#Moving from the seat of attention #Repelling the Monkey #What constitutes a Live Writing Practice? #Start before you’re Ready #Write like a Dancer #Your destination is wherever you are located now #Moving with a Pen(cil) in the Hand.

Studio Practice 

Dance & Text Improvisation; 10 minutes. James Baldwin The Struggle of the Artist. 1969

1)Listening & Moving to the sound & texture of his voice. 2)Listening & Moving to the content of what he says.

Perspective & Position Improvisation 10 minutes. 2x chairs, table, mirror, camera. See video documentation 

1.)Your perspective is from where ever you are positioned. 2.)Your destination is wherever you  are located now.

Reading Audre Lorde; ZAMI, A New spelling of my Name. 1982 Persephone Press 

Writing 20 mins; Live writing practice. Bar Restaurant Bern. 

Studio Practice 10 minutes Moving with a Pen(cil) in the Hand. Writing a bit. Moving a bit.

Reading Sadie Plant Zeros and Ones 1997 Forth Estate The Pleasure of Work and The Work of Pleasure. An Interview with Giulia Palladini in MASKA 2019 Save As… Knowledge and Transmission in the Age of Digital Technologies Diana Taylor New York University 2010

Writing 20 mins; Daily live writing practice Bar Restaurant Bern. 

#12 mins Reading/Writing/Moving Practice

Set timer and fufill each task for 12 minutes in a chosen order.

Studio Practice

12 mins Moving.

Reading Practice

12 mins Reading; Sadie Plant Zeros and Ones 1997 Forth Estate

Writing Practice

12 mins Writing.

Networks, no specific centralized system or even center.

Learning, learning, learning from mistake making not from pre-existing knowledge.

A learning of connections, intuitions and experience. Everything is just appearing. Who is the I doing the doing? The eye doing the seeing? The moment we look, we don’t see. A connection found between my meditation practice and the book I’m reading on AI and machine intelligence.

Thinking as moving, reading as writing, moving as writing. What comes first; the thought or the movement? The movement then the thought? Accepting everything is just appearing. Needing it seen? Needing to show? How to be seen by the room? How to be seen by writing?

The seductiveness of suggestion. A brushed cheek, a lifted shirt, carrying one thought, fulfilling it and allowing it to open on to the next. A movement strategy. One thing leads to the next. Requires rigor, concentration – not to move too quick or slow, to look out the corner of your eye, hold your head at a certain angle – so as not to give the appearance of trying too hard while at the same time being hyper vigilant, super aware. Tricking your conscious.

Aware of the touch of my fingertips, the taste in my mouth, the feeling as I swallow, the weight of my tongue. The sound of the restaurant downstairs, the hum of collected voices, punctuated by the clink of china, the temperature of my upper lip, the shape of my friend in my thoughts, or my boyfriend and the shift of attention they produce. Trying to get it all present at one time, collecting and shifting through the experience of my senses, saying yes! to everything that is appearing.

Pleasure in Progress.

I wanted to share the pleasure. The pleasure got shared, but not with my work.

It got shared among friends and looked very much like partying. At the same time, I was able to defend it as somehow a part of the work, or if not part, then a reward for having done enough of the work.

Pleasure got taken around some late-night bars and then bought back home to pleasure itself some more. It kept up the neighbors and left its mark on the sofa. It certainly didn’t stick round for breakfast or help clean up. A friend poured the champagne and I leaned in closer and forgot the pleasure of work I’d left behind and instead got down with the work of this pleasure; drinking. The next day’s pleasure at being back at the studio was slightly muted by the previous nights’ pleasure. Luckily, I was able to tell myself to relax into the pleasure of not needing this pleasure to resemble the pleasure of yesterday’s pleasure – and to see what occurred.

The time in the studio began to feel considerably contracted. There seemed limited time now to fit in pleasure whereas before it had appeared timeless and inseperable from what I was doing. Pleasure didn’t seem up to the job, it felt a little too much like resting. I asked it what it had to show for itself, I told it to get off the floor! Do something! But the lines had been drawn between work now and pleasure later. It felt like a familiar organization of my time and the return to some generalized anxiety about never having enough of it. The same friend from the night before suggested learning some rejoinders to protect the space where pleasure and work meet; Can I get back to you? Maybe later, I’m busy now. What I’m doing is important. 

Though this is not this residency’s description, would it be a good place to begin practicing a defence of work that looks very much like someone having a good time?

I don’t mean to sound like a certain French actress in a certain Tarantino film when I say one of the most radical questions (for me) remains; what gives you pleasure? I mean, of course what gives me pleasure, and is surprisingly tricky to answer.  Or, what will you do to invite, protect and defend that pleasure in your working life?

#FEELING AT HOME

Studio Practice

At the recommendation of a friend I attempt 20 minutes of Qi-Gong.I smile at and shake my brain. I repel the monkey – smoothing down the inside of my forearms and Play Ball with the Lion, moulding and pulsing Chi between my hands. Marisa from YouTube reminds me to stand still, be inside my body and be present,  and I think all the contemporary dance classes I’ve ever taken feel like this.

Reading 

Reading and re-reading, underlining Giulia’s text below.

On_coexisting_mending_and_imagining_note