ghent BE 2012

rewriting distance

 

11-16/06/2012

With Koen Augustijnen – Gent – Belgium

 

 

The new challenge: how to fix the flow; how to keep fixations flowing.

Writing down my memories of one journey:

Koen going in. Cleaning the floor with his big toes. The cleaning becomes writing. And then he becomes a bull that charges against the wall. To transform again into a triptique. The martyr in the middle between two anonymous patrons.

The sound brings lightness. The martyr becomes an old neighbour calling after his pigeons.

The sound triggers new movements away from the wall towards the table. Again an object to climb on, with his naked feet inviting me to join him. I decide to go in, my eyes closed, only using the sounds he makes as guidance, to find him, to connect.

When I do, it is not his feet I find, but his spinal column, higher up behind the third chakra. It inspires me into a circular dance, trying to run around the table without losing the contact.

All this time, Lin is witnessing the fragility, the precariousness, the unbalance. Will the table be strong enough to support the energy of our common risk taking?

I end up sitting in a corner. I get a soothing wash which supports my back bending and a primitive cry.

Later I am at the table, watching Lin lying on the floor, writing down the images from before: the martyr calling his pigeons.

The roll of paper becomes a white sheet on which Lin rests underneath the table, with Koen lingering above.

I have to go in to save a pair of glasses. I go in again to put everything back in place. Which is what rituals do, at least according to Lin.

Cannibalism is a ritual to restore the natural order: man on top of the food chain and simultaneously at the bottom of it.

Lin is asking questions with the bottle as a mike.

So many images later. Me covered by the sheet. The paper only revealing my naked feet and Koen at the table again. The memory of him making the pen jump on the table.

Me coming off the painting, doing a strange cannibal dance, guided by his percussion, biting his neck. A vampire’s bite. Returning him the favour of a soothing wash.

So which part do you want me to repeat, to fixate, to remember exactly the same or totally different?

A possible score:

Toe

Martyr

Pigeon Song

Blind

Finding a spot

Creating a circle

A balancing act

Washing

Writing

 

The sound of the scribe scribbling. Oh, krinkelende, winkelende waterding.

 

Lin: What a strong, little table, this is.

 

 

Miranda’s exercise:

Rock formations I used to make with my grandfather from in plaster soaked cloth for the tunnels of my miniature railway. Originally they would be white, but then we would paint them green or brown.

We would use the same technique to make landscapes for my miniature soldiers with trenches and ruins.

Already the first time I watched this piece of wall I fantasized about putting miniature people in its niches and cracks like the contemporary visual artist who does this in the public space and then photographs them: little people on top of a garbage bag, having a pick-nick.

I also remember how as a child I loved to visit caves – I think we all do, because of some primitive instinct, seeking protection, looking for the mystery or the hidden treasure, hunting the animals inside, playing hide and seek, finding shelter for a storm, a shared secret meeting spot with your lover where you carved your initials in the wall.

And then I remember this rock in the Vikos canyon in Monodendri-Greece, the first year I went there. It was a remarkable place at the end of path and if you sat on it, the canyon was underneath and the sky with eagles above.

It started with the impossibility to capture the shadows of a table always moving, like the impossibility to climb a brick wall with too little edges.

They are both wearing white and singing and doing this amazing balancing act and I feel blue today.

Lin was recreating some of Koen’s circle choreography without realizing it.

A thousand circles is a town of hat makers.

We were shedding our skin and dropping it on the floor inadvertently.

Koen: I caress the table and it becomes a dance.

Like a beetle that fell on his back.

We are passengers. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. La, la.

How sound and movement synchronize inadvertently. Like a distant thunder creating the soundtrack for this exploration in the caves of our common memories already shared after only two days.

We are rain drops. We are traces of red paint, difficult to scrape off. We are a thousand circles. We are hat makers. We are writers. We are passengers. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. La, la.

The words have a rhythm. The rhythm has a story. The story has a shadow underneath, constantly moving and impossible to capture. La, la. La, la.

The body as afterthought casting the shadow of its story on the ceiling. Oxidized.

 

 

The body as afterthought.

“Même le corps est en état de disparition.” (Sylvie Cotton)

We all leave things behind. We leave hats behind. We leave umbrellas behind. We leave books behind. Books leave thoughts behind. We leave houses behind. We leave places behind. We leave people behind. Fuck!

Eventually we leave our bodies behind.

A fragile balancing act of disappearing and reappearing with another skin, another shell, another body.

 

 

Can I ask you a question? What are a Thousand Circles?

Is it here? Is it on the earth? Or in the sky? Is it?

Yes, it is.

Fuck, and can I get there?

Yes, you can.

How?

Just follow the water. Remember you are a passenger. And you are singing la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. La, la.

 

 

The previous days we have been rewriting the practice:

–       Using different sources to start from: e.g. Miranda’s exercise of discovering and sharing the space; or Koen’s proposal for a physical warm up, focusing on grounding and playing horses.

Whatever the common source is, strongly influences the practice afterwards.

The other main proposal by Koen is to take one particular theme or improvisation task to focus the practice: e.g. ‘sound on, sound off’; ‘forgetting the body’ (my interpretation of his original task).

Again there is a power of concentration, of connecting.

Today we decide to focus on the form by doing only one cycle – performer, witness, audience – and by always finishing ‘our story’ whether we tell it, dance it or perform it.

Lin tells the story of her grandmother’s blue sweater that she nearly lost, but recovered and slept in last night.

Koen tells the story of his journey form Derby to Darwin with his brother: two Flemish Crocodile Dundees in the Australian outback.

And I give myself the task to roll out a white carpet to reach Lin.

We each keep our integrity which is staying with our own story line, but then we start to appear in each other’s stories: I move between Lin’s grandmother’s legs while she is watching a wrestling match on television. Lin sleeps in Koen’s story and tells him how to escape from a crocodile. …

The beauty of Koen mapping his story on the paper while telling it.

Second round.

How one story you tell triggers the memory of another that you don’t know but that we share and although I wasn’t there when it happened since I know about it, I share your emotions.

We – I and you – we are three which make the weaving so much more delicate, so much more layered between story, memory and really lived emotions.

To be able to keep laughing and crying alive at the same time.

A Joni Mitchell song.

I found my love by giving a blow job on her spinal column.

To keep the smile of the Buddha alive in your belly.

To sustain.

 

 

Are you the man who knows the song?

Are you the woman in a dress who walks into the sea?

Am I the rain man in between?

Once upon a place – a city of a Thousand Rivers, we all met to get new hats, table hats under which we could shelter, on which we could draw each other’s pain, to massage it away with blow jobs and laughter and rain drops.

Are you the man who turns a song into a story?

Are you the woman who draws a body into a wave?

Am I the rain man in between? Who hands out torn fragments?

Once upon a place – a ferry boat with a cinema on it, we came together to watch the movies, to watch each other move through centuries of water.

So now, the world will never be the same.

Again.