Collapsing time / mystic math

i think i've mentioned the mystic math of performance before (re: comedy) - it's really an odd thing - and i think applies to number of people and time.

I've become very much into the idea that Time is actually the central ontology of dance (articulated well by André Lepecki in Live). Reading his article, an aspect of AH's project (that I'm dramaturging) was made clear (a feeling on the edge of language crystalizing) - a the solo's suddenly becoming about that as much as space or movement.

In the solo's we found 20 minutes to be the only time that worked. Longer was too long, shorter too short. The feeling (for lack of better word) that we wanted existed at 20 minutes. And that feeling had to do with a treatment of time, relating to the prior notes about anxiety in away - length was needed to aclimatize us to the space.

The moment we added another performer - CD and IS running their solo's simultaneously, this quality disappeared. The option to look somewhere else meant that we (as audience) no longer had to in time with the performer. When CD falls ten times, I could watch what IS was doing, thereby stopping the duration of CD's falls.

This was less true in a larger space, which adds another factor.

also music as keeper of time.

incomplete

Post disc manifesto, for the record

because I mentioned it:

"Post-disciplinary" being mostly a joke, but one that keeps coming up. Tried to leave it open enough that it's not exclusive to performance. Very much a first draft. Would love to hear comments, amendments etc...
I think I need to add one for curiousity, but not tonight.


A Post-Disciplinary Manifesto
draft 1. Jacob Zimmer. 04/06/05

1. All categorization is marketing. Including this.

2. Nothing is ruled out. Nothing ruled in.

3. Rigour is required. Not everything goes.

4. Waking up is evidence of hope. Artwork even more so.

5. There is good and bad fun. Good fun is essential.

6. Separation between emotion, body and intellect is destroying the world. It’s also resulting in bad art.

7. When doing something strange, it is best to be relaxed. A willingness to approach strangeness is worth more then knowing the terrain, since the latter is a lie.

8. Lying is another word for imagination. The pursuit of the truth does not exclude lying, it requires it.

9. Have something to say. It’s possible to change your mind later.

10. Not being able to do something is no excuse not to. How else will we learn?

playing for real

there was a recent post at Culturebot from a dance company the included "it's time to start playing for real" (not "playing to win"as I've been misquoting)

this call triggered a bunch of thoughts in me... it resonates, despite being very unclear about what that would actually look like.

or perhaps that's not true. That I do know what that might look like, and I am unsure of my capability of doing it.

that playing for real would involve dropping the chronic self doubt and hemming and hawing that surrounds much contemporary work (or maybe just my personal life porjecting large). that instead of meekly asking for a little corner, that we take space (even if that is just corner that we want) and make someone kick us out ( at which point would we be surprised to find that nobody actually could be bother to try)...

solid opinions and an aggressive stance have been so (importantly) problemitized that, for me at least, it has ended up resulting in a kind of paralysis and depression that just isn't interesting or useful anymore - though is, at this point very hard to drag myself out of, no matter how much I hear and intellectually understand the need to just go for what turns me on and screw the rest.

The CW's are important for this, as was (is) the TT - two projects that I've actually moved from chronic thoughts to reality. And while they are not successes in terms of numbers, they hold that space for me. they establish precident. And some very important things have come out of the TT especially - thoughts and friendships both.

the "playing for real" also ties to the idea of proposals (which we've been taking about since feb., and now I read all this Bourriaud where he talks about it. that common occurance - idea's occuring in the same time yet independly really should be the subject of some kind of study - if it is [oh hypothetical reader] let me know).
that it's not just making proposals in a conversational tone (hey, wouldn't it be neat if...) but in an active, realized way (we are doing this, care to join?)

a way in, for me is rock 'n roll (he says listening to Paradise City) - that a kind of strut and attitude. but how to get there personally continues to be the problem.

what for?

"The question we might raise today is, Connecting people, creating interactive, communicative experience: What for? What does the new kind of contact produce? If you forget the "what for?" I'm afraid you're left with simple Nokia art--producing interpersonal relations for their own sake and never addressing their political aspects."

another Bourriaud interview

quick note

for reference, had a much much better day with the music today.

post-disciplinary / post production

Nicolas Bourriaud and Karen Moss

"It is also interesting how few of the artists in this exhibition are involved with technology. While their work may somehow comment on the technological, they are not much involved with technology, which is refreshing.

NB: They just use it.

KM: They use it, but they're not commenting on it."

possible thread to post disc.

also, same article for a relation to history:

"NB: I think the most important thing is you don't have to be intimidated by knowledge and by history. Most people's relation to history can be summed up by this image of somebody trying to walk into a room with a lot of porcelain and fragile things and not wanting to break any of them. It's super-precious and it has to be kept exactly like it is. I think all these artists do exactly the opposite. Which is they don't care about any historical object, they just use it and try to understand what's in it. And these are two different ways of seeing history – first as a commodified history, doing nothing to change it - or revisiting it all the time and feeling totally free."

future reference

what does it mean to "play to win"?

anxiety and songs

today we talked about how the new music added a clear sense of the anxiety that exists in the work. while I can't deny that existence - anything we make in these times about ourselves is likely to be anxious, but what I love(d) about the work is that there was a feeling of peace with anxiety... or at least it didn't make me anxious, it made me feel good - not in any easy way but in terms of the proposals it made about how to be. CD mentioned the other day that comfort and discomfort are on a spectrum and there is actually some beautiful spaces that live in the in-between. Not quite uncomfortable, not quite comfortable. The show really lives in that space for me (as do most shows I really like). I bring this up only in relation to the pleasure I feel with the work around anxiety. That it's not a simple pleasure.

So all of this is to say that bringing in an element that fore-grounds the anxiety of the piece makes me feel more anxious (go figure) and that this isn't the most satisfying choice for me (of course, it's not my show, so I may just have to deal) -

this all relates to the p.s. from yesterday. Prior to today (the composer arrived) we'd been working with music the performers brought in, with it being explicit that it should be stuff they wanted to listen to. Mostly, then, it was pleasurable music, sometimes guilty pleasure pop music, sometimes more indie, but still in the "not art music" category. This music I enjoyed immensely. I enjoyed watching the performers listening to it, dancing to it. Even, especially, when the choices were guilty nostalgia choices.

these preferences are not exclusive to the current work - it's true of my own practice as well and to the shows I see. I used to work exclusively with new music made especially for the work. Practical issues made this impossible (I moved away from my composer friends and didn't have any money or know anyone in my new town - and grew fatigued by cross country collaborations) and now I don't know if I would could go back. I like needle drop, and pop-ish, non art music needle drop in particular.

So my question is - is this just my hang-up? do I rely on this easy context, or is there something more to it? I justify it by thinking about it as counter to the "seriou

(oh for f*cks [why do I feel that I should make u=*?] sake, just lost a bunch that I wrote cause it wouldn't publish. I take back all the nice things I said about blogger. will try to recreate, but surely fail)

"seriousness" of the work. That it helps humanize the work by showing that us snobby avant gardists like a good pop tune with great hook. That it re-contextualizes both the work and the pop song itself.

And I like it. I like that they're songs not "music" that they have beginnings and middles and ends that I can recognize, that they have lyrics. I can and do appreciate serious art music (I realize I sound anti-art and reactionary, but you'll have to believe that I'm not, or maybe I am and I have to deal) but when I comes down to it, I don't want to listen to it. This kind of mainstream preference is also there in movies, in a slightly different form - I like serious films but am more likely to rent and especially to go to mainstream Hollywood flicks.

not really going anywhere, except to note this is one of the places I get in twists of doubt to whether my personal preferences are right and rigorous or lazy and counter-revolutionary (to make way too much out of it, but in bad moments, honest)

for future reference: the collapse of time when more than one person is on stage

for the record: I imagine the audience of this blog to be one person who I don't know and never reveals that they are reading (though if you are, feel free) - this feeling allows me to write in a different way and I appreciate that... so whoever you are, thanks.

when doing something strange

draft 1
(it is interesting that I prefer writing on this then say, oh a word processing program)


some things before we start:
One: When doing something strange it is best to be relaxed.
Two: If time is equal to or greater than shape and movement, is ten minutes enough to get to know someone new?
Three: Would you be kind enough to tell us what it is all about?
Four: People come together, more or less for the first time, what happens next may shape the course of history.
Five: Hehe. Smile.
Six: The familiar, in a different place, might be strange. We also wonder about the inverse.
Seven: Do you too feel the pressure of expectation?
Eight: [10 sec of silence]
And Last: When doing something strange, it is best to be relaxed. To be able to approach it as if familiar. Thank you.

a couple things

1/ luddite?

2/ story/gesture meaningness


1/ on the radio last night there was a report about Newfoundland on Radio Netherlands (that very occurance worth a note) - essentially about the collapse of the fisheries, the resulting death of tradition, and tourism that results in the performance of those traditions after death. and while that cycle is interesting enough, and close to home for me since it is a similiar pattern in Cape Breton / NS - what I thought about as I fell asleep was various interviews with people, who, while sad about the loss, nervous about tourism ("we have become people fishers") said (in paraphrase): change happens, and, like the death of a loved one, is sad, but moving on is needed. To hold out and try to pretend that the change didn't happen would be close to death itself.

the impact of this thought was that I wondered about my quasi-ludditism that is evidenced in continuing to work in the theatre, or live performance in general - especially as I am resistant to technology as a key element. I've said that theatre is retro-grade activity before, and have an unsettled relationship to the idea "of going back." Arguably much of my aesthetic, political and formal interests involve some kind of stopping or returning (small groups of people meeting in person with as little mediation as possible, a way of engaging with each other that seems to be passing.) Are these idea's born from a desire to stop movement, to halt or even reverse change? And is this a bad thing? I can criticize and more to the point attempt to side step the modernist notion of progress, but is doing so responsible?

I have been discussing with various folks the difference between art that reflects contemporary life ("Oh, that's so true [and often bad]") and art that might offer some proposals towards a different life ("Oh, what if that were true!?") - this formulation feels right - BUT is the proposal I have to offer some going-backwards towards a romantized past that never existed? Or a future in which the recent past never happened?

That I hate cell phones and genetrification (though am fond of the internet and my palm pilot), prefer film to video and Guns 'n Roses to the Darkness.

Is it a constant that some will bemoan the death of a former authenticity, while the kids move ahead with or without me, creating their own definitions of authenticity?

Nothing really formed yet, and it's not going to change the work yet, but some questions (damn that Dutch radio about Canada.)

2/ We've been talking about different gestures holding the same importance - getting undressed being done with the same weight as adjusting a chair - a space where everything is both equally unimportant and therefore important. Wondering in the past few days (with World Stage and CD and IS's showings) whether and how stories might function the same way - after Chad's showing people talked about how the one piece of text weighed much more than everything else. I think on one level this was a result of it being the only story/text - that to create that level ground where the audience moves with little friction between possible meanings, one needs to do at least 2 things (to get the teeter totter level, 2 children of equal weight are needed) - don't know that this is anything mind blowing but speaks of the mystical math that is necessary to make work (something is funny once, three and 5 times only etc)


ps: is music a cheap way out or an important road sign?