experience: Desguisement, Trikster: Leader, Army, community; Empathy, Embodiement; metaphor, Story teller, companions of here and there,, present time and grec time, poetic militancy or activism.

References: Emanuel Coccia, the live of plants, Parable of the sower - Octavia Butler, Lygia Clarck,

notes from the Analysist Adrijana:

* Half woman half bird - from where does this imaginary/vision comes from? Of both: women and a bird?
* The bird watcher who doesn’t watch the birds but learns how to move, how to dance with a camouflage, the camouflage that is not for this environment

* Watching birds as silent activity - Would it make sense to do the listening practices in a loud space? - In a way, thinking about what did the spontaneity of the situation - the cleaning person that does his job - what did it do to our listening of the studio

* The relationship between singing and carring knowledge -> it is about sharing artistic research also
* The 5 lines of sirenas -> the percentage of their voice in comparison to the other text in the book: is it because it is a knowledge that when you hear it you die or is it because Homer wrote it and he just didn’t know more about it

* How they sound = what they say

How you sound is what you are sounding, how you sound is the message

Sirenas are not teaching us how to listen, you do, so you are a different creature of ambiguous kind. Perhaps a magician, who puts the envelope somehow in front of us that we don’t notice.

reference: Monique Witting novel Les Guérillères

Sara both analyst AND PARANOID DETECTIVE

the work produces something in which THE ARTIST BELIEVES IN A WORLD WHERE we are both alone and together, both the witnesses and the sirens, the birds and the birdwatchers.

you created a situation in which you let the sirens appear, SO YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE DOING THE WORK AND EVEN WE SHOULDN'T LOOK AT YOU BUT A HUMAN “BUSH” , TRICKSTER, HIDDEN SIREN we are your sirens (but you are also reading with us, creating the confusing of who's who). As a siren I understand with my brain, read with my voice sometimes another voice adds to mine to be more powerful but from the outside is incomprehensible: only single words randomly come out. CACOPHONY IS UNDERSTANDABLE FROM THE INSIDE BUT NOT FROM THE OUTSIDE

The text evokes a contemporary story of emergency, THE ARTIST MUST BELIEVE THAT TODAY IT'S IMPORTANT TO accept or fighting the anxiety to be lucid in the midst of the panic and the noise under attack. We can relate the situation described with the last two years, even if the language refers to a more than human cyborg/machines beings (the sensors, the connections, the disconnections...) or maybe it's just because those beings talk about humans as a different species. THE ARTIST ALLIGNS WITH THE TEXT OF JOTA MUMBASA, ALSO IN THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL, PARANORMAL AND DYSTOPIAN ASPECTS, AS A MATTER OF FACT THE ALIEN ASPECT FIRST APPEARS WITH THE “IIIII”

THE ARTIST BELIEVES THE The meditative introduction opens our “sensorial” apparatuses in a way that I can call them sensors. WE ARE SENSORIAL MACHINES The meaning convey by the text is one of hope, hope in an unexpected transformation by surrendering to the danger and a counterattack to be ready for. BUT ARE WE READY FOR THAT?

Mirror Chloe:

Your presentation consisted of 3 different kinds of engagements: * Watching you; * Listening to you/being guided; * Participating in speaking out loud.

You were wearing a costume, and you showed us how you dance with it. You carefully prepared an envelope with a text for us. You gave clear instructions such as "the noise is welcomed"

You work consists of listening * to the place; * the space outside the place; * to ourselves; * and each other.

Paranoid Detective for Carolina from Amy When I think of cameoflage I am immediately thinking of deception, hiding, misinformation, possible attack. I search for this though the calmness and serenity of the collective moment doesn't bring me this. The costume, the now now now setting, the instrument, all evoke and amazing ritualist feeling, further embodied by our chanting, our polyvocal preaching. This makes me wonder what I am bowing down to, summoning? calling? apeasing? What is this? Is it within me? Is it the alien eeeeeeee? The following text by Jota Mombaça brings back to me this snese of being inhabited, taken over, killed by an infiltrator. Because it is my personal interests, I become obsessed with the traced of ourselves that are brought about in the text - a falsifying media trace that can be made - how? What media is 'truth'? This sits in contrast with our actions, that are made from the ears, voice, lungs, letter on paper in an envelope. Is there a romanticisation of these "old school" tecnologies? Can you scream as two thousand? Are we going to raise our voices in unison in triumphant finale?! No. No we are not. We do not get to this. Why? Because we are not doing this. We do not scream out at discrimination and violence that occurs in our social fabric, this text reminds us that we are guilty in our silence, the work reminds us that we are also not really listening.

Antye as a Imitator notes: put on the costume, asked for a volunteer, you told Sara would stand with closed eyes and saying now when she feels like, when the intuition would make her say it. When now was said three times we would all gather wehre you were. You started working in the space. We were standing around sara looking into the space and your moving. You climbed the table at the end of the room and in-between table and the wall and sara said now. you moved towards the net, climbed the net and sara said now when you were back on the ground. you moved in-between the erected tables and sara said now. You whistled and we all moved there. You told about your obsessions about the serines and how they escape you. You read from the odyssey the 5 lines they say/ have in the book. You point out how many lines there are in the book and how little they occupy and how they nevertheless entered in such a degree our imagination. you invited us to sit or lay comfortable for a body practice. you invited us to always breather in three times and out on vowels starting the U, with the invitation to feel the vibration of the vowels in specific areas of the body, as if the vowels and the vibration would massage the body from the inside. the u in the pelvis, close to our sexual organs, the o 4 fingers above the navel, near the rib cage. The A behind the sternum where the heart is. The E in the throat, and the I in the middle of the head. You told us that the I is not from this world and therefore hard to achieve/master (not the right word) so lets hear how we sound today together. Afterwards you invited us for a 10 min hearing meditation. You invited us to listen to all the different sounds, from your body as well as in the room, in the building. You said that it is actually not true that you could reach the sirens, that there were escaping you. You actually found some during your research, your journey. Kassandra, a Greek name I forgot, and Jota Mombaca. You said that the Mombaca text you read so many times, and you want to give their text to us as a gift and that you put the text for each of you in an envelope next to us. You invite us to read the text all together in a cacophony again, all in our own time. that we could spread if being to close is too much and that we could also listen for a while if wanted. After us reading you told Aleksandra she could finish her text if she wanted. You whistled again and the presentation is done.

analist from aleksandra

ANAPAULA

Diva Adrijana notes:

I wasn’t overwhelmed, cause I love to be overwhelmed. I feel you are feeling many things, and you are working on feeling even more. And that excites me. But I am jealous, because you didn’t take the mushrooms with me. I love the poems in the end, it is as if you try to describe what you see, for me to get surprised and amazed by how much you can divert in the different descriptions. It is made for me! Although in some other parts, I feel sometimes used, to be just an observer, and I wonder is this what you want, since you also used the tools from the others, as they are yours. I also felt that you used the stone. But then I liked that working with the partner and working with the stone come very close. I think you like that too. It is maybe your appetite. I liked the meditation, this one worked, usually they don’t. I just can’t get into body imaginary practices, except for a very short moment.
The documentation of the studio process - what kind of quality-aesthetics is employed? What are these - pieces, works? Shall they be immersive perfromances, screened videos? Maybe you should treat this with more care? Because I get so impatient what to do with my body. What does it mean to do things with the objects as a relation? And then to film it? I would love to talk with you about this and show you some other photos and movies. I wished you were there, with us for the nails, it would be so amazing.

Analyst Chloe:

The work shows a universe of relating to the surroundings in many different ways. The artist brings together different ways of witnessing and co-existing with the human and more than human world. The work shows different elements from this surroundings: we saw mushrooms, a ball of dough, a tantra practice. But we mainly were looking at the artist approaching these entities. Seeing the entities through the gaze of the artist. How do these things inter-relate? It seems that the artist brings these elements together to create another human (or artist-centered) realm. But is there also a relation other than the objects being part of the habitat of the artist? What does the negotiation with the other entities look like? Are they as consent-based as the tantra practice? The appetites seems to be the way into this research. The appetite brings a lust into this practice. Bringing the necessary energy and sexual excitement that is needed to go through the very large amount of methods and approaches.

sara diva:

I felt overwhelmed by some many words. The meditation was taken too lightly to really do the work. I was starting to get impatient. But when you started showing some images, even if the quality of the display was not amazing (you know video on zoom etc...), my appetites got back and satisfied a bit more. There is a specific quality in the work, even in the way you lay out your words in the presentation text (colors on black for example). The work with the stone is on the same line of the work I have seen from you in Paf. There is a special craft in the attention and the quality of movement (gravity and balance). The corn flour video is interesting because, not containing gluten, the masa reacts in a very different way than wheat flour, this lack of glutinosity made it heavier, not elastic at all, as if the traces of your touching are sculpted there. The “quiz” (appetite thinking further) reveals also a layer of humor and some sort of poetry that is present with the stop motion video of the garden's kinship.

While you were presenting I wrote down some words: febrility, non-self, modes, monumenting, molecular, gravity and balance

Analyst for Anapaula from Amy As an analyst trying to answer the question - if you feel something? The relationships that emerges throughout the appetites, present visually and in language, is that of touch. You feel the artist in different attempts and efforts to feel, to be deeply in body while at the same time in an 'out of body' mode. There is a great desire to observe, in almost contradiction to being present. The term appetite, given to all of the practics, implies there are exercises for growth of sustenance. They are a form of nourishment for the artist, and indicate a kind of hunger. In perceiving appetite as a hunger for, you can comprehend that the urgency for this work goes beyond so called 'logical' thought. The artist describes all objects they interact with as bodies, challenging a human-centric perspective and sparking thoughts of interconnectivity, we are all kinetic particles the artist reminds us (via Spinoza, via Deleuze) Each body that is interacted with holds very different materials qualities. They are bodies working in other realms, with different modes of time.

Antye as a Diva notes: I felt a bit overwhelmed by so many different concepts and thoughts and modes of working and I wonder what the actual connection is beyond the statement that actually everything is connected and therefore also your research topics and modes of working. I very much love on the other hand that you are using all the things around you to work and to do your research: the garden, your partner, local food etc., accepting your situation and being in Mexico while you are actually are to come to Brussels. But because of so many different topics etc. I also had a slight feeling of randomness and arbitrariness. I really love the idea of little gesture performances with the erotic dough and the stone hugging, but it felt still a bit too innocent, a little bit too vanilla sex. I love how you integrated perhaps even exploit your partner for and in your practice, and how there the topics of eating, appetite, erotics and connection become personal and close the circle. So, you definitely created an appetite for your practice. I definitely want to know more!

INGA

Fan Chloe

From the beginning you emerged us into another realm using speculative language. Effortlessly bringing us into another, richer, more sensuous universe in the future. You say in the future you’ll not be you, but there’s still some part of you. That’s how I feel about Inga the performer. You introduce concepts and materials that might have not much to do with what you’re presenting but they add to the animated realm you carry with you and that influences your work and the reception of your work. By this dramaturgy of magic realism you are able to extend the attention span. Your material and immaterial way of storytelling tickles my senses. It’s as David Abram once said: A story that makes sense is one that stirs the senses from their slumber, one that opens the eyes and the ears to their surroundings, tuning the tongue to the actual tastes in the air and sending chills of recognition along the surface of the skin. You don’t only enrich the future of the European Union, but you also penetrate the present with more potency.

With delicate care for your audience you guide them through a proces of archiving what they’ve lost. Having you as a personal, reliable pillar through the proces made me feel supported, taking care of. I was one of the lucky fews to receive the washing, massaging and touching of my hands with ice cubes. Seeing my hands being touched while you were speaking made me aware about their access to modern technologies, how they’re so used to them, almost completely fuse with them (as they are now while writing this on my computer).

There’s no solution in your work, no way out. Just a gentle holding of what’s left. A humble and soft approach to keep connecting to each other in the mess that we share or shared in a realm in the past, the future and the present.

Notes from the Fan Adrijana: Align, Admire, Caring the work further

I am a big fan of bringing the past performance through the storytelling and reenacting it by making another performance. This is a great methodology for artistic research - telling stories about past performances. In another performance. There is this another artist I am a fan of, who does this, Pia Louwerence. We meander through your memories of a performance while we are told about the future with fading memories. You carried the loss of that performance to create a surplus in the present. To allow the stumble upon recalling what has happened while at the same time guiding us to reconstruct it in our head. Since I heard for the first time about future studies and that there were people called futurists, (Nikola Tesla considered himself one of them, I think) it is something that keeps on being intriguing to me. It is so exciting that you have been with all of those researchers from the different disciplines and that you could make this dystopian scenario looking for alternatives. There is this band, from three amazing artists, called Europe Union - I think they named their band maybe at the same time that you created this huge project. Yes, what is happening in the border crossing is always an unpleasant story, it holds a dystopian projection. I do it, just because I trust your instructions, I am your fan.

sara KONTRARIAN (but missing the first half an hour:-/)

The opposite would be that you don't explain to us but just do the thing first and later on fill in the gaps. It's not immersive if you don't immerse us. And to immerse us would be to tailor made changes on the original performance for us (I understood that you consider us a different kind of audience).

If you and your performers are the filter to guide the embodiment of my archive and the criteria seem obscure to me, I might not so well connect it to my memory. But maybe you are translating it to a language I don't master, for someone else. Who would that be? And did I understood well that at the end you (or your performers?) choose the one memories that make a better impression on you (or the performers) ? In that case there would be a selection involved.

You said “The thing wants me to talk”. It would be: you let the thing talk to you and you want to give voice to that.

Paranoid Lilia You assume that the past tense legitimates the experience of the present time and I stay estranged to my own feelings of what it might mean to engage in such experiment. How would it be if we have jumped directly to the installation settings with less words and explanations?

Can the revisitation of a project be adapted to other contexts? or was this an intentional performative gesture?

I ‘m not sure if the idea of archive and possible futures is something that you are still wanting to dig into and if yes what kind of gestures does it need?

You assume that longing is a possible common societal necessity, that memory is a trigger to build up a new society and that the values that are brought up by you are also common. You must believe that there is a good way to repair society though the formulations of the ‘good’ way are not open enough to include deviations, contradictions, desires, differences, … I’m suspicious of the instructions control.

Kontraš for Inga from Amy Being contrary for the sake of discussion. We are in 2040 and have experiences 3 days without electricity across the world, why hasn't there been a financial crash? Massive loss of life? Army coups? Is there not a more urgent, pressing desire than memory? Did people completely stop backing up their laptops? I am asking these questions for the sake of it of course, an imaginary future invites such ideation. the artist speaks from the position of longing for Europ. But what is Europe? The baseball cap with Greco Roman heaadress of leaves is presented as a key signifier, along with an unopened soap from Portugal and a luxurious scarf. These objects denote an exclusivity that is at odds with our following activities. Europe smells of imitation soap. It smells clean while the floor get's dirty. Dirty on the edges like Europe. If you are longing for something why do you destroy it? Europe has an ice touch. How can the touch screen memory evoke a material bodily memory? Can it remind you of a sweaty bum on a bus? Aural memory is told while a rope is slipped between our fingers. The rope, however, is a long roll of analogue film and each riple is 1 second of image. Why don't we use these devices of capture in 2040? I can accept inthis world that sea levels are rising so we cannot keep material items safe, but why can we not use our voices? If you embody a story from someone else that you detest, will it push you further away from that person, to make a boundary of your own?

Antye as a Kontras notes: The artist gave the introduction to a multi-person performance that was placed in the fictional 2041 where all digital data was destroyed after an electricity blackout and therefore a lot of memory lost needed to be helped to re-emerged, translated and archived afterwards. But why would this happen in 20 years from now, while a lot of digital data is still stored on magnetic tape and hard drives that do not need electricity, and when the world is still populated with people that grew up without computers as the external storage of all the childhood memory? We were invited to watch what seemed to be the making of a chalk ring in the European union colours with all its connections to magic and spell bounding, where the colours get dispersed in the same the European Union gets dispersed. Do we need magic then to deal with this political crisis or is magic power feeding from the dispersing of the European Union? In a post digital data society that pushes nationalism according to the artist, why stories of border crossings are the ones that get archived in a time, when borders are becoming much more present in the fictional scenario anyway already? The performance seemed to want to take care for and help to remember memories in form of gestures, why then using the gesture of washing hands, a gesture that seem to evoke images of purifying, of cleaning, perhaps also in relation to christian foot washing (atthe same time not knowing what this would actually mean)?

for chloe

sara analyst

The work puts us in the (vulnerable?) position of questioning why, when and how lies function at both micro and macro levels in our everyday life. In the first set up we are first asked to tell a lie we told which makes me immediately think about how many lie we tell to ourselves, to make our life more simple. At the same time I have the experience that telling the truth can be less stressful than keeping consistency with a lie (to be consistent with a lie not to contradict ourself etc). In the wall the concept of lie was integrating media and social media. The confessional booth reminds us to a church confessional with the difference that is a conversation. It seems a problem related to religion, as Sina said.

In the last game, manipulation and the performance of the lier are as much important as creating suspicion between the members of the group and a sort of accusation machine which made us very very excited.

It's clear that the artist is concerned with the topic of lying and manipulation because of her design background (and ecological activism). Is there a guilt complex as well? Would she be less ashamed if it would be considered “art”? And what if she would be the lier of the game? We didn't accuse her as if she was not part of the game...

Analyst for Chloe from Amy The artist, or maybe not artist, invites their audience in intimate couples, as a team you encounter three different stages of experience. Team because Chloe as facilitator provides openings to her research, there is explanation and encouraged questioning. The abstract TRUTH and LIE are discussed from Chloe's own position, them from position of participant upon request to whisper a lie into a tube, usually a voice amplifying device but now muffled by being stuck on a wall. Truth and lie is then perceived in the realms of news and media, and finally in a confession booth. This is where the team, or the couple, sensation is heightened as you are asked to confide in one another. In the booth the facilitator pokes fun at themselves, mimicking an over-caring facilitator that in discussion Chloe told you was a style she wanted to break. In these three scenarios there are repeated positions or structures of power dynamics - the facilitator, the mafia, the news, politicians, social media stars, the church. Actions of manipulation are made clear and then confused, in reference and conversation. The second half of the presentation jumps onto these sensations and expands or exploits them. The convivial game of lying makes the group laugh while simultaneously prompting them to doubt one another. Personal, intimate stories are shared in the midst of silliness, and one lie. Participants are unwilling or unknowing of the lies they speak in the space of a.pass. The scene ends with smiling suspicion, the method activates sensations that may be understood later.

Paranoid Lilia The work proposes an individual reflection of what lying is by assuming that everyone has a relationship or opinion about lying and truth. It would be interesting to dig into the ontology of such concepts.

The work brings to the fore an interest in sharing and revealing patterns of communication that induce people to believe in discourse as truth. To investigate what are convincing behaviours and strategies of information can be in order to collect adepts.

The artist believes in collective and intersubjective formats as a way to include the audience in the discussions. We never get to know what is the position of the artist in relation to lying, truth and information.

The idea of process is very present in the presentation of the work. Steps and stations are organisational tools to guide the audience through out the process of thinking togther.

Suspicion is the tone we are left with. The positive effect of this is the fact that each of us stays with the questions of truth and lies in relation to one's own ethical beliefs, shifting the idea of universal truth. The backlash can be the fact that the suspition provokes mistrust and that without trust there is no solidarity.

AMY

paranoid sara With your amazingly written and executed performance-radio, you bring us to a scenario so close to reality to be dystopian. We are moving, in the train, one hand holding the phone, listening to the mixtape side 1, connected and disconnected at the same time. For the side 2, we are all walking, again separately, connected and disconnected, towards some kind of Holy Grail. We are already tired, our backpack full of sand but it's the end of our day, the end of our search.

Data is all we are, we are only data and our sound (as data) is pretty convincing.

It is so close to us that we can feel it but we cannot find it. It's only one meter deep but the material is responding with unexpected viscosity: we dig a hole but the hole is made of quick sand and the more we dig the more we are sucked in. Is this what data do?

Other scenarios appear: were is the hidden camera (and not a candid one!)? Is there a drone following us the whole time? Our irrelevant size compare compare to the one of the fibers (?) inside the cable, compare to the great impact on us.

The connection made throughout the cables : a list of cities and countries, are they all real? The divided ownership of the cable has geopolitical implications: while they keep us worry with petty business about borders: we are officially in a post-border world. A world in which you as data don't need passport, visa, legal permit. You as data are fast traveling currency.

Analyst - Paranoid - Kontras by Chloe

The work indulges us, the audience, the listeners into the hidden world of underwater internet cables. Through enjoyable audiotracks, you are invited on a trip with anti-educator Amy. Her shirt says 'inspire', and although she says it's 'ironic', it seems important to her to 'teach us something'. This anti-educator uses other methods than the teachers I'm familiar with. Mingling well known formats as 'the podcast' and 'the tourguide', with self produced 'sounds of the internet', sounds of data and silly handgestures. She makes a tough and hard to understand topic, into something juicy. A fascinating univers that makes me want to know more. Isn't that the dream of every educator ? The aura around her work feels fun, but there's suspicion too. She addresses us with 'you'. Describing our background in education (are we turning into Amy's again?), making us into data (do I want that?),... What is she doing with us ? Are we in fact 'safe' in the hands of this 'silly' tour guide ? The careful preparation and caretaking of the participants (there's cables and headphones for everyone and every type op phone) are starting to become a subject of suspicion. What is Amy going to do with us, once we've found and destroyed the internet cable ? Are we better off in a disconnected univers ? When I'm asked to say 'Fuck You' to the internet, I think of all the things it brought me. I'm thinking if the internet could be in need of some love and care. Is there a way in this work to celebrate and thank the internet ?

Analyst Isabel The researcher offered first and audio clip to be listened in preparation to our destination, second an audio clip to be listened in our landing location, to finish with a collective ritual. In both proposals a Geo political stand view, a site specific cartography, where we travel and walk by to stand over a material, yet a digital mesh of exploitation. The voice of a disembodied entity of female features, seemingly autonomous, unveils the secrets held in the colonial and neo colonial atrocities that sustain our current telecommunication / internet user habits. The voice proposing a somewhat airplane hostess, tv or radio commenter, with every word carefully choreographed, hypnotizes the listener, who draws the post human reality in which we are living in, to enlighten an inevitably present of the future that we are all trapped in. The ritual, inviting what is probably THE thing that we are left with: a collective blaming power purge of magical possibilities, where we can at least release our ignorance, guilt, as: is there any solution to the problem? if in the end no-one is willing to give the web mesh up?

Aleksandra

Analyst Chloe

The work questions the boundaries of our bodies. The artists brings us to the beach to experience a 'natural' setting, away from the places we so often inhabit. The artist tells about her background, about learning how to dance on a plastic floor between white walls, constantly looking at her own body-image in the mirror. I imagine that this image makes your boundaries very clear. The work shows the opposite of personal, body limited embodiment. During a meditation in which we are invited to loose our boundaries, the artist seems to loose hers as well. Her voice seems to come from all different directions, but I cannot hear her move. It seems she has become the wind she is speaking about. Guidance is very present in her work. The artist explores the idea of an invisible guidance. This is present in the pairwork. One person is invited to explore the surroundings with their eyes closed. The other one is there as a guide, not to restrict its partner but to 'guard' over them. To make sure they don't fall into holes, bump their heads into a cabin or step onto a jelly fish. One persons senses are divided over two bodies. This division brings disorientation, reluctance towards the environment and connection with the partner. The work explores caretaking beyond the borders of cities and tries to connect with a more than human world.

Analyst Sara

The artist convinces us to go to Oostende for her presentation. It is so important to get out of the studio, away from her habits/customs, to be able to rediscover something anew: the body and the body in relation to the world that was lost in the severe years of her dance education. The artist guides us moving around creating an overall stereo sound effect. What are the borders of my skin? We get lost in the feeling of the sand, the sea, the salt, the pores opening and closing, provoking a change in the muscles and the bones. A lot of imagination is required. The wind is probably the easiest to feel without having to imagine it. And the temperature dropping. How could she rediscover all this without using imagination? Because imagination is still what she was using in the studio. what about taking into account changes happening during the session?

Then in couples we are free to discover without seeing, with a helper, a caretaker next to us. While the desire to go the sea was strong, cosmic forces maybe, the waves still disorient us. Both me and my partner changed direction of our path. How do we deal with the idea of freedom and more than human forces? What a methodology of researching into that could be? How to research more precisely feeling, sensation of the body in the relation to the outside?

Diva for Borys from Amy A diva who feels. What is my skin? My muscles? My bones? I am listening to a voice who knows this very well and I am very jealous. I do not really know my bones, I want guidance into feeling. Into thinking. The body as a porous entity is easier for me and my vivid imagination. I feel gross. Every pore is blocked with a grain of sand, I think about blackheads. I am infiltrated, the sand moves in and I am reminded of a Butoh exercise I once did where you moved as if a colony of insects were eating you from inside out. Half the class left before they disintergrated, they found the self abolition offensive. We are salt and suddenly this is much easier to imagine, I am a pile of salt, a mass of individual parts sharing chemical properties, with the possibility to dissolve, to change. When the wind blows this imaginary intensifies - imagining being the only way my mind can participate in such activities - I want the direction and nrration to involve the element of wind. With wind I can be totally submerged into, and becoming, a sand dune. The texture of the wind on my body makes a desert landscape. The second exercise I enter with skepticism, doing this exercise again .... , however the final words of instruction, something like get bored, do it again, explore everything possible, begin to resonate. The sound of the wind changing as you turn different ways becomes extremely sensual, I love to bend my legs and join them together to feel the warmth of body in contrast to where the wind hits. I wish the instruction would have told us to do it in silence, but I have a fantastic partner who is a silent shadow, I am almost unaware of her presence. When we try to copy stepping the same steps so she cannot hear me. I enjoy this concentration of being a shadow. Watching other duets while watching Adrijana is hilarious, and a layer to my own sensual experience.

Diva Isabel I arrived to the beach with the air I brought from the city, from social interactions, from my personal life. I was immediately asked to exhale this air and breath in a new one, but my mind was still wondering in both my immediate mind imaginaries and digesting the present view. Why would an artist researcher assume that one is ready to jump into a voyage of imagination if my mind is still full? Why, for example in this case Aleksandra, couldn’t there be a moment of downloading thoughts into the earth via my physical roots first, so that my mind can get a bit empty and then ready to follow the proposed instructions? Yes I can become the sand, I can become the sun, I can de-particularize my existence and I’m willing, but the only thing I ask is for the giver to work into transitions modes. “If I want to take you there, I first need to prepare you so that I can take her into my universe”. So what could your transition proposals be about? The second part however was for me of great subjective joy, perhaps in the borders of eco-feminism as I could release my body repression immersed in a patriarchal system. In my own blindness I also found friendship and joy. I lost my sight but I had someone accompanying my sensorial trip, my child wanting to be freed. I was immersed in a tool where I could measure my mood temperature, I could turn my sight inside and listen to what my inner body needed and wanted, I ended up making love with the sea. Then I moved from my eco feminist immersion into an eco-sexual one, as mother earth suddenly become my lover as I touched her waters, probably something I was longing for after a year of lockdown.

Gary

Imitator Chloe The change of costume marked the beginning of a sharing of different practices. In a pink onesie and high (outdoor) heels, the artist starts with saying he doesn’t want to bore us. The first thing he shares is a collection of sounds which he relates to specific characteristics. Such as the sound of a toy police car that was related to violation although it was worded in a more appealing way. The artist uses his own vocabulary to take us into his bureaucratic, maniac universe. Next Gary shares with us the first story he ever memorized which is the history of an Irish airport. Gary draws the plan of the building, terminal by terminal in chronological order with markers on a foldable whiteboard which he brought for the occasion in a yellow, corporate looking trolley. Up now is an audioguide for a walking tour in the North quarter of Brussel, which the artist refers to as ‘the forbidden zone’. He takes us trough, while describing the surroundings by 1. giving personalities to buildings and natural elements (such as: the plants look embarrassed to be here), 2. maniacally describing the towers, their names and their histories; 3. bringing the architecture alive with sentences like: “these towers seem to tell us to ‘walk faster’ and ‘work harder’. The artist ends with reading the lexicon he and his partner finished the day before. Which inspires me to end this feedback with a list of words that I couldn’t make into a sentence but want to share anyway: * investigator * guide * paranoid classifying * european bureacracy * eurovision songcontest

Sara diva

I wish you could infuse me with your febrility and vocabulary. You are a beauty drink for the city of Brussels performing a beautification process of towers, tunnels, metro stations, and forbidden or forgotten zones. But we are in Oostende, in a special place for the history of Belgium. The high heels still resonates from “that place”. You do what is needed to satisfy your obsessions, as you said your “psycho-political agenda”, but this comes as a very generous gesture of citizenship, extremely engaged queer citizenship. I could define your genre as paranoid comedy and comedy is very political.

By paying attention to everything I don't, because I consider it rather boring or better because there is not enough room for all those details, learning the names of buildings, the years of inaugurations etc., you point at institutions/architectures/structures I find myself living in. Ear/eye opener/sharpener. Is it my fault if my son is obsessed with police cars and sirens?

Cataloguing, listening is a way to calm anxieties and creating new ones. This I know: a list is never completed. (stealing from you: beauty drink, codeword: Charleroi, extreme picnic, gay taster, highrise boyfriend, para intelligence, para-research, research as style, self-institutionalization, structured romanticism, urban reconnaissance.....)

PS: Please invite me to the inauguration!

Paranoid Detective for Gary from Amy As an expansive and minute response as one paranoid detecting to another paranoid 'detecting', this probably completes the cycle back to total retionality. I'm thinking something like the cycle round from genius to so called 'insanity'.

words from the arch: what is it what is it what is it what is it. a fingerprint. a thumb, poised atop a piece of paper to hold it down in the wind. 4 gates of an Irish airport. the measure of a soundwave altered by sharp architecture. a curve of attention with an accelerated peak and a devestatingly immediate drop. an incomplete pie chart. the space in between the heel and sole of a stilleto. the measure of a step in an archeay. the way a clothing falls when it is unzipped on two sides, an architectural detail of a place I have never been andn cannot imagine without summoning up other none descript business districts (what is their economy???). a sonic boom used in warefare. the ear of a teenage aurally attacked in a shopping mall. a phallic tower iwth soft edges.

[followed by a diagram]

Paranoid Detective Isabel The researcher might be believing that the lenses he uses to view his world are a mix between documentary and fiction, perhaps he thinks that he is working with mokumentary tools? In this/these format/s we find a character, a performer, a reporter, journalist, maybe even the alternative mayor we all long for, one of hybrid identity that proposes with a sarcastic tone another way of envisioning architecture, the life of walls and urban species that we transit through blinded, such as airports and corporations buildings. It seems important for the researcher to denounce the co-existence of social/structural design with citizen subjugation to diplomatic power dynamics. He might then be thinking that he found an untouched business, niche, that informs the public on social and economic issues imbedded in international political relations that are normally obscured/silenced/hidden to the public eye. Depicting then on our ignorance, our child trust, our capacity of believing or of even ignoring facts, features, factors that shape our life and behaviors. Non the less, even if the researchers points a trap, it seems that he is not particularly interested in showing us a scape gate, assuming that only informing is sufficient enough. As his presentation lists realities without contrasting with other possible presents, pasts, futures. Does he assume that we are not interested in experience an alter other? Perhaps and alternative urban planning that could bring in all the fiction his pink suit and hills are visually depicting for us? I’m curious to see how does the artist ideal conspiracy city would look like? What color and texture would it have? What quality would streets, highways, sounds and hidden tunnels have?

Vera

Soft Diva Chloe The artists shares with us the importance of silence in her work, but other then silence her work erases the boundaries between audience and performer and works with emerging group choreographies for me. In her warm-up, triangle work and silence walk something like that is emerging (or could possibly emerge). During the triangle exercise f.e. we create something that is more than the sum of the artist instructions. In all the exercises I’m putting my attention outward, towards the other participants and inward: what’s my characteristic, what do I see in the triangle work? These different levels can in some times be disturbing, making me want to leave because it’s hard, and other times it seems effortless, and it becomes something else. While making the triangles, I like how my feet touch the sand. I like how there’s time for me to enjoy this, because the instructions left space for me to find a way to contribute in a way that works for me. In general I think the artist uses this kind of loose facilitation. But still, there’s something about her that makes me want to be a ‘good student’. I fall asleep during the meditation and didn’t know what I had to do when I got up. Vera doesn’t put me on the spot to explain my drawing which would’ve definitely made me feel like a ‘bad student’. Maybe it has something to do with my association of silence with educators that can impose silence on their students quite violently. During the silent walk ‘the silence’ seemed something that was imposed upon me, like when I had to copy the school regulations in silence as a punishment. How come silence can feel like a punishment?

Isabel: reference book: Encounter with remarkable men Gurdjeff

Sara as paranoid detective

we start with a proposal that is not well formulated, it's a version of an exercise we did in advance but to make an alteration the artist needs to be clear with the initial proposal. Or maybe does she believe that by saying less something will emerge? If she wants to work with emerging choreography she needs to set the conditions for that to happen, with care and some testing. Precision is important, especially in a simple exercise.

In the third exercise, she said she is working about silence but there is no silence at the beach. There are a lot of sounds and ways of listening to those. Is she maybe working on doing the least as possible and let things emerge from that? Is there a question of experimenting with authorship? The exercise is inspired, but we don't know exactly how, from Hoover, Duchamp and Cage. Is there a need to legitimize the research? What is her relation with the important figures in her work?

In the triangle exercise there is something happening because there are few simple rules. But why does she let us choose the form? Why does she have difficulties taking decisions? We look like people walking in oblique lines mostly ignoring each other. Does someone know what we are doing? Are we sending a message for alien creatures? For the moon? The sound live mix works pretty well and we are (successfully?) somewhere else. Something is finally emerging. We are performing. And at the same time I know, I saw this performance before in this exact place.

Paranoid Detective for Vera from Amy We are invited to a specific, but shifting, space on the beach, we end up in close proximity to a young duo, why? To enhance our discomfort as we dance an impossible dance. Vera wants us warmed up and confused at the same time, where do you channel a confused energy? We channel it in a collective decision for a simple shape, but all our ideas are rejected to the artists choice of triangle. A triangle is a highly suggestive share with many religious connetations, it now becomes obvious that we are starting a cult. What do we worship? Verbal instructions complexify the following task that is in fact something that can only be understood through doing. The artist really wants us to participate in an activity that she describes as dull, long and boring. Be we are on a beach and she is smiling, the space in the distance that she offers to us, holds secret potential. The triangle drawing task evokes deep concentration in some, pensiveness or restlessness in others. This mixture of emotions alongside everyone's individual engagement with their task heightens a sense of island mentality. Dually, while we receive more and more onlookers, triangle island become a place of comfort. As a paranoid individual I very much enjoy that I can obsess on my triangle mission while having some awareness of other people's activity through a thought they share on a telegram voice message. An experience of many bodies is possible through one, but are the messages made from obligation of given as a gift? We leave the island forever after all our work to establish the triangle state. We have to lie down for an unknown amount of time, enacting an idea of Marcel Duchamp. As someone highly suspicious of white, male artists of the past, I assume Duchamp was an arsehole. I don't want his method in my head, so I do the exercise without him. Architectures of sound. I hear the amazing building works into aeroplanes and then some of future interstellar vehicles that fly through a foggy dystopic cityscape (though I am on a beach in the sun) My architecture is so vivid in contrast to the methodological triangles I drew. The tiangles were collective - though with frictions - while our imagination remains solitary. What is the mythology of worldbuilding the artist tries to evoke?

JIMENA

understanding the oracle together.

sara as fan

Dear Jimena,

I admire how you included the proposal of the block “not in the mood” in your research. It cannot be a coincidence ;-)Thank you for making the effort to present something to us even in your absence. Reading some of the exercises I was reminded by the work of Loic Toizé a choreographer that taught me a lot in terms of being a dancer (“interprete”): an excellent dance pedagogue. One of his exercises is, for instance, to walk forward imagining you walk backwards or walking upside down (your feet are hands and vice versa). With him I discovered other ways of perceiving the body, its organization and how dance is always in relation to an other. I did my first telepathic dances with him and then I discovered other choreographers working on similar ideas, like Alice Chauchat or Jennifer Lacey. Do you know them?

Someone told me about your treatment during the Cat and the kung fu exercise which explains how the past, in front of us, is what we know and the future, behind us, is what we cannot see yet. It was nice to try to figure out how to interpret your tasks and in some of them I questioned myself if what you propose is not always happening (left and right, slow and immediate.. at the same time). I ended up working on the tongue/snake, the 2 modes of information and the boredom as provocation or resistance, which I am not sure how to understand it.

I am very curious to see how you interpret these materials and if you develop a training.