Day (3) - K (2)

A colder day in recently sunny Berlin. An interesting mixture of gray and clear sky seem to put a sober tone on everything around.
Today were moved to K (2) our new location for the lab. A smaller room, a little claustrophobic, with a low ceiling and a general appearance of a storage room, rather than a meeting room!
The HKW is completely transformed. And now its actually funny going through its stoic halls and open spaces to find it filled with flowers or installations for the opening.
As usual I arrive late, assuming there is no traffic in Berlin, and getting surprised every single time!
It was Thomas's turn this time. And this is a blank space ( ) where Thomas can write whatever he likes in it.
Although I did not catch the entire presentation, Thomas proposed an exercise of sorts where anyone can suggest a particular activity on the condition s/he would start by saying "Its better to/not to...."
How it works is the entire participants would try to configure a way to solve this proposition and try to come up with a solution to this problem. Anyone can suggest any proposition provided it does not come out as a series of associations of proposition linked together. The suggestion should appear as a coherent sequence.
Some of the activities suggested were:
To hug
To tickle
To stop
To look outside
To do what you usually do
To speak about England
After a lot of displacement and commotion it was suggested that we "better go back" and continue!
By now it was Erin's turn to give a 15 minutes presentation of her work. And she was generous enough to physically share with us her installation, and let us have a feel of what it is really like. Erin's background includes painting, she is stranger to colors, shapes or textures. Her collection included prototypes of basic shapes for a jacket, a skirt, a shirt,.....etc, with vintage button and rare earth magnets specifically designed so it can be attached to whoever walks through the space where the pieces are.
Erin described her work in trying to create pieces of cloth that do not have preconceived notion about the body. How the body looks, or how it should look. In a way it was like designing a "democratic collection" where everyone can access and personalize in a way.
She wanted to create an interactive environment that was non-threatening, and that resembles a playground to a big extent. The "magnetic" quality and the fragmentation of the pieces of the fabric ensured a mobile engagement. The piece could move along with the people.
Erin described the seduction of the fabric to her, but holding a piece of a China silk, I completely understood the latent seduction she spoke about.
Each piece of fabric had a series of connective sewed to its side, so there was a whole side of the piece that is not cloth related. People can treat the fabric pieces in non-garment related way.
Erin spent hours and days hand-sewing the pieces, and sometimes friends helped. This notion of sharing, somehow is still carried over. The engagement that is done with the piece is not the conventional engagement. There is something very personal, generous and seductive about it.

Next in line was Loan, who was slightly uncomfortable with the collective gaze, where the entire lab was scrutinizing her and what she was talking about. I have to say that I personally thought that she was incredibly articulate and engaging for someone who dislikes public presentations. She started by saying why should anyone be interested in knowing anything about her! She then went on to describe the process of her work, which revolves around what she termed as "negotiating the I". She breaks down her process into stages of sort. There is:
listening: "shutting up" she calls it, trying to read the situation
After reading the situation you then try to understand, what is needed/expected of "me"? where can I contribute? what are we looking for here?
You then start to propose something, a direction maybe?, according to what happened earlier
This is the point when the new "I" is created embodying the knowledge, references, experiences that are subsumed under a "we".
Loan says a key statement that defines her process, "I am never only myself all the time on stage", the "I" is a construct, based on the idea "we" created. The artistic work then happens between the "I" and the "we".

Rike came up next, and she surprised us, by a very personal presentation, an excerpt from Roland Barthes, handwritten, on embrace. And I don't think she would mind me quoting it here:

"There is embrace, which is a motionless cradling: we are enchanted, bewitched: we are in the realm of sleep, without sleeping: this is the moment for telling stories, the moment of the voice which takes me. In this companionable incest, everything is suspended: time, law, prohibition" nothing is exhausted, nothing is wanted: all desires are abolished for they seem definitively fulfilled."

Rike seemed to remind us of the importance of an embrace, and the difficulty of keeping a partner in embrace if you are an artist! Especially a dancer. She said it has been very difficult maintaining this embrace while traveling so much to perform. She seems to be caught up in dilemma of combining what she loves, with she does.
Erin then made an intervention and posed a very interesting question:

"what kind of collaborative process can it create this kind of feeling?"

Rike's short, but very personal presentation was followed by Matthew, whose presentation reminded me of corporate briefing on a new management strategy! The presentation was precise and laden with management terminology!
Matthew's process revolved around transparency. He is interested in group dynamics and how a group can functions. He investigates the process of decision making. He gives of dancing as collective situation, where people negotiate how to "act". There is an explicit set of rules of how to function and yet there is also an unspoken of system of rules. For Matthew a process can be more transparent when you open the process and examine the unspoken of rules of interaction, all these assumption that are unnecessary, and create this field of possibilities that we were not seen before.
Matthew then argued that a flat structure will not necessarily result in transparency as expected, however I did not understand his other alternative ( ) this is a blank space where Matthew can suggest other systems for transparency.

In a swift synthesis by Erin, to integrate what Matthew was saying and to give a cue for Brian to start, Erin played further on how way of opening up a system can be a cause of derailing it. She gave an example of that, and said that there might be a million sparks for derailment, as derailment as a contagious phenomenon, but the question remains how far should you go? When do you let go?
Erin suggested that language could take over, this is when Hooman intervened and started questioning the extent of trust we put in language. He said that spoken language is only one form of expression, that does not entirely express a person, there are many readings of the endless layers that constitute a person. How is it that we "read" or "listen" or "see"?
Hooman demanded that we try to interpret the "in-between".
And this was the cue for Brian's presentation which was about organizing non-verbal experiences and finding a way to assert this in relation to the speaking world.
Brian screened the film of autistic activist Amanda Baggs, called "In my Language". A link of her video can be found below.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc

Brian explains that Amanda tends to put language in a opposition "my language vs. "language", taking language into opposition with non-verbal experiences
He sees Amanda creating complex, organized world of thought, that does not need to express itself in language. Her world its not meant to symbolize, or to communicate, but its expressive. The "language" can take this kind of expressivity creating gestures, relating things in environment, gathering these things. What Amanda does is create an actively relational rhythm, a counterpoint as Brian describes it.
She combines many modes of expression singing for example is a layer
All these modes express the complexity of her environment its a different way of thinking of language. Its an affective expression of her mode of existence, an affective resonance with a certain symbolic reservoir that draws in symbolic associations.
Brian then threw in the biggest question of them all, "the question of philosophy".
He maintains that its not religion or ideology, it would be using the machinery of language to reconnect to these sensory non-verbal experiences. A way of reconnecting differently.
Then explaining his own process and practice Brian states that as a discipline philosophy creates a certain way to relate to a certain discourse, as a process it is cut loose from this disciplinarian tradition, going out to express itself differently.
The logical question then was what is an aesthetic process then?
Brian answered that the aesthetic process is a process of becoming, its a perceptual experience, its the way by which one makes connections, there are practices that are relational, there are practices that bring multiple layers of sensation, generative, creative inside every practice, it is a way of containing.