Jerwood Bank 2007

Today felt heavy with sensorial and intellectual properties in my head and body. In the afternoon, I was reluctant to move as if that would alter the state where images and stories were forming. On the other hand, I was  eager to engage with the words and shapes that I feel connected to. Moments like this always make me panic. Moments when I feel confronted by complete emptyness, a white canvas, with lots of pontential, but blank.

each colour is a manifestation of a different physicality

follow the signs and you’ll discover a new potentiality!

Today was fantastic, listening to Jonathan talk and feeling like so much of what he said applies to what we’re doing. Its great to feel as though what we’re doing can relate to a wider context.

Today felt like a new beginning with the portrait. Yesterday I struggled to find any physical manifestation for the idea that was quite clear in my head but became feeble and self concious in the transition from thought to movement. Something was freed today. I think it was using some of the suggestions from Deb and Sarah about trying to find the extreme ends of the scale and giving yourself parameters in terms of time and trying to give a situation and context around the event.

It was really useful to ask Jennifer to help me try a few things out, and break myself out of my own world.

Duration: 4 minutes
Video clip of Jonathan Cole in conversation.

Dr. Jonathan Cole, Neuroscientist
Jonathan Cole’s academic research has focused on the effects of sensory deafferentation (the elimination or interruption of sensory nerve fibers) and motor control, largely with Ian Waterman who has a condition which has left him without touch or movement/position sense below the neck but, nevertheless, has developed ways of moving, even walking, to a unique degree.
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Duration: 4 minutes
Video clip of Jonathan Cole in conversation - I don’t smile because I’m happy, I’m happy because I smile?

Duration: 14 minutes
Audio clip of Jonathan Cole talking about face, facial expression, Moebius syndrome and emotion.

Ian on physics, everyday balance and swedes. (Duration: 1min)

Ian on sitting up. (Duration: 45 secs)

Ian walking. (Duration: 20 secs – no audio)

Proprioception is the sense that indicates whether the body is moving with required effort, as well as where the various parts of the body are located in relation to each other.

balloon: a bag made of thin rubber or other light material, usually brightly colored, inflated with air or with some lighter-than-air gas and used as a children’s plaything or as a decoration.

my head… i haven’t digested this afternoon’s content. patience, patience. and also – patience for myself with the tasks we are working on at the moment. i feel so much; maybe this is the magic, that this is so completely holistic, that no part of me is left out. i had a moment of coming-out-the-other-end today, a little like rohanna mentions in her post. that some circuit was tripped after class this morning and i found less the attic of my intellect, more the cellar, where things are maybe fermenting a little bit, the seals on the jars are not quite so tight as i would like them to be… and now i feel more confident in that what i am getting to is more real, more mine – but also more exposed inside of that, a little shaky.

maybe after a night’s sleep…

Meeting Jonathan Cole. I was completely engaged and touched by the subject so deep related to what we are doing!
When you realize how extraordinary people can be, you immediately feel incredibly small.

Then you find a motivation within your sense of failure, a emotional strength that encourages you to keep going.

Five days ago I wrote the above.
Didn’t publish it. Didn’t blog since. It s a perfect time to recover this short “fragment of thought” having had a really bad day!!!
(I was working on text to use it as a structure in relation to one of my movement. It didn’t really work when on the top of the text I was encouraged to add an extra code).

Someone said:”Restriction tend to make for interesting work.”
I deeply believe it ;that ’s one of the reason why I spent the all day struggling with my task.

“Art does not reproduce the visible. It renders visible” (P. Klee) I am struggling with making things visible! It was helpful to see my self in video yesterday and acknowledge the gap between sensing something and see its manifestation into movement. At the moment I am working on some Gormley’s drawings. I am borrowing his drawings and their forms; maybe the next step would be to leave the two-dimentional images behind, make them alive, find their emotional realm, sense what they suggest me…     any advice is more than welcome!!
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The search for the necessary or distilled fragments of movement rarely come to us quickly. The search is often a meandering or even disjointed path, and often we are clear about what is not right before finding the thing that is particular. It is a constant cycle of building and editing.

On Thursday we had a visit from the actress Harriet Walker who shared some thoughts with us about her practice, and started, among other discussions, some interesting speculations on the differences between actors and dancers.

One thing she said in particular was particularly fascinating to me, that at times when she thought she had successfully and fully embodied a character role she felt that she had entirely escaped herself. She even said of her experience playing the character on stage ‘it was not me’.

For me this is an entirely opposite to my practice, which is perhaps something that I had not fully realised until now. Looking back I realise that I have always tried to be myself, or at least keep an element of myself in the work that I have done, both in the studio and on stage.
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