I pack my things together, being sure that everything I need can fit on the back of my bike. I have a bag with my computer, an interface, a microphone and cable, my phone. I bring a broken umbrella in case its too sunny for my computer, stick it behind my bag and tie my sneakers around it. I start to ride, down the street and around the corner and then onto the paved street of the fields. There is wheat or rye or some grain growing, there are potatoes in rows and poppies lining the edges. The sky is wide and to the right of me is a coal factory, the white water vapor makes clouds that rise up and out. I keep riding till I get to the dirt road but the last bit I have to walk because the grasses are too high. They have been growing this whole spring, every visit this field changes, the biggest one being a few days ago when the grasses were cut down. It is a natural surrounding that is actually sculpted by agriculture. There is an invisible owner who decides when to plant, when to let grow, when to cut. I let this change in floor pattern be part of the flexibility of my surroundings. When have I ever been part of an untouched piece of land in this Anthropocene era?
After "overlapping live-ness" performance which failed to live-stream yesterday, the 26th of June 2020, due to a tractor (!), rain that fell unexpectedly from exactly 19-19:30 and a slow YouTube connection which I have never had before, I am trying to prepare myself for tonight! If I can protect the computer, mobile, interface and microphone, I don't mind the rain. But was it the rain that affected my internet connection?? I've got plastic tarps and a tent, although if I set it all up and the tractor comes again, I cannot leave quickly... I wonder if performing live outdoors in secluded areas requires other fields of knowledge for me to have. Like being able to read and to trust in the formation of clouds, the colors of the sky, the temperature of the wind and the strength of it. To be able to know this part of the landscape and not have to rely on a weather forecast. How can one prepare for the unexpected -- not just one unexpected but three? What state of being might that be? And what to do about a tractor?
I wonder how the drastic change of the landscape through agriculture can be explicit in how I move and in how I sense the surroundings? What is then the constant, or is there any? Can time be a constant, for example would it make a difference if I practiced at exactly the same time every day in the same location? But I have done this, and the light, the placement of the sun, the temperature and state of the agricultural field was always different from the day before. Maybe I am the constant, or the trees or the birds, although we are not unchanging.
I have been contemplating the necessity I feel in exposing an inner-ness, as a way to express care for an outer-ness. And vice versa.
I am curious not about my subjectivity but the commonality with my surroundings, one body amid many.
It is not only related to how I sense myself and my surroundings, but rather related to the state of being as these senses are amplified. To search for aliveness as that which happens when the body and its surroundings are simultaneous and overlapping and in play.
My artistic research involves feminist, post-human and phenomenological practices, which I hover over and dive within and which help me to clarify my artistic research. One area of my practice has been exploring how to deepen my perceptions of my surroundings by limiting my experience by one sense as well as integrating all of them into a state of quivering aliveness. Another area of my practice attunes me to the minute workings of my body as I see and feel it from the inside. The sliding of my shoulder blade along my rib cage, the lowering of the diaphragm as I inhale, the press of the big toe joint on the ground are singular actions that create a complex movement and to which my attention switches back and forth so quickly that all three actions are integrated in my awareness. The practice of suspending the thinking mind so that the body-mind determines what happens next is a practice of listening and waiting. At the same time, the natural surroundings have a lot to say. And in listening to my body and practicing a movement-as-listening, I take in what happens around me.
How can my internal processes be externalized? How can the color, light, textures and non-human bodies within a natural environment be internalized? Where are the portals within their boundaries and how does the spectator relate to the explication of something he or she may not have internalized? How to keep complexity and multiplicity of experience while performing what is based on a personal, multi-sensual experience of the self and surrounding?
I am curious how you, the spectator, moves as well, with hands and arms through space and as a movement of sensation; how the location and placement of your body affect the work and your experience of the work.
I explore my mouth as a portal through which another body enters, transforms, and exits. I am curious if the location of the color red determines its redness. A woman moves, a body moves, limbs and grasses sculpt space. Mysterious, lurking, live and live and live. Expelled space, the red release. I explore how this medium can continuously generate potential even after it leaves the body, and especially when it is seen. A rhythmic body traverses a landscape. Don't tell me where to go, mind, I give my feet their time. I am a porous container maneuvering topography, until I stand still.
Archive of Questions After Participation in the Experiments
or
How to Distill the Essence of What You Want to Find Out in Questions to Strangers:
What physical movements did you make while participating?
What other movements occurred while participating?
What key words would you use to describe this experiment?
Based on your thoughts and physical experiences of the experiments, how does the one you didn't see make you move?
What do you think you did not see?
Do you feel something is missing?
What does that not-knowing, not-having-seen do to you?
How does your body feel?
Do you think these experiments could be called performance?
What did you see, hear, think about?
What does silent mean to you?