Sunday, November 25, 2007

( Bivak Gloria ) - fin

the project ends today in Antwerp. we've visited the Rubens House: a financial empire around the recognised genius of a single man... building a space ship for longer travels is one thing, but I get the impression that we are already removed from our origins by one layer, already sort of in outer space today ( with a few more reminiscenses from the past, e.g. the neo-cons, pollution, exploitation, Western Hegemonial thinking)

Thursday, November 22, 2007

bivak gloria - final (before performance)


I'm getting ready to perform at the finissage. together with Dwight Marica and Robert Rosenau. repeating what we've done these past weeks. to realise one out of many possible threads of movement with the installation, with the added presence of the visitors of the finissage.

many trails of energy to ride on / follow along and with, including my own. Robert Rosenau mentioned today a Zen-kind of state where there is absolute quiet and openness inside, to be ready for whatever comes, before thinking it over. in a way I hope to do the same. to be ready for a kind of energy that will take me anywhere, through many layers and threads and possibilities.

I understand the installation as condensed energy. and with the video's there is an extra layer of movement involved, represented in moving colors and light. so I hope that the long periods of working on the ground will pay off in a more readily available physical preparedness, ready to be in the moment, move!

Look at me now and here I am
And with it all it is not preparation
They never make it breathless without breath.
And once in a little while they wait.
Without its leaving.
Let it be that it is said, let me alone.
You alone have a way to think and swim
And voices have no other.
It is in their refrain that they sing me,
It just can happen so.
Getrude Stein from Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded

work

today and yesterday I've spent long periods of time on the floor, doing Kinetic Awareness / ball work / available tension / sensitive energy work. there is a lot to repair and heal, especially my right elbow and knee. the fatigue translates itself into a tightened ribcage, contracted from a certain thoracic vertebrae in my spine (I think T6, but I'm not entirely sure)

while I was working on the ground, there were many workmen coming and going today, as they re-modeled Michele Matyn's sand-mountain. to all of this the radio was going on all the time, playing 80's and 90's hits + advertising. a hard time to concentrate, to find that space where there is no sound interrupting anything.

but I could work on what I get paid for in this project, to do my work as a dancer, just the same way that the working men worked to shovel and carry around the sand. we both followed our own necessities, resulting from our task. so that I could modify my own internalized bourgeois judgement of doing some luxury-work, something for affluent elites only. I've worked on this earlier in con.sens.us but here it was closer, because we were all limited to one space for a longer period of time, so the interactions were less momentary.

it helped me to feel less 'crazy' more trusting that what I do makes sense and that I am aware of it.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

oil painting - body awareness practices

Ghent Altarpiece
saw it today... wonderful colors (Mary in clear Blue God-Father-Christ in shining Red, John the Baptist in full Green, not to mention the many shades of green of the plants). there are X-arrangements in many ways, a.o. the four streams of people towards the altar of the lamb, held together by a circle of angels surrounding it. a reality, as complex as reality, beautiful. I felt re-rooted in my European heritage.

this painting was one of the first where oil was used as a liquidizer for the paint-particles, instead of egg / tempera. this new approach fully allowed painting in several layers above each other, to achieve a much more naturalistic illusion of the represented objects and people. also, it is speculated that painters Jan van Eyck and Hubert van Eyck used magnifying glasses to achieve the minuscule details.

a sensoriness so lively and largely unhindered by intellectual obstacles. brought into arrangements, without compromising the sensory experience. (see again "The Tower of Babel" in this blog)

the painting suggests endlessness, I could fly right into it...

in the church itself there are two copies of Adam and Eve made in the 19th century. the difference of doing something a second time, making it secondary. I didn't even notice that they were copies, I thought that for some reason the originals had been placed off the altarpiece itself. I wasn't as impressed as I'd expect I'd be. later I realized that not only was the way of painting them cruder, but also the copy Adam & Eve were wearing dark animal furskins.... to cover their nakedness.....

* * *

in my own experience I find that through using release-based techniques (including Kinetic Awareness) I gain a very similar ability of working more refined and in layers, comparable to the use of oil-painting. my body is explored more in minuscule ways, I become more sensitive to the energy of moving / living / being.

the increasing awareness of my body creates links in my consciousness, where before had been gaps in my understanding, allowing me a more complete and con-sequent course of action.

and, I find that the release-based body work creates an open-ended attitude, linked towards infinity...

weaving


satori : we are creating weavings of energy through our actions / movements in space and time (if the first dimension is direction, the second plane, the third space, the fourth time, could the fifth be results of behaviour / interaction of energy formations????)




letting all pre-conceptions go (being balanced enough to let them go, not needing them necessarily, because of satisfactory fulfillment OR risk taking...)
like stated by Vanita & Joe Monk express (in) the moment ...


creating real-time, efficient patterns of and in the present, through improvising with the structure, the situation, Hessenhuis, the installation(s) moods, colours, the presence of the visitors etc.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

videos from the first and second day with dance at Bivak Gloria

10 excerpts from the first and second day
to document where we started from film/dancewise

click on the image or see YouTube channel thomasrealdance

Friday, November 2, 2007

depuis l'modernisme

het naamloze zachte, dat de mens tot mens maakt.
Christa Wolf, Kassandra

coming to full circle at the end of week #2. all the work that we've done and did. again...

Thursday, November 1, 2007

getting back to Gertrude Stein

I read Stein with great interest during my early twenties and it has been a major source of inspiration for me ever since. even though I've gotten to realize many alternatives since then, I am still re-discovering many of her ideas and statements as very valid for what I am interested in in my work. As I continue working with Robert and Dwight, these notions are coming back into my attention.


... I had in hundreds of ways related words, then sentences then paragraphs to the thing at which I was looking and I had also come to have happening at the same time looking and listening and talking without any bother about resemblances and remembering.

[...]

I said in the beginning of saying this thing that
if it were possible that a movement were lively enough it would exist so completely that it would not be necessary to see it moving against anything to know that it is moving.

[...]

As I say the American thing is the vitality of movement, so that there need be nothing against which the movement shows as movement. And if this vitality is lively enough is there in that clarity any confusion is there in that clarity any repetition. I myself do not think so.


No matter how complicated anything is, if it is not mixed up with remembering there is no confusion, but and that is the trouble with a great many so called intelligent people they mix up remembering with talking and listening, and as a result they have theories about anything but as remembering is repetition and confusion, and being existing that is listening and talking is action and not repetition intelligent people although they talk as if they knew something are really confusing, because they are so to speak keeping two times going on at once, the repetition time of remembering and the actual time of talking but, and as they are rarely talking and listening, that is the talking being listening and the listening being talking, although they are clearly saying something they are not clearly creating something, because they are because they always are remembering, they are not at the same time talking and listening.


quotes from Portraits and Repetition written in 1934, published in Lectures in America, Random House, New York 1935


with these views, I find Stein voiced what were concerns of the 20th century: get back to the medium itself, find out what it can do, rather than maintaining the conventions of the 19th century or in fact the conventionality of Euro-Asian cultures up to that time.

as I am working with two visual artists, one mainly in sculpture - one mainly in media, I too get back to what I believe is the essence of what my medium is about - kinesthesy and its shared experience with others.