This performance was an attempt at talking and moving at the same time, with an audience present. I was testing how witnessing my process would change it: how would an audience change me, and how might I change them? I initiated my practice for 10 minutes, holding the audio recorder and improvising, following curiosities, and identifying the present thought, or some emergent linguistic representation of the elided present. I still think of this as bringing consciousness to my inner voice, and calling attention to expanded perceptions of the body and imagination. I still think accessing the present is impossible, but I'm interested in trying.
The present is constantly evading me. This video is the third performance (the show took place over three nights). I recalled memories of the previous two performances, and tried not to repeat certain moments, instead calling attention to their emergence in my memory.
After the ten-minute timer went off, I identified one choreographic directive that emerged from the improvisation. Something contextual. In this instance, it was ‘turn futility into power, turn corners’. I then replayed the audio, while I changed my costume. There was about 2-3 minutes of observing the space and listening to the audio in my absence, when the audience could remember or track some of my previous movements in the room. I then re-entered the space in costume, as my alter-ego Schpando, and moved to the sounds of my thoughts while attending to the physical directive ‘turn futility into power, turn corners’.
Insights:
How I prepare for this work is important. It lays a contextual terrain for emergent thoughts/ they are ‘tainted’ by the information and mood as affected by the moments before. How I prepare helps saturate the atmosphere of this work. This is the affective space of the work, and a variable of control that I can impose, but am also surrendering to. In this video, I was influenced by an article I read earlier that day on Sick Woman Theory I make reference to it when I say things like “how do you throw a brick when you can’t get up?” and I’m physically more drawn to the floor in this performance (typical for me, but not always when I’m doing this type of work).
References:
I’m inspired by Maria Jerez in how she uses everyday tools to expand upon self, and surpasses the design limitations of technology towards a more physical absorption, or expression of self through technological tools.
I’m also thinking about Jeanine Durning’s ‘inging’ that performs a similar continuous outpouring of vocalizations, and attempts to do so at the speed of thought, getting as close as possible to vocally articulating a thought as it’s being formed in the mind, and churned out of the body