PART 2
EXPLORATION DATE: 10.10.2022
FOCUS/PRACTICE: Conversation-as-Material (I) as a shared practice. The focus of this conversation practice was the preceding period of exploration (June 2022 - October 2022).
STRUCTURE OF PRACTICE
Speaker is not visible (masks camera with tape), listener has back turned, active listening.
1. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]
2. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each]
3. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [10 mins each]
4. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [10 mins each]
5. Speaking/listening: taking turns facing [5 mins each}
'SCORE' FOR CONVERSATION PRACTICE
- Take a moment to tune into the chosen object/focus of exploration – this could involve a period of recollection, or looking back at notes, sketches, wordings that relate to the object/focus of exploration, or by noting/drawing/diagramming.
- Connect and try to stay connected with your direct experience.
- Feel free to speak before knowing what it is that you want to say – thinking through speaking.
- Feel free to speak in single words, partial phrases, half sentences, and thought fragments.
- Allow for vulnerability and embarrassment – for wrestling with, stumbling and falling over one’s words.
- Consider different speeds and rhythms. Allow for silence.
- Approach listening to the other as an aesthetic practice.
Hmm. It feels like a long time ago. I suppose what’s immediate in my mind perhaps is that shift from the fieldwork we’d been doing and our conversations, well I suppose its two things and I’m thinking of the workshop. And designing what kinds of things that we had been doing, designing then a workshop, well a short workshop, I just found that quite interesting the things we had been doing and experiencing and then in a way having to or thinking about our own experience and translating that into a simple exercise or entry point for other people, who we didn’t know. That felt quite a leap of - I suppose well, I do remember feeling nervous and it was scary, thinking that these are quite obvious things we were doing, that people will know or recognise or they’ll be familiar but I suppose the dorsal framing that, it did create a way through. Partly I was quite nervous in that beginning and improvising and feeling I was in the midst of it so I can’t quite remember some of the details of it, I remember stumbling out the other side and passing over and really enjoying that part of it and talking to you later and to you, trusting that the first part had brought people somewhere. It felt like the attention in the room, yes there was a lot of attention and quietness and curiosity from people A real sort willingness to enter the material and put themselves in it. I didn’t feel they had any big expectation from us. People were very present and willing to independently enter that space - and with each other. I had a feeling that there was a kind of value and special atmosphere that got created. And yet, this passing over to you and then joining the participants as a participant, I really enjoyed - you took us through that next part. And also I can’t quite describe it, something about having these two voices, so there might be something that I or you might have thought to do but the other one is doing or saying it, this is sort of reflecting on how we’ve been giving things back and forth to each other or taking things on board from each other. Reflected in how we passed over in the workshop. And it was a short workshop, I’m thinking with a longer time this passing back and forth could be more developed. It was perfect for that situation, but I feel a longer workshop or a longer working period time or even a few days a researching together with other people, it gave us an insight into other possibilities I think. I loved working with other people and it reminded me how lovely it is to offer and receive and to get kind of feedback or sharing of what you have experienced and others have experienced. To share vocabularies.
It’s kind of weird, I’ve got my eyes closed as you’re talking and I can really visualise being in the room and I think the thing well one of the things, I take strongest from it was just something about the light. It almost feels filmic when I think about it in some ways because it felt like the light had this greyish purplish tinge to it and all the saturation of colour had dropped away and I just remember us being in the room and I don’t think it was but it just felt like there was a real sense of quiet had dropped into our practice. So if I think about the experience of it that’s the first recollection or memory that comes from it somehow, that
there were all these different bodies in the room. And there was a kind of, well it is in the frame of conference and there is a certain energetic dimension anyway, but it felt like it dropped into a very quiet, quite slow register of awareness or engagement and as a memory I can vividly recall I think lying on the floor when you were talking us through or inviting certain movement practice, and then I think maybe I had my eyes closed and just for one moment opening my eyes and just seeing all these other people moving in the room but in really different ways and that kind of joy actually or surprise that the same invitation was giving rise to all different ways of moving and responding in the space. And even those movements that felt even expressive or were more dynamic in movement there was this slow quiet to them and this kind of purply grey low dusky light that was in the space. Very beautiful actually, is my memory of it. And I think in that sense, a bit of the contrast between thinking about it, preparing for it and then the doing of it. Maybe in the preparation there was this apprehension of sharing something and I think for me also sharing something, I don’t know whether I feel like inexperienced but certainly it’s not a comfort zone in the sense of workshop or a movement-based workshop. So, there was some apprehension. I and yes, really enjoyed, maybe it is that two voices of really being able to let go a little into the experience that you were initially guiding us into and feeling quite supported in that.
Maybe one of the things I noticed actually and maybe that’s the tendency of the writerly dimension of my practice is that I am much more familiar or comfortable with kind of organising ideas or words on the page or even structuring the sense of something. And less perhaps about this the organisation of those practices in the body as something that’s quite embodied. So, I was really struck by the way that you were improvising actually and drawing these instructions and invitations into the space in an improvised way. It seemed as if it was very much coming from a sense of your practice, of really inhabiting these ideas and ways of working. It’s an interesting difference actually, I think some of it is not through fully inhabiting that myself but I think there’s also something about just being interested in the words as much as practice somehow.
I’m very glad that you were talking about the space and the light because, yes in a way I was talking from that image in my mind. Its almost taken for granted that the image … but you speaking it out like it really doesn’t run over it, yes, that was a first thing, that was the first, that is a thing that light, that time of day, that we had to try to make that space to come into or own it for a couple of hours and the decision-making, trying to have it later in the day. And a kind of bareness to that space, yes that was very special. Yes I suppose it reminds me too, sometimes it’s good to start, yes it’s good to start at the beginning, walk into the space before anything else or anyone else. And actually how much influence that has on or can change or has to adapt the plan. I was thinking when you were saying about improvising that first part, it’s interesting that I’ve been noticing recently as well if I start to do something and think oh that’s interesting and I start to think oh I’ll do that again and a plan emerges, it collapses in on me, it just loses anything, so its interesting there’s something about being in the physical space and the different energies of the people, in a way I kind of….I don’t know if it’s a necessary thing. It’s a way to do it. To manage those things. You have a plan and at the same time you are trying feel what is the space what are these people what feels like an interesting or a good way to go now. Maybe to be prepared to drop something or shift something. There’s a kind of, when you are on your own and doing a task its easier, it’s easier to do that when you are on your own, sense is being made, there’s a permission to do that but with other people it’s a bit more complicated. You put a proposal into the space and you don’t know how it will be received. There’s a kind of risk. Maybe being in the space with those people and that sense that we weren’t quite sure what was going to happen, there was edges of the risk and the finding a way through, in a very short time, the short time puts a kind of zzzumm edge into the space, there’s a way through, that you have to follow, commit through maybe. I’m slightly rambling here. You mentioning the space, it put me back into that sense of being in a space with other people and negotiating with what’s happening to oneself and imagining what might be happening to others.
Yes as you’re talking I’m trying to reflect back to the moments before the workshop and even this sense of, I don’t know a kind of tension or pull between the principles of dorsal practising and being in situations where I feel quite uncomfortable or a sense of trepidation and maybe also recognising I think one of the habits I try or I am trying to work with is that in those uncertain situations my habit might be to lean into it more, even to try and control it a bit more and just really recalling, well not only how difficult it was to do that but that it was so antagonistic or opposite to the aspirations of dorsal practising, so this real sense of being receptive to what might arise and yes, this sense of control actually I think is very interesting, I was trying to think of a context recently that’s come up around control and it was to do with neither being in control nor being out of control and these parameters of and there are these two extremes, one being in control and one of being completely out of control. And that there’s this space in the middle maybe of cooperation or participation that is neither in control nor out of control. And this feels like a big working ground in my own practice to edge into this middle space of trust I think it is, I think a sense of trust and vulnerability that feels very active there. And I guess I’m thinking about this sense of leading the workshop or facilitating the workshop and what it means to do that from a dorsal perspective. To lead dorsally just feels such a nice idea. I think you were saying you’re kind of entering the space backwards. Not knowing, I almost feel as if as facilitators we were falling back into it and just hoping that the group would catch us in a way or that they would respond to that gesture in a very physical sense. But that does feel like a very alien way of working but it is a way of working I’d like to practice more and more because it’s so liberating actually, it really is so liberating to be able to place faith in the materials and the practice and in the sharing of a practice and trust I think that …. you know we’ve been working with this for some time and there’s I really think a richness to it and trust that that it will be communicable and shareable, and other people might also find it enriching. And to almost leave it like that and make a space for people to also, I suppose it’s like the opposite of transmission in a way, it’s really holding a space open in such a way that people might encounter in a very short time some of our experiments in a sense. I think that willingness to enter that kind of space feels also very risky in the context of something like a conference and also in the context of working with individuals who have already strong or sustained somatic practices. It wasn’t to do with a communication or transmission of a technique or a method or anything like that in a sense although there were some dimensions of that.
I am immediately very full. My mind is sort of pulling me back there but also racing ahead.
Something you said about – umm, I think good to refer back to the space or to refer back to some of the vocabularies – the idea of entering the space backwards as a way of, not as a method or technique but its interesting to think of how to lead a workshop backwards, how to facilitate something, umm, yes, how to facilitate rather than, a situation of how to explore things in a dorsal way. Something in what you are saying that leading a workshop doesn’t mean you are in control the whole time, doesn’t mean you know what’s going to happen. I’ve slightly lost the thread but there’s something very interesting I think in reflecting back on how you might lead something - with some of the same ideas of the practice itself. In a way I’m only re-iterating here what you said, but it kind of struck me as something, well I suppose what it brought up in me was oh yes, that’s interesting, it makes me want to try again, my mind leapt ahead, oh where could we do that again? Maybe there’s also in what you were saying about there’s a kind of risk to work like that in a situation like a conference, but I’m thinking what’s interesting in the way we have worked and you bringing a linguistic knowledge, or curiosity or familiarity and ways of working with language, means there is a vocabulary around it, there are words, not necessarily talking about it, but ways of connecting ideas or connecting experiences to wider ideas or other experiences. For me at this stage this stays really interesting this moving back and forth from the body and talking and transcribing and these different ways of talking and what the conversation brings and what the body brings. It felt like a nice timing that we were able to share that with people and feel there was a kind of richness, a real field of exploration to dive into. I am thinking now, my mind jumping, that when we were doing the reading and all the different things that came up with that as well, from setting up the space, maybe linking with one of the things you were saying, not control but how to frame the reading, setting up the tables, the papers, it’s very interesting how there are these frames and tables and ways of doing something that can then hold the improvisational. My sense of the performance is a bit if a blur. I was so aware that I had no sense of time and it felt that there was one too many things that I had to take attention of and feeling grateful and happy that you were dealing with the measured time. It’s a kind of practice and that we went into without quite knowing what would happen. I was incredibly surprised, almost funny, this being lost in time, and realising there was something I couldn’t quite manage to do, having to stay alert, pick up cues. And then the actual experience of the umm I like this sense, there was a sense of performativity to it and at the same time having to concentrate so much on what was happening. There I did feel slightly out of control, in a good way probably, because its almost like the tables and the way we had set it up was holding this sense of not quite knowing where this is going, working within the parameters, was very interesting to do. And having an audience there, or listeners, creates a very, yes that attention in the room, that listening attention in the room, I hadn’t really done something like that before, not really. And the idea of listening, and yes a willingness from the people who came to listen, but then also like this one man who started to move. It is in a situation in which people are independently working through their own ideas and are very generous. At the same time, it makes me wonder, if there was a kind of permission for everyone to sink in, maybe at first the expectation of something is going to start and then maybe a feeling of oh, this is it, this is how it’s going to go on. That’s quite exciting. Maybe that’s also a trust. That this is the practice, and this is what we are going to be doing for this amount of time. From my own point of view as a performer and working with words, I greatly enjoyed the idea of reading and exploring this mix of, something around the voicing, the reading and the speaking, reading speaking and listening, something in there, we have spoken about that before how to voice things and listen to things at the same time. Reading, voicing and listening.
Really interesting how vivid the memory comes back as you’re talking about it and actually the transition from the workshop into the performance reading or the practice of reading, kind of strange that in my memory its almost as if the two things happened in the same time and space and they didn’t at all but it feels as if they somehow did, that one seamlessly went into the other. Something about, in terms of the reading practice, maybe I could feel it being more of a dorsal practice, because I felt more at ease in it in some kind of way, yes maybe this is an interesting sort of exploration between ease and uncertainty or discomfort within the sense of dorsal practising because it feels as if both of those things are somehow necessary, there is a level of the unknown or the uncertain or even the unfamiliar, what was a necessary place for ease and comfort and being relaxed in that. Maybe actually and is it possible to find a space to feel very relaxed in a space of uncertainty of something or if not very relaxed at least edging towards relaxing into the uncertainty. And although I work with language, I would say my practice is very language based, often the way I’ve used language is in quite a controlled way in some sense, I think of the way I write it’s very constructed, I suppose really, laboured even in that sense, so it feels a real opening, to find ways of working with language in a way that is very live and improvised. But actually, the thing about the improvisation is it leans on this rich archive of materials that we have. So I think it’s not about, there is nothing, the improvisation isn’t a kind of expressive improvisation that is live in the moment. So there’s something, even quite conceptual about it. It’s a very weird kind of practice in some ways, because on the one hand there is all of that openness and uncertainty and not knowing what’s going to happen but on the other hand there is quite particular frames in terms of the time, the source material, the score - and I am interested in this relationship between these two dimensions I think in a way - the wildness of it is somehow held, I don’t think its controlled but a space is held open for this kind of getting lost or just not knowing what’s going to happen, but the fact we are resting on materials, yes, this idea of resting upon materials, or being able to lean on materials just feels a really strong dimension of it. That on the one hand it’s completely unpredictable, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but on the other hand it really rests on this richness of what’s come before from conversation so I feel very, I almost want to say safe, actually is the word coming to mind, but I don’t mean like comfortable, like I know what’s going to happen here but more like I can take the risk and I think it was quite risky, it was an hour reading where we don’t know what the content is going to be. There is a rhythm and speed to it also in some senses. But I think the structure also enabled that sense there could even have been long gaps, and this was fine, and I can’t think of many situations of presentation that are like that actually, that could handle even this not finding the next words and it could even have been for some minutes and it probably could have managed that whereas in another kind of presentation this would have seemed completely not possible to be able to inhabit those moments of not quite knowing what’s going to come next. Maybe that sense of this release or relief or like a kind of slight liberation of that comes through. If I compare it to other kinds of performative reading or presentation, which can be very frontal, you know, it can be very frontal there was something in this about, I kind of feel almost like stepping into a river in a way once it started, we’d stepped into this space and time was passing and words were being spoken and it was just unfolding in a way. And that we knew that this would unfold until it stopped, and we were just in it, sort of, and kind of almost like letting go into or surrendering into the structure of that score in a sense but always having that tether point of material to rest upon in some kind of way. And maybe that sense of the coming back to single words I find it’s like there isn’t a demand for sense making in a conventional rational sense so that sense of being able to voice or use language where the prerequisites for sense or for logic or for argument or for clarity of something unfolding weren’t important principles within this but somehow there was a sense making - we were saying these lines which chronologically might have had no relationship to one another temporally, they may not even have been in the same time frame to begin with and yet there was this capacity for sense making arising, simply through this bringing together of fragments but that this organisation of sense isn’t grammatical or logical, or, it sort of finds its own sense somehow and that sense feels very on the one hand poetic but it just feels as if it comes from a very strong sense of embodied connection to the text, to listening, to the space. It almost feels more sense-ful than a more like rational way of giving language expression to experience. And I think that came through strongest again, also maybe when the moments when the pressure of performance or self-consciousness of performance dropped a little bit, and it was possible to enter this flow of exchange and sense making, like the river of words somehow. And somehow just helping facilitate that flow of language rather than me speaking and you speaking, somehow just being vehicles through which to let the language arise. Funnily enough I am thinking as we’re talking a lot about Cool and Balducci’s work whose work I like a lot and that idea of duration. I think as you were talking I was getting really excited and trying to stay present about ooh all these other possibilities and one of them being this very durational kind of voicing or reading where we might do this for some time and then stop and then come back and then stop and it might even unfold over hours somehow, that this relationship between the actual movement practices and voicing practices might actually become much more seamless and the one flows into the other over a really long period of time. And this sense of a positive exhaustion somehow.
It's hard not to, not to jump ahead, I can feel a really strong senses of, well I suppose just being curious to try some things again or this idea of duration or to have a situation or a space for a number of days, it would be a very interesting experiment, and a different situation, this idea of working with a longer period of time would be an interesting development of taking the materials and ways of working, it would really shift something, or I’d be very curious what would happen, what could happen, or what that might be, and yes how, what would happen whether things would continue to unfold, or totally exhaust or totally transform. Hmm. I was thinking again also of this sense of having other people there, drawing back on ideas about having witnesses or audience and what that generates in a space. It creates these other energies when someone is witnessing or listening, there’s that feedback loop knowing that someone is listening creates a certain, well not necessarily a tension, but also in a way it keeps something alive, or keeps you curious, or keeps giving you permission to be there, and to continue, whereas practising on your own how there’s a different sense of how do you keep, how do you stay present and alive in a situation. That is a practice in itself when you’re working on your own and there are different ways of doing that but it’s harder, so there is something around having other people, or other, other people in fact, because when you are working on your own there are other noises and sounds and there are other things around or movements, but having other people there as witnesses, that’s very interesting how you get a different kind of feedbacking or sense of what you are doing or how you are present and a very heightened sense of, if I think about what we are doing, the uncertainty and unknown and the sense of feeling lost but in a way or you called it safe or this idea being held by a simple structure and the materials but also being lost perhaps in something that is also a curiosity, that is curious and interested in being there and finding out what will happen. I think for me I am wondering also, I’d be curious in duration, if I would, umm or these multiple ways of being present or the different activities that are happening simultaneously and how to navigate and negotiate or how many focusses can one hold or a kind perhaps of suppleness or agility in being able to shift from reading to talking to noticing to listening. I’m wondering over a period of time what might happen with that, that what feels almost overwhelming might become familiar so that overwhelming becomes a kind of familiarity of having to navigate these different modes of listening or speaking or keeping time or losing time. It's nice this image of the river. I suppose I can’t help but have the sea in my mind, because when you’re in the sea, the sea is just very very big and you have to just bob and be lifted and the timing, somehow follow the timing of the sea- or the river- that you’re in and knowing then how to navigate the different currents or the swell. Because we are so often with a sense of the feet firmly on the ground and wanting a sense of grounded-ness but maybe there is something about this sense of these bodies of water that are more immersive I suppose, which feels closer to a sense of when you are either immersed or involved or performing in an overwhelming situation, where its all around you and in you and in that whole space. Yes immersion, an immersed situation for everybody, mostly for us, because as a listener, its clearer you are there and you are going to listen and see what happens, although it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s also something about these decisions of having the back to the audience, something very particular about that, this sense of someone seeing you from behind, I find that quite… in that time …well I was very aware of it, it felt quite simple but very poignant and also interesting, interesting because in a way even when facing them I was kind of too busy reading and they were a kind of blurry presence in the front of me. Oh maybe similar to this, having my back to the audience actually did relieve me of my face being seen, or where the sounds coming out of my mouth were not being seen, even my scanning, all that activity was being seen, witnessed from behind. There’s a kind of strong performativity to that, I can’t quite place it. as though I was outside of myself, no that’s not right. It felt like a very strong physical situation to be in. It really opened up my back. I was actually more aware of them in a way behind me, as a body of people behind me than when I was actually facing the other way. Maybe this whole back the whole surface, the body could somehow, I suppose with the back we’re all facing the same way, audience were facing the same way as me, so it maybe includes everyone in a different kind of way, and then similar perhaps to what you were saying, the activity, the words, there’re passing through and are almost a separate thing from the body that could be picked up on.
This sense of different in which we are liberated from this forward facing and frontal facing and I think here this taping actually it has a quality of that but in a very different way. With you describing us with both of our backs to the other people in the space, there’s something about some point in the reading where it felt less and less like speaking-to and more and more, what did it feel like, it felt less and less like a presentation as if we were communicating something to a group of people or audience and more and more like we were practising something and they were witnesses to that and in a sense more and more like passing time or spending time and sharing time together through an activity that was unfolding and requiring some kind of durational engagement with it. I think I was quite struck by what some one was saying about this sense of, to begin with, recognising or getting a sense of the kind of the physical dimension of what we were describing. So these arcs in the reading where there was this kind of grounding, through this invocation I suppose of lying down and a languaging of lying down and then they were saying that at some point they realised that this was going to continue for some time and that their mode of engagement had to change quite dramatically in a way, perhaps from even listening to, yes, what is the mode of listening in this kind of sharing I wonder? I’d be curious what that experiential shift was like for that person where there’s this recognition of ahh this is something different here, and I need to change my way of engaging with it or I need to drop into this in a different kind of way. Or even for the person who decided they needed to get up and move or dance. I’m curious in the sense of how was that recognition in experience, and what happened to them when they went oh okay this is calling for a different kind of listening, a different kind of engaging. A different kind of speaking, a different kind of communication actually I think. It felt like there was something, maybe it sounds a bit over inflated even but somehow dropping into a slightly different register of sense, and interesting that you were talking about the temporal coordinates feeling quite slippery. I think there was that sense, I don’t know if it comes from this sense of circularity or this repeating, or you know, we’re working with texts that do have a linear unfolding to them but the way we’re engaging with them is in a highly non-linear way, its fragmentary, its looping, its returning, sometimes saying again and again. So it does something maybe temporally with the material itself and I wonder if that contributes to this sense of like temporal confusion, or loopiness of time, almost a bit dreamy in a way. It’s making me think of, there are these yoga nidra practices, what does nidra mean, like dream, like visualisation practice just on this edge of sleepiness or dreaming which is a very heightened moment also where it’s quite clear that it has one foot in the awake world but maybe another foot in quite a different dimension somehow and that its form of sense is hovering between these two different realms in some kind a way. Maybe that is something that is this non-linear, the looping, the returning, a structure that is born from quite a different sense of system in a way. I am visualising well I can’t visualise, because it wasn’t there, I don’t know what this it would be to really feel the felt sense of the people behind us and afterwards learning that they were moving, lying down. That this audience was very dynamic, quiet, quietly dynamic, I think this is just very beautiful, I’d love to well I don’t if I would, or I don’t think it would be possible to visualise or film because I think the feeling of it is bigger than the visual. This is interesting. The felt sense of this as an experience was really powerful or even the felt memory of doing something then later knowing there was all this activity happening behind us, softly, quite quietly, or this moving. And then I feel this pull of a desire to try and document or capture it in some way. Like a desire that it is more than this ephemeral felt experience. That somehow if only we could have documented this or filmed this, but I don’t know how we could do that because I don’t know that its documentable in some senses because it feels as if it was so much this atmospheric felt tangible commitment that was making the event, not what it looked even so much, perhaps not even what it sounded like but somehow this shared field of attention which just eludes, slips away from any kind of attempt to document it. But I can feel this kind of wrestle in myself between knowing that that experience resists documentation but at the same time wanting to keep it in some kind of way, or evidence it or share it again or have a remainder of it in some sense. And knowing how it would almost, like the same if we were filming the workshop, I’m sure if you looked at the documentation it would be nothing like the feeling of inside of it, so this sense of inside of an experience and the intensity of this insideness that feels very strong actually, this insideness of a practice actually which maybe does resist certain kinds of more conventional forms of sharing. I’m thinking with another project I’ve been working on the matter of how to publish and share practices has been quite a strong question. Even like where is the practice, and can it be shared in any other way than through the encounter with the practice itself. Can you only ever share artefacts or documents or the actual doing, is it reliant on the experiential encounter with the practice? Or is there a possibility of sharing with wider audiences beyond that? I’m thinking a lot about film practices, they’re on my mind, this kind of atmospheric poetic possibility of working with a camera in some kind sense, like almost like another form that would get close perhaps.
Oh. I am still in listening mode. One small residue of what you were saying, how the people, how the audience, gently dynamic, working it out for themselves behind us. There’s also a sense of this shift you were talking about from performance, the word that came up was invitation, an invitation for an audience to be part of what was happening, rather than to be witnessing it in this more traditional sense of things are being delivered for me to consume, but more of a way of ah yes, okay, we’re all here actually now and we are all part it, we’re part of that situation, the immersion perhaps. There’s something very interesting when you can set something up that creates a situation to be part of rather than confront someone with a laid-out table. I don’t know, well, I appreciate that when I can enter into something and be part of it, yes, bring myself to it or in any kind of way really. Reflecting a little bit back on what you were saying about documentation, there’s also something in me that thinks oh what a shame, what a pity, and there are some things, very simple things we could have done, where we could have got someone for example to take a photo of us both at the table, sitting with our backs to the camera, but again this is only a documentation. Well they give a window, a taste of an idea that the work holds. Or even the sense of. We could have recorded our voice and transcribed that I don’t know we could have done but in that situation we didn’t know. How can you, you cannot record everything, every aspect, all the experience in one medium. You almost need to piece together something and as you say perhaps there is another way, not the thing itself but something else, well maybe its not even a document, but could share something of the practice. Or another medium, this idea of sound or radio, different formats. What might that be, what kinds of things might be able to share, and that can sometimes be a single image or a small conversation, or maybe is something that is durational in itself, maybe that’s a way, not so much documenting but a different way of sharing something, maybe it does have to be experienced, now I’m rambling too. While you were talking, drifting into rivers and seas, I’m still looking at these pictures on my wall and these whales and other sea creatures and you talking of this filmic or other way …
There are so many moments that feel really strong in memory. And not that it is continuous but somehow you have these episodes or moments. One of the moments was actually, it was when, it was in the workshop when we moved from a series of movement practices into a conversation practice and people paired with one another and were sat back to back, and this invitation to, I’m not even sure how to describe it, because it’s not quite conversation in a way, but this voicing, I think we were sort of saying almost like you were speaking to yourself and with the other person listening is witnessing that. And I think you were with somebody, and I think I was the only person not witnessing and providing some invitations or prompts. And just the sound in the room was really amazing actually, this low level of communication or this voicing, that was just between one person and another person but together when there were several pairs in the room, it was just this making of a kind of murmering, a sharing and witnessing, this shared language, of a very particular shared direct experience, and yes something in that about this intensity of shared experience but also singularity of experience within that, the sort of shared and the singular felt really present at that point. And all of the different ways that individuals voiced these very particular embodied direct experiences in their own words but at the same time not actually being able to hear any of the words, so there’s something curious in some of this practice, about language functioning or operating in a different kind of way to communication of information, I mean almost like, I don’t know how to say it, almost like, pure communication again doesn’t feel quite right, but there was this intensity of languaging but it wasn’t really to do with the specific things that the words were saying. As a witness in that space, you could hear this background noise of sharing and maybe some fragments of things. Maybe this is quite oceanic, like watery, this watery fluid sense of language and certain words and phrases popping up to the surface and disappearing again. But just a very different way of languaging actually that’s not to do with clarity as such, but more to do with, I don’t know really, like it feels closer to blood, or breath of fluid or some other sense, an expression of aliveness through language but it’s not to do with the meaning of the words necessarily, but the contact between the words and the experience being the most important thing. And the kind of fogginess or fuzziness or like the opacity within that, I feel like a milky, the colour was like a translucent milky glass kind of colour that you can just about see though but it’s kind of hazy, and not quite opaque, this not quite opaque dimension feels interesting somehow, a kind of in-between state of sense making that is neither clear nor opaque but somehow in this zone inbetween, but greyish, murky greyish milky.
It felt like the attention in the room, yes there was a lot of attention and quietness and curiosity from people A real sort willingness to enter the material and put themselves in it. I didn’t feel they had any big expectation from us. People were very present and willing to independently enter that space - and with each other. And also I can’t quite describe it, something about having these two voices, so there might be something that I or you might have thought to do but the other one is doing or saying it, this is sort of reflecting on how we’ve been giving things back and forth to each other or taking things on board from each other. Reflected in how we passed over in the workshop. And it was a short workshop, I’m thinking with a longer time this passing back and forth could be more developed. It was perfect for that situation, but I feel a longer workshop or a longer working period time or even a few days a researching together with other people, it gave us an insight into other possibilities I think. I loved working with other people and it reminded me how lovely it is to offer and receive and to get kind of feedback or sharing of what you have experienced and others have experienced. To share vocabularies.
It’s kind of weird, I’ve got my eyes closed as you’re talking and I can really visualise being in the room and I think the thing well one of the things, I take strongest from it was just something about the light. It almost feels filmic when I think about it in some ways because it felt like the light had this greyish purplish tinge to it and all the saturation of colour had dropped away and I just remember us being in the room and I don’t think it was but it just felt like there was a real sense of quiet had dropped into our practice. There were all these different bodies in the room. There is a certain energetic dimension. It felt like it dropped into a very quiet, quite slow register of awareness or engagement and as a memory I can vividly recall I think lying on the floor when you were talking us through or inviting certain movement practice, and then I think maybe I had my eyes closed and just for one moment opening my eyes and just seeing all these other people moving in the room but in really different ways and that kind of joy actually or surprise that the same invitation was giving rise to all different ways of moving and responding in the space. And even those movements that felt even expressive or were more dynamic in movement there was this slow quiet to them and this kind of purply grey low dusky light that was in the space. Very beautiful actually, is my memory of it. There was some apprehension.
Maybe one of the things I noticed actually and maybe that’s the tendency of the writerly dimension of my practice is that I am much more familiar or comfortable with kind of organising ideas or words on the page or even structuring the sense of something. And less perhaps about this the organisation of those practices in the body as something that’s quite embodied. So, I was really struck by the way that you were improvising actually and drawing these instructions and invitations into the space in an improvised way. It seemed as if it was very much coming from a sense of your practice, of really inhabiting these ideas and ways of working. It’s an interesting difference actually. I think there’s also something about just being interested in the words as much as practice somehow.
I’m very glad that you were talking about the space and the light because, yes in a way I was talking from that image in my mind.That light, that time of day, that we had to try to make that space to come into. And a kind of bareness to that space, yes that was very special. Yes I suppose it reminds me too, sometimes it’s good to start, yes it’s good to start at the beginning, walk into the space before anything else or anyone else. And actually how much influence that has on or can change or has to adapt the plan. There’s something about being in the physical space and the different energies. You have a plan and at the same time you are trying feel what is the space what are these people what feels like an interesting or a good way to go now. Maybe to be prepared to drop something or shift something. There’s a kind of, when you are on your own and doing a task its easier, it’s easier to do that when you are on your own, sense is being made, there’s a permission to do that but with other people it’s a bit more complicated. You put a proposal into the space and you don’t know how it will be received. There’s a kind of risk. Maybe being in the space with those people and that sense that we weren’t quite sure what was going to happen, there was edges of the risk and the finding a way through, in a very short time, the short time puts a kind of zzzumm edge into the space, there’s a way through, that you have to follow, commit through maybe. Being in a space with other people and negotiating with what’s happening to oneself and imagining what might be happening to others.
One of the habits I try or I am trying to work with is that in those uncertain situations my habit might be to lean into it more, even to try and control it a bit more and just really recalling, how difficult it was to do that but that it was so antagonistic or opposite to the aspirations of dorsal practising, so this real sense of being receptive to what might arise. I was trying to think of a context recently that’s come up around control and it was to do with neither being in control nor being out of control and these parameters of and there are these two extremes, one being in control and one of being completely out of control. And that there’s this space in the middle maybe of cooperation or participation that is neither in control nor out of control. And this feels like a big working ground in my own practice to edge into this middle space of trust I think it is, I think a sense of trust and vulnerability that feels very active there. And I guess I’m thinking about this sense of leading the workshop or facilitating the workshop and what it means to do that from a dorsal perspective. To lead dorsally just feels such a nice idea. I think you were saying you’re kind of entering the space backwards. Not knowing, I almost feel as if as facilitators we were falling back into it and just hoping that the group would catch us in a way or that they would respond to that gesture in a very physical sense. But that does feel like a very alien way of working but it is a way of working I’d like to practice more and more because it’s so liberating actually, it really is so liberating to be able to place faith in the materials and the practice and in the sharing of a practice and trust I think that …. you know we’ve been working with this for some time and there’s I really think a richness to it and trust that that it will be communicable and shareable, and other people might also find it enriching. It’s like the opposite of transmission in a way, it’s really holding a space open in such a way that people might encounter in a very short time some of our experiments in a sense. That willingness to enter that kind of space feels also very risky. It wasn’t to do with a communication or transmission of a technique or a method or anything like that in a sense although there were some dimensions of that.
My mind is sort of pulling me back there but also racing ahead.
To refer back to the space or to refer back to some of the vocabularies – the idea of entering the space backwards as a way of, not as a method or technique but its interesting to think of how to lead a workshop backwards, how to facilitate something, how to facilitate rather than, a situation of how to explore things in a dorsal way. Something in what you are saying that leading a workshop doesn’t mean you are in control, doesn’t mean you know what’s going to happen. Reflecting back on how you might lead something - with some of the same ideas of the practice itself.
But I’m thinking what’s interesting in the way we have worked and you bringing a linguistic knowledge, or curiosity or familiarity and ways of working with language, means there is a vocabulary around it, there are words, not necessarily talking about it, but ways of connecting ideas or connecting experiences to wider ideas or other experiences. For me at this stage this stays really interesting this moving back and forth from the body and talking and transcribing and these different ways of talking and what the conversation brings and what the body brings. It felt like a nice timing that we were able to share that with people and feel there was a kind of richness, a real field of exploration to dive into. Not control but how to frame, setting up, there are these frames and ways of doing something that can then hold the improvisational.
It’s a kind of practice and that we went into without quite knowing what would happen. I was incredibly surprised, almost funny, this being lost in time, and realising there was something I couldn’t quite manage to do, having to stay alert, pick up cues. And then the actual experience of the umm I like this sense, there was a sense of performativity to it and at the same time having to concentrate so much on what was happening. There I did feel slightly out of control, in a good way probably, because its almost like the tables and the way we had set it up was holding this sense of not quite knowing where this is going, working within the parameters, was very interesting to do. And having an audience there, or listeners, creates a very, yes that attention in the room. At the same time, it makes me wonder, if there was a kind of permission for everyone to sink in, maybe at first the expectation of something is going to start and then maybe a feeling of oh, this is it, this is how it’s going to go on. That’s quite exciting. Maybe that’s also a trust. That this is the practice, and this is what we are going to be doing for this amount of time. Something around the voicing, the reading and the speaking, reading speaking and listening, something in there, we have spoken about that before how to voice things and listen to things at the same time. Reading, voicing and listening.
Really interesting how vivid the memory comes back as you’re talking about it and actually the transition from the workshop into the performance reading or the practice of reading, kind of strange that in my memory its almost as if the two things happened in the same time and space and they didn’t at all but it feels as if they somehow did, that one seamlessly went into the other. Something about, in terms of the reading practice, maybe I could feel it being more of a dorsal practice, because I felt more at ease in it in some kind of way, yes maybe this is an interesting sort of exploration between ease and uncertainty or discomfort within the sense of dorsal practising because it feels as if both of those things are somehow necessary, there is a level of the unknown or the uncertain or even the unfamiliar, what was a necessary place for ease and comfort and being relaxed in that. Maybe actually and is it possible to find a space to feel very relaxed in a space of uncertainty of something or if not very relaxed at least edging towards relaxing into the uncertainty. It feels a real opening, to find ways of working with language in a way that is very live and improvised. The thing about the improvisation is it leans on this rich archive of materials that we have. The improvisation isn’t a kind of expressive improvisation that is live in the moment. So there’s something, even quite conceptual about it. It’s a very weird kind of practice in some ways, because on the one hand there is all of that openness and uncertainty and not knowing what’s going to happen but on the other hand there is quite particular frames in terms of the time, the source material, the score - and I am interested in this relationship between these two dimensions I think in a way - the wildness of it is somehow held, I don’t think its controlled but a space is held open for this kind of getting lost or just not knowing what’s going to happen, but the fact we are resting on materials, yes, this idea of resting upon materials, or being able to lean on materials just feels a really strong dimension of it. That on the one hand it’s completely unpredictable, I don’t know what’s going to happen, but on the other hand it really rests on this richness of what’s come before from conversation so I feel very, I almost want to say safe, actually is the word coming to mind, but I don’t mean like comfortable. It was an hour reading where we don’t know what the content is going to be. There is a rhythm and speed to it also in some senses. But I think the structure also enabled that sense there could even have been long gaps, and this was fine, and I can’t think of many situations of presentation that are like that actually, that could handle even this not finding the next words and it could even have been for some minutes and it probably could have managed that whereas in another kind of presentation this would have seemed completely not possible to be able to inhabit those moments of not quite knowing what’s going to come next. Maybe that sense of this release or relief or like a kind of slight liberation of that comes through. If I compare it to other kinds of performative reading or presentation, which can be very frontal, you know, it can be very frontal there was something in this about, I kind of feel almost like stepping into a river in a way once it started, we’d stepped into this space and time was passing and words were being spoken and it was just unfolding in a way. And that we knew that this would unfold until it stopped, and we were just in it, sort of, and kind of almost like letting go into or surrendering into the structure of that score in a sense but always having that tether point of material to rest upon in some kind of way. And maybe that sense of the coming back to single words I find it’s like there isn’t a demand for sense making in a conventional rational sense so that sense of being able to voice or use language where the prerequisites for sense or for logic or for argument or for clarity of something unfolding weren’t important principles within this but somehow there was a sense making - we were saying these lines which chronologically might have had no relationship to one another temporally, they may not even have been in the same time frame to begin with and yet there was this capacity for sense making arising, simply through this bringing together of fragments but that this organisation of sense isn’t grammatical or logical, or, it sort of finds its own sense somehow and that sense feels very on the one hand poetic but it just feels as if it comes from a very strong sense of embodied connection to the text, to listening, to the space. It almost feels more sense-ful than a more like rational way of giving language expression to experience. And it was possible to enter this flow of exchange and sense making, like the river of words. Just being vehicles through which to let the language arise. I think as you were talking I was getting really excited and trying to stay present about ooh all these other possibilities and one of them being this very durational kind of voicing or reading where we might do this for some time and then stop and then come back and then stop and it might even unfold over hours somehow, that this relationship between the actual movement practices and voicing practices might actually become much more seamless and the one flows into the other over a really long period of time. And this sense of a positive exhaustion somehow.
This idea of working with a longer period of time would be an interesting development of taking the materials and ways of working, it would really shift something, or I’d be very curious what would happen, what could happen, or what that might be, and yes how, what would happen whether things would continue to unfold, or totally exhaust or totally transform. Ideas about having witnesses or audience and what that generates in a space. It creates these other energies when someone is witnessing or listening, there’s that feedback loop knowing that someone is listening creates a certain, well not necessarily a tension, but also in a way it keeps something alive, or keeps you curious, or keeps giving you permission to be there, and to continue, whereas practising on your own how there’s a different sense of how do you keep, how do you stay present and alive in a situation. How you get a different kind of feedbacking or sense of what you are doing or how you are present and a very heightened sense of, if I think about what we are doing, the uncertainty and unknown and the sense of feeling lost but in a way or you called it safe or this idea being held by a simple structure and the materials but also being lost perhaps in something that is also a curiosity, that is curious and interested in being there and finding out what will happen. These multiple ways of being present. Different activities that are happening simultaneously and how to navigate and negotiate or how many focusses can one hold or a kind perhaps of suplesse or agility in being able to shift. I’m wondering over a period of time what might happen with that, that what feels almost overwhelming might become familiar so that overwhelming becomes a kind of familiarity of having to navigate these different modes of listening or speaking or keeping time or losing time. Somehow follow the timing of the sea- or the river- that you’re in and knowing then how to navigate the different currents or the swell. Because we are so often with a sense of the feet firmly on the ground and wanting a sense of grounded-ness but maybe there is something about this sense of these bodies of water that are more immersive I suppose, which feels closer to a sense of when you are either immersed or involved or performing in an overwhelming situation, where its all around you and in you and in that whole space. Yes immersion, an immersed situation for everybody. When facing them I was kind of too busy reading and they were a kind of blurry presence in the front of me. Oh maybe similar to this, having my back to the audience actually did relieve me of my face being seen, or where the sounds coming out of my mouth were not being seen, even my scanning, all that activity was being seen, witnessed from behind. There’s a kind of strong performativity to that, I can’t quite place it. as though I was outside of myself, no that’s not right. It felt like a very strong physical situation to be in. It really opened up my back. I was actually more aware of them in a way behind me, as a body of people behind me than when I was actually facing the other way. Maybe this whole back the whole surface, the body could somehow, I suppose with the back we’re all facing the same way, audience were facing the same way as me, so it maybe includes everyone in a different kind of way, and then similar perhaps to what you were saying, the activity, the words, there’re passing through and are almost a separate thing from the body that could be picked up on.
We are liberated from this forward facing and frontal facing. With you describing us with both of our backs to the other people in the space, there’s something about some point in the reading where it felt less and less like speaking-to and more and more, what did it feel like, it felt less and less like a presentation as if we were communicating something to a group of people or audience and more and more like we were practising something and they were witnesses to that and in a sense more and more like passing time or spending time and sharing time together through an activity that was unfolding and requiring some kind of durational engagement with it. I think I was quite struck by what some one was saying about this sense of, to begin with, recognising or getting a sense of the kind of the physical dimension of what we were describing. So these arcs in the reading where there was this kind of grounding, through this invocation I suppose of lying down and a languaging of lying down and then they were saying that at some point they realised that this was going to continue for some time and that their mode of engagement had to change quite dramatically in a way, perhaps from even listening to, yes, what is the mode of listening in this kind of sharing I wonder? To change my way of engaging with it or I need to drop into this in a different kind of way. Or even for the person who decided they needed to get up and move or dance. How was that recognition in experience, and what happened to them when they went oh okay this is calling for a different kind of listening, a different kind of engaging. A different kind of speaking, a different kind of communication. It felt like there was something, maybe it sounds a bit over inflated even but somehow dropping into a slightly different register of sense, and interesting that you were talking about the temporal coordinates feeling quite slippery. I think there was that sense, I don’t know if it comes from this sense of circularity or this repeating, or you know, we’re working with texts that do have a linear unfolding to them but the way we’re engaging with them is in a highly non-linear way, its fragmentary, its looping, its returning, sometimes saying again and again. So it does something maybe temporally with the material itself and I wonder if that contributes to this sense of like temporal confusion, or loopiness of time, almost a bit dreamy in a way. It’s making me think of, there are these yoga nidra practices, what does nidra mean, like dream, like visualisation practice just on this edge of sleepiness or dreaming which is a very heightened moment also where it’s quite clear that it has one foot in the awake world but maybe another foot in quite a different dimension somehow and that its form of sense is hovering between these two different realms in some kind a way. Maybe that is something that is this non-linear, the looping, the returning, a structure that is born from quite a different sense of system in a way. That this audience was very dynamic, quiet, quietly dynamic, I think this is just very beautiful, I’d love to well I don’t if I would, or I don’t think it would be possible to visualise or film because I think the feeling of it is bigger than the visual. This is interesting. The felt sense of this as an experience was really powerful or even the felt memory of doing something then later knowing there was all this activity happening behind us, softly, quite quietly, or this moving. And then I feel this pull of a desire to try and document or capture it in some way. Like a desire that it is more than this ephemeral felt experience. That somehow if only we could have documented this or filmed this, but I don’t know how we could do that because I don’t know that its documentable in some senses because it feels as if it was so much this atmospheric felt tangible commitment that was making the event, not what it looked even so much, perhaps not even what it sounded like but somehow this shared field of attention which just eludes, slips away from any kind of attempt to document it. But I can feel this kind of wrestle in myself between knowing that that experience resists documentation but at the same time wanting to keep it in some kind of way, or evidence it or share it again or have a remainder of it in some sense. And knowing how it would almost, like the same if we were filming the workshop, I’m sure if you looked at the documentation it would be nothing like the feeling of inside of it, so this sense of inside of an experience and the intensity of this insideness that feels very strong actually, this insideness of a practice actually which maybe does resist certain kinds of more conventional forms of sharing. Can you only ever share artefacts or documents or the actual doing, is it reliant on the experiential encounter with the practice?
The word that came up was invitation, an invitation for an audience to be part of what was happening, rather than to be witnessing it in this more traditional sense of things are being delivered for me to consume, but more of a way of ah yes, okay, we’re all here actually now and we are all part it, we’re part of that situation, the immersion perhaps. There’s something very interesting when you can set something up that creates a situation to be part of rather than confront someone with a laid-out table. I don’t know, well, I appreciate that when I can enter into something and be part of it, yes, bring myself to it or in any kind of way really. Well they give a window, a taste of an idea that the work holds. Or even the sense of. How can you, you cannot record everything, every aspect, all the experience in one medium. You almost need to piece together something and as you say perhaps there is another way, not the thing itself but something else, well maybe its not even a document, but could share something of the practice. Or another medium, this idea of sound or radio, different formats. What might that be, what kinds of things might be able to share, and that can sometimes be a single image or a small conversation, or maybe is something that is durational in itself, maybe that’s a way, not so much documenting but a different way of sharing something. While you were talking, drifting into rivers and seas, I’m still looking at these pictures on my wall and these whales and other sea creatures and you talking of this filmic or other way …
There are so many moments that feel really strong in memory. And not that it is continuous but somehow you have these episodes or moments. One of the moments was actually, it was when, it was in the workshop when we moved from a series of movement practices into a conversation practice and people paired with one another and were sat back to back, and this invitation to, I’m not even sure how to describe it, because it’s not quite conversation in a way, but this voicing, I think we were sort of saying almost like you were speaking to yourself and with the other person listening is witnessing that. And just the sound in the room was really amazing actually, this low level of communication or this voicing, that was just between one person and another person but together when there were several pairs in the room, it was just this making of a kind of murmering, a sharing and witnessing, this shared language, of a very particular shared direct experience, and yes something in that about this intensity of shared experience but also singularity of experience within that, the sort of shared and the singular felt really present at that point. And all of the different ways that individuals voiced these very particular embodied direct experiences in their own words but at the same time not actually being able to hear any of the words, so there’s something curious in some of this practice, about language functioning or operating in a different kind of way to communication of information. There was this intensity of languaging but it wasn’t really to do with the specific things that the words were saying. As a witness in that space, you could hear this background noise of sharing and maybe some fragments of things. Maybe this is quite oceanic, like watery, this watery fluid sense of language and certain words and phrases popping up to the surface and disappearing again. But just a very different way of languaging actually that’s not to do with clarity as such, but more to do with, I don’t know really, like it feels closer to blood, or breath of fluid or some other sense, an expression of aliveness through language but it’s not to do with the meaning of the words necessarily, but the contact between the words and the experience being the most important thing. And the kind of fogginess or fuzziness or like the opacity within that, I feel like a milky, the colour was like a translucent milky glass kind of colour that you can just about see though but it’s kind of hazy, and not quite opaque, this not quite opaque dimension feels interesting somehow, a kind of in-between state of sense making that is neither clear nor opaque but somehow in this zone inbetween, but greyish, murky greyish milky.