I am calling back the many layers of the experience we had that day together, in november, through the spectrum of words. I remember we spoke English.
Sonia, Stéphanie, Carolina, Lisa, Caroline, Florence and I. 7.
A mix of affections and concentrations as we’re greeting each others.
Mutin’s space, a match box, opened on one end to the street with a late afternoon winter blue light. We gather in the center of the room. The dice rolls and pauses on 5. The Go score.
One is recalling the score:
Choosing objects (could be the same or not).
Finding together a place in the space. People defining by their position the borders of the “Image Space”. Bodies are included.
With an object, one is making a proposition, calling “BEGIN”, closing his/her eyes and measuring its lifespan by calling “END”. One’s proposition asks the others to offer their attention. We are looking at what a proposition is as we are showing each other something of the space.
Being patient. So each proposition can echo in each of us.
We are building a bank of perceptions.
So it can induce a dance that could move by itself.
“RESTART” is a useful call.
The clock rings aribitrary over our 30 minutes warm-up.
I find myself returning to the center. We all end up sitting around a bunch of objects. White is their color, providing a soft contrast with the orange-yellow wooden floor. Sharing the same color adds a kind of abstraction to them. But at this point I can’t help seeing a cup, a plastic spoon and a plate too. Without any signal, our many hands and fingers start to activate, as our senses. Objects gradually loose their names and declare their physical identities. Some roll, some jump, glide, glue, rebound, others make scratchy sounds, some sensual,bumping into, hiding each others. Some are the extensions of our limbs, extensions of our desire to play, others are the sources of our impulse to move. We play both these in and out ends and it sets the mechanism of an odd timing until it suddenly crackles everwhere, a campfire, an unlyrical orchestra of cartboard, plastic, skin, bone and eye and ear too – Later one will say this moment was the PROLOGUE and everything that followed would be “ante”, pouring backward to that moment.
RESTART. All objects have disappeared, we’re looking in and out. I feel the space of our attentions sharpens.
BEGIN, a white line draws curves forward in my direction, holding just a breath. END – Is it the ghost movement that I feel, moving towards me, for I feel going backward in a narrow space ?
I sense a second End. We all release our attention one step down. Many small ajustments around sitting and looking. Now is the zone, we are all free to play, anything. But instead, we seem cautious, inhibiting. Silence becomes crystal. Is it the aftermath of the proposition? Has our concentration locked us in in tension ? Has it been set by the value of our first restart?
Next to me, a body collapses and exposes a natural environment. BEGIN. A small vessel flies over revealing the body’s topography OR a continous touch of the laying aura. END.
BEGIN
The call asks me again to “virgin” my attention as to regsiter how the propositions accumulate without thinking about it. The image of seeds emerge, something is growing. A kinetic map of beats is being printed in my body.
END
The last two sessions in Mutin comes back to mind (5 – the Begin& End score). I remember bodies’ propositions all along the walls. Bodies have now withdrawn, objects are the characters. They move us. As if they were doors to enter the space, each with its own specificities, asking consideration in order to let us in.
My vision has suddenly selected all the human faces. Pale ovales projecting spaces in volumes. I sense a BEGIN. My head is moved to follow their choreography as I stumble down the floor on a white flat circle at an arm length, magnetic, shining. My eyes are attracted forward.
I hear me saying – BEGIN. It provokes an earthkwake in my senses and desire. But the circle grows, filling and fitting more and more my visual field. Light is touching all my front body. The space is getting warmer. Then I smell plastic, all is becoming black. I forecast real touch. END
END BEGIN
Somewhere here, there is a moment I can’t grasp where suddenly the communication seemed to have reached a stable point. I am lowering my guard somehow, after the intensity of all the previous tuning of singular timings. I don’t need to target my attention anymore. It feels our communication system [when our attentions sync, in a reprise modus operandi, when we can track the difference and the repetition beteween our propositions] went from frontal to peripheral in a Go way. Or was it just me? END END BEGIN
END
RESTART
RESTART
Time has slowed down in a jungle of arms, legs and torsos. One eye, sometimes more, sparkles in the density. The horizon has lost stability. Background goes front, ever suprising, with generous invitations to follow surfaces of textiles, tubes of light, bites of flesh, chains of breaths, upward, forward and down. Limbs have their own lives, here and there. My attention curves, everything is touch. No outside. I am taking part in a civil desobedience full of care. This is a long humid exhalation. Jonas makes the whale, as the whale Jonas. Nothing breaks but rolls. Another GO.
A concerto.
REPLACE
Switches of figures, like reorganizing the furniture of a room and still recognizing it. The background remains.
BEGIN
We are all looking in the same direction from one end. One many eyes (a déjà-vu : same pattern occured the last 2 sessions !). I notice the objects are spread all over. Space beholds. The carbon little creature walks in. Agile across the white proofs of evidence. I start to remember each. She is now the black cursor of my memory, playing back the whole run. Hands reach out from my eyes to move with her in time. She rolls, jumps, rebounds and bumps and crackles too. Reverse me. GO. Feeling of a revolution. Back to the Beginning. Other incursions. A little theater of light at the opposite end of the room. Or a box who becomes the princess with the red robe supported by caring figures. Many disappearences. END.
END.
Last call:
I wish this text was an invitation for others (you) to enter, filling gaps, resurecting memories, rotating into other points of view, twisting the timeline and language. So it can be more than me. A memories’ conversation? Can a memory be collective ?
Tuning Space 