PhD magic

PhD is a journey that in my opinion only the word magic can explain it.

Things just happen, without knowing exactly why, when and where. It becomes. The combination of an action thinking with living and all sorts of other stuff that happen in between these two compose the PhD thing.

It is just another type of research, as we do research in all other faculties of life. I research to know which is the best mobile phone i should by to fulfil my needs, where I want to go in my next vacation, what ingredients are the healthiest, what is it that I feel before my periods and how does it affect my life... researches one does all the time.

The doctorate research is just another one. It needs life in the middle so it can be completed in most creative and unique way. Only my life will give the research it's single character.

This is the second academic research that I engage with in life and I notice that things just happen. Too many unpredictable directions are taken due to life types of issues that go along the investigation. On the end of the first one I suddenly noticed that I had no clue of how I managed to get where I got. It's like, we take so many turns because of things that come up on the way that in the end we don't know if it was a rock or a river or a snake that made me get where I got.

All of this magic thinking arouse today during my research in the Laban Archive. While researching for the Living Architecture module for the Choreological Studies Specialist Diploma, I suddenly realized I was both investigating for the module and for my PhD as a whole. I was astonished to realize how one thing is conducting the other and that at a certain point I might not even recognize how or why I chose the path I followed...

Magic!

 

"Movement is, so to speak, living architecture"

I am still in motion. And architecting my pathways. 

To architect is much harder for me than to explore the expressivity of the movement - its dynamics.

Map out where the movement is going... is to architect a life(dance) plan. 

From Laban - who thought of the space as a harmonical entry of the body, to Forsythe - who looks at the range of possibilities of the body (and not attempting to be harmonical). It is a travelling through time to understand the evolution of space occupation and development within the movement art. 

Click here to download:
Proliferation_and_Perfect_Disorder.pdf (178 KB)
(download)

artist or researcher? thoughts over Marina's sensibility.

I had an encounter with this video yesterday, just because i could not sleep (in the middle of one thousand thoughts and research anxieties...)

But it came as a present or as a crises starter.

artist.

Is it possible to be an artist and a researcher? or does the academic mind kills the hability to see (and accept) de invisble-visible ?!

Where am I in this pathway of the infinite-impossible that as researchers we have to pretend to know until many years have gone by and they (we) can actually know something.

As artist, the more we pretend, the less we expand. Its sincere. 

If it is possible to have a researcher-artist, I want to be one. (hoping that I am already a little tiny bit of it)

implo-explo

sion.

There is this movement that is so comon in each and every person. The combination of explostion and implosion that varies from one to the other as well as a simultaneous entwine of them. This is such a powerful movement that it becomes as all sorts of body* actions and reactions... crazy enactions and still inactions. If according to R.Laban our exernal movement is directly connected to the internal movement ("internal emotions <-> external expression"), which are the dances that acts these movements? There are many dance makers that "talk" about this movement. It is a infinite source of materials for enactments and live-live experi-ments. It is all about the invisibility of the visible. Or the contrary. And what happens when the external expression is banned? Implo-sion once again. And explo-sion. The movement still continues, but in with a different patterns. We are non stop implo-explo-sions either patterning or dispatterning. And this is rhythm! (rhythm of life!) of breath, of heart, of thoughts, of musical movements of an idea or lack of it.  ....

 

* appologies for the use of the word body. 

WTF live art

P567

A journey to what is living.

On a warm and sunny English saturday morning, after having a rare cold shower, I got my bike and I set off to live art.

Living through the caos of a million people trying to get to the same place I was going was a spatial experience of not having any space, while feeling the small hands of a blond girl curiously touch my legs and arms. 

And finally there I was nearing the art, when I decided to stop in a organic farmer's produce store of the Sussex producers. Organic ice-cream!

And I got there. A place (a nice bid gardened house) in Falmer, being greeted with a big smile from the door keeper. On my first steps in there is a curious scene of this girl blindfolded messing with a jigsaw puzzle. A man sitting opposit of her doing the same. Both speaking nonsense. No sense of the pieces or of any connections of what they were saying. Just there. happening. A jigsaw puzzle embedded in nonsense. That was intended to stop happening three hours later. 

I continued to walk around, following the map I received in the entrance. And I quickly started to notice the aliveness of the interesting things almost hiding in the garden. Then sound. "Find the spot which sets the sound off". No clue. A little girl comes and tells me she has the answer. She had definitely found her own answer-spot, and she was happy!

A small trailer parked with some seats. "this is a performance ......." So I sat there and started looking at the slides. Lived stories from an English 60's. The sound of a typewriter. Soon enough I was going to be there, crafting the art and living the story of the slide I chose. Concentrating on the story that was just being created and instantly typed, without any chance of erasing or changing a word. 

Some more steps and I find this living collage (photo). The artist invited me to be part of his art and amog his words were things as "you", "art" "copyright", "all of us" "our" "health and safety", "dogs" "children" ... So there I was becoming part of his art and acquireing my copyrighted spot in that big thing. Later on in the afternoon the artist revealed he was starting the sweat.

There were small ensembles performing throughout the day in the Garage. And intimate performances of body musicality in a closed space. A 5 minute rave and rituals of sound voyage.

There was a stall of food and of drinks. Local home made Ales that were still lively fermenting. The food was also to be crafted by each one's choice of combining ingredients there available. 

Assisted by the facilitator I painted and transformed a Tshirt. I shined my leather sandals.

Almost by mistake I took part in a workshop and later performance led by Marina Sossa, where a group of people lived their pathways from life to death during 15 minutes. 

Other pieces of art were living around the garden. Installations in the grass, in the trees and in a glass gallery box. Dances happened in a selected area of the grass. 

People of all ages were living that space and re-creating its aliveness. Art was being done, seen and allowed in the lives of the lived.

As a living person I left together with the sun to my expected intense journey home, where I knew I would have to live through the million people that would be attempting to do the same pathway as I was. 

WTF was a chance to live and share ephemeral artistic liveness. To be sensitive to details and to be assisted into nonsense senses of art-crafting. And to live through the sunny and warm (unusual) English day.

Beyond

[post done for the Maya-Lila blog at:  http://maya-lila.tumblr.com/]

 

Se pensar em intensidade ao invés de tensidades, aonde é que o ser vivo dançante pode ir parar?!

Talvez parar é que ele não vai.

Acredito que vai se mover além. Não para o além, mas simplesmente além. 

Se mover além. 

É para mim atravessar fronteiras. 

Temos muitas fronteiras que nos seguram como o que somos:

A pele segura o todo de dentro do corpo.

A roupa segura o corpo.

A sociedade segura nossa expressão (seja movimento ou aparência ou …)

A religião traça linhas

O ser humano constrói paredes, muros, grades, atos, venenos…

A mãe/pai dizem não

O dinheiro cria regras…

 

São muitas as fronteiras. 

 

E se passarmos a pensar nas intensidade ao invés das tensidades?!!

Intensidades como (parafraseando Debora Hay) pensar que cada uma das células do corpo faz o convite para ser vista. Não assumir que nossa dança tem uma frente (limitada pelo palco). Nossa dança pode ir além.

Algo que chega a ser tão pessoal (intimo) como universal.

(é um sentimento de vida a toda e cada parte do corpo, que faz parte do movimento e participa da mesma forma, compartilhando das mesmas intensidades…)

O corpo intenso pulsa.

a pulsação conduz o movimento (que não estagna na fronteira da mente). Flui em intensidade, em qualidades, em características. 

O artista como a fonte, o veículo e o material. Que faz circular o ciclo espiral da vida (como a respiração que nunca fecha um ciclo pois cada nova respirada já se está a um passo adiante na vida). 

Cada movimento que fazemos (artisticamente) é assim também. 

Um ciclo espiralado composto de intensidade (movimento, pensamento, sentimento, sensação, reação, contracção, relaxamento…).

O artista que trás do material e leva para o imaterial e volta para o material em outro lugar. 

É visível e invisível, depende sempre dos olhos que vêem. Do ouvido que escuta, do toque que sente, do gosto degustado, do cheiro… do arrepio.

É além. 

 

overwhelming-thing

It looks like dance is a bit of every-thing and a bit of no-thing.

Movement can never be one-thing. Too-many-things that can become some-thing. A not-known-thing that would best be described as a felt-thing. Space in time-thing that changes never becoming that-thing but some other-thing that I could not know or even tell exactly which-thing. A past-thing mixed with the future-thing becomes the right-now-thing that is all around even when it is in only one body. But at the same time it is a body-thing other wise it would not be dance. Misterious-thing that comes out of a desired-thing to travel to the other and become a new-thing.

Thing could be the exact definition for this that is dance.