TOOLCloud

Collection of practices

PRACTICES OF ATTENTION

HUMMING

multitude of perspectives

Start to hum and at the same time sense into your vocal apparatus, including your spine. Notice that the vertebrae vibrate along your humming, some places clearer, some less. Start to play with pitches, volumes, different vowels and consonants, timbre and feel the tone of your voice. Tune these explorations

1. with movements or positions of your body the sound might generate (if they don´t, you can also simply play with the sensation of movement and vocalizing as 2 co-existing „tracks“ of sensation).

2. with anything else you hear in your environment. How does your sounding behave in relationship to sounds in the space you are part of? How far does this influence your relationship to the things/ other beings/ the space itself?

(tested in LTTA1 and LTTA4 as part of the tuning ins)

LISTENING
learning, multitude of perspectives

This listening practice features a selection of electro-acoustic works that showcase the range and diversity of this genre. The pieces vary in style, instrumentation, and approach, demonstrating the many ways in which electronic and acoustic sounds can interact and complement each other. Throughout the event, the listener is invited to engage with the music and explore the different sound worlds. Rooted in the awareness that social situations like a concert are never natural but represent designed, created or at least curated situations, this listening practice plays with its own constructedness and at the same time aims to facilitate a non-hierarchical being-with-others.  

(tested in ME1, Symposium)

WALKING
transformational processes

Start walking. Slowly shift your weight from left foot to right foot. Observe the mechanics of balance and shifting weight. How does your foot unfold itself from the floor? How does it reach and touch the floor? Do you feel gravity? Stay aware of your back, your front, your left side, right side, the space above you, space under you, your flesh, observe where your awareness travels to, what path you take, be aware of what affects your walk. You can change to walking sideways or walking backwards.

(tested in LTTA4 as part of the tuning ins)

TOUCHING
transformational processes

Start with touching your own body. Be aware that touch always is doing 

(touching) and receiving (getting touched) at the same time. Give in to the needs/ desires of your body: which body part wants to be touched in which way? Which materiality or quality of touch triggers which kind of sensation, and eventually response? When does touch become movement?

Now, use touch in order to 

1. connect your body to the floor

2. connect your body to the air around (first your own kinesphere, then from there into the „larger world“, which could be including other human beings and objects)

3. (in case human beings are present and available for touch) transpose your self-practice to touching and receiving touch with a partner. How do two bodies behave with each other? What triggers mentally,  physically?

(tested in LTTA4 as part of the workshop)

PRACTICES OF CONVERSATION

DRIFT`N`DIALOGUE
learning

Drift’n’Dialogue invites participants to a dialogue that takes place during a stroll. The practice of walking and thinking occurs simultaneously as a continuum between the interlocutors. Both the route of the walk and the ‘thought path’ are followed, without any objective or fixed outcome. Simply drifting, pulling, being lured or shooed away…intuitively deciding – perhaps without even knowing exactly which of the two dialogue partners will decide, because perhaps a path of thinking /walking emerges only through joint negotiation. This allows new thoughts to forms beyond the main place of action, on detours (also of the intellectual kind). 

(a format elaborated at ZTT/HfMT Cologne/Biennale Tanzausbildung Cologne “Reflection and Feedback”,  shared and tested in LTTA4) 

STILLNESS

transformational processes

Be quiet, close your eyes, find a comfortable, yet attentive position. You can be still, or move, at any time. Ask yourself: what is silence? Is it the lack of sound? Is it a state? Does it develop? Are there different kinds of silences, and if so, in which way?

(tested in LTTA5)

SMUGGLING
relaying, transformational processes

A trade through 'unauthorized routes‘… a purposeful movement of objects, substances, information across people in contravention to the relevant frameworks. 

(tested in LTTA4)

RELAYING (writing practice)

relaying
For the project outcome ARTicle we use the base concept of Relay as a writing method. This is to assure a multiplicity of perspectives and to test our method in various contexts. It means we move away from the idea of one author and maybe even from co-writing to instead try a form of dissolved authorship, where everyone’s voice is heard but it is the words of no one. However, it still needs some organizing principle, which will be the role of the editor. The editor initiates the writing, gathering materials from collective discussions and writings to put a first draft together. The editor can ask for specific contributions from the others, or simply to get feedback on the draft. This will generate a first version of the text. This text will later be passed on from editor to editor, as a form of filtering that also allows the different texts to find a more similar tone. It will eventually land with one editor who makes the final version. There will be one text for each category in the Research Catalog presentation. The texts will be accompanied by other media such as, audio, video and imagery (photos and/or drawings).

(tested here, in the ARTicle :) )

PLAYING
learning, transformational processes

Playing is a negotiation of agreeing to, following or making up rules, and often also challenging or bending these rules, or even cheating. Playing is practicing rules within a usually chosen and safe frame. This is obvious when observing young animals’ play-fights as a preparation for the real fight they will be confronted with as adult animals. A playful attitude fosters learning capacities, aliveness, enthusiasm, and certainly social skill building. In their pure form, both play and arts are free from product orientation in the economic sense of the term - and thus provide examples of social structures and dynamics other than neoliberal growth- oriented frames.

We practice playfulness by surprise: playing games. It could be any kind of game, directly related or seemingly unrelated to the project’s context. We observe if - and if yes, how - a playful mind influences the course of our day(s).

We can sometimes also take each other’s roles and keep working on our agenda, from the perspective of the playful alter ego, and witnessing the others taking on other characters.

PRACTICES OF SUSTAINABILITY


SUSTAINING    
on sustainability

Start from the word „to sustain“ and create a concrete experience from it. This could be: to sustain a breath, a sound, a movement, a state etc.

From this very concrete experience, identify its sustainability (e.g. how long does this breath sustain itself? When do you need to re-initiate? Do this with different examples, so you will have some things that end, some that exhaust themselves, some that keep running by themselves, some that need some intervention in order to sustain.

When is sustainability desirable, when even existential?

What are things and processes in (your) life that are sustainable?

Without having to answer these questions in depth, start to move in a way that feels both comfortable, yet also exciting/interesting, ideally in a very simple way.

Pursue this for some time while monitoring your sensations, feelings, thoughts and movements. Keep asking: 

1. When am I losing energy, and need to feed in new forces? Can I tell why this happens, and if so, could I change it (“close the energetic leak“)? 

2. When does the movement and the sensation, feelings, thoughts that it generates sustain themselves? Can I tell why, and if so, can I benefit from this realization?

3. When do I feel like gaining energy? Again: Can I tell why, and if so, can I benefit from this realization?

You can do this by yourself or in relation with something or someone.

After the practise, see how maybe some of your findings might be applicable (directly or indirectly) to larger realms of society and life.

SLOW TRAVELLING  
on sustainability
There are always countless reasons why - „this time“- not to take a train: the schedule, the effect on the body being in trains or  busses for days, budget (ironically, within Europe slow travel is many times still more expensive than flying, often to an extend that makes the choice unsustainable on monetary levels!).
Deciding for slow traveling can create an attitude and a commitment that sets free a transformation of perception of time, space, body, social relations, and work.
Once accepting the duration given, „lost“ time converts into „gained“ time: When do I have so much time for myself in my everyday life? When can I read and write mails without rushing and - rare feeling - finish to-do lists thoroughly, read a book, news, or listen to music? Simply look outside the window? Fall asleep for a nap whenever my body asks for it? Be in real time conversation with colleagues,  friends and family members?

Short version:
Commit to your decision to travel slowly with full heart. Accept the long time frame that is ahead of you, and let „lost“ time convert into „gained“ time. Make use of and enjoy the gained time.

TUNING INTO WHAT IS ALREADY THERE / EC(H)O-TUNING  
on sustainability, learning

Enter a place, a moment, and tune into what is already there (and was there before you arrived). Ask yourself: What do I bring to this place, this moment, this situation? What moves, shifts, what stays, even gets more fixed? What has disappeared beyond my perception? What assimilates, what collides? How can I be respectful and mindful with what I meet, and contribute with what I bring in most possible constructive and fertile ways?
This practice includes a quite subtle and virtuosic negotiation of calibrating leading-following, reading the situation and - when allowed or needed - stepping in, making proposals, and seeing what is happening with it. A giving and taking, like in dancing or playing music together, with whom and whatever is present.

SLOWING THINGS DOWN

on sustainability

Slow yourself down by taking a walk.

BREATHING
on sustainability

Take a conscious, nourishing breath whenever you feel stressed, but also when you don´t.

CHECKING IN
on sustainability

Ask yourself  on a regular basis: what is sustainable for me in order to be most possibly alive, sensitive and productive during a session/day/week/ month/term?
When do I feel energized? Can I tell where the energy comes from? How can I  make it likely to feel energized again in this way the next time? When do I lose energy? Can I tell where, why or how I lose it? Can I prevent myself from losing energy again next time?

CLOSING THINGS
on sustainability

Make it a habit to consciously close things (your electronic devices, a conversation, a process, a project, etc.). The tendency to keep things open can cause feelings of being overburdened. And closing can be so satisfying, and - from an artistic point of view- a beautiful thing to pay attention to (think of wonderful endings of your favorite novels, movies, pieces of music or dance…!).

PRACTICES OF FEEDING FORWARD / FEEDING BACK

RELAYING
transformational processes, learning

Start with identifying one or several „in betweens“: how can you make them concrete for you? Explore what you start to identify as an in between f.ex. a time span between two events, or a space between two bodies and concretize by asking:  What lives in this in between that I am exploring right now? What is passed on, what stays in this space or time zone? What is my role in it? What do in betweens have in common?

After exploring, maybe you become more aware of in betweens in (your) life, and value what they have to offer, and what they do for us? And also perceive them as potential agents?

(exploring the in between events, practiced in the symposium schedule)

MEANDERING
relaying, transformational processes, learning

This practice presents the idea of “relaying”/meandering”— wandering casually without urgent destination—as a way of framing a conversational creation process that can help loosen control without being out of control.  Through the method proposed in this workshop we implement a creation and learning process that is not only pleasant and rewarding but also leads to a concrete action plan and agenda, to experience the highly relational, embodied, and contextual nature of relaying as a method. 

In the RELAYproject collaborative inquiry and conversational learning are approaches to creating and learning in which participants construct knowledge together through dialogue. Both approaches advocate letting go of control to allow insight to emerge through free-flowing conversation. These approaches contradict expectations about learning among both teachers and students and raise fears of discussion degenerating into pointlessness. 

(practiced in one of the workshops in the LTTA4 in Cologne)

WEAVING
relaying, transformational processes

A relay setting invented by one of the three groups of students in the second LTTA in Copenhagen resulted in an imaginative rendering of a weaving process that addressed the presence and absence of representation and the intersection of technology and analogy. The arrangement chosen in Copenhagen combined the process of weaving with the technology of video. It showed passages of a "weaver" whose sounds or movements had produced the translated designs of the earlier "weaver," which in turn were translated by the current weaver into newly transformed patterns. The video and audio recordings created an acoustic/visual relay that highlighted sound and movement as catalyzing creative material. It addressed the transformative nature of material,  creating a feedback loop and the possibility of communication.

In the frame of a seminar in Cologne - which served as an in-between event between the LTTAs in order to filter the knowledge of the RELAY project into the curriculum - the setting was slightly adapted. While in Copenhagen video material formed the starting point for the transformation process, in this process analogue materials from students in Cologne served as the starting point for the transformational process. Students from Bucharest transformed the given analog materials into digital compositions and re-layed them to the Cologne group at the end of the seminar. The process invited to invest into the following questions: What potentials and scopes arise when we understand the materials as a starting point for scores? What dynamics and materialities unfold in the work?  And how do composers deal with them in this function? 

REVERSIBILITY

For now

Keep your eyes on the page as you follow the instructions

There will be time to lift them

Don’t rush. This can take 5 minutes, or more

Ease your gaze - Just focus as much as you need to be able to read these words

Relax your neck, jaw, and forehead

Rest your hands on the table or your thighs

Sink into sitting

Become aware of your skin touching the seat, your clothes, the air

Rest into the points of contact

Bring your attention to your right hand

Make a small gesture in the air and bring it back to exactly where it was before

Repeat the gesture, as precisely as you can

Once more

And again, and this time, as you bring your hand back, make it the exact reversal of the gesture

Pass through each point on the pathway that you inscribe in the air when you make the gesture

To become more precise, do this with just the very beginning of the gesture – begin and reverse

Bit by bit, increase the length of the movement, until you are doing the whole gesture again

GOING BEYOND POLARITIES / ENTERING A THIRD SPACE

Polarization is an obvious and substantial part of democracy’s crisis. The resonating, calibrating  body offers a key to overcome fixed opinions, roles and perspectives. The world - most of the time- is not only this or that, right or wrong, black or white. It is full of nuances, movements, layers and hybridity. It is full of surprises. Sometimes a third space is not a compromise, but a new constellation that could not be foreseen before an embodied exploration.

To open up to resonance and calibration can be overwhelming, and even scary. How can we practice to embrace complexity, embrace even fear, and remain in resonance, trust and responsibility? How can we keep open the possibility that the other (position, opinion, identity, etc.) can complement and enrich our life, widen our horizon and deepen our insights?

We can practice embodied depolarization by sketching three different fields in the space. A is the field to embody position A.  B is the field to embody position B. Field C is the third space, inviting to overcome polarity.  Usually, such structures are imposed to verbal discussions, however, to involve the body can reveal essential feelings, perspectives, and realizations that would remain hidden if only speaking would be at stake.

RECYCLING

Recycling Pile

transformational processes, on sustainability

The sculpture which is part of the ARTwork included a recycling pile in which materials could be placed after being taken out of the sculpture. Any material that was removed thus wasn’t deemed useless or used up but kept beside the sculpture to be reused in a shifting context. This allowed for another kind of negotiation. Materials could be brought in and out ongoingly. It clarified what was active and what not but also defined the objects not currently used as being in a process in relation to the space.

PRACTICES OF COLLABORATION


MENTORS RELAY (in pairs)
multitude of perspectives

In the Copenhagen LTTA we created a down-scaled version of the overall model of RELAY, by creating smaller work groups that continuously throughout the week transitioned between three different workspaces, and met at the end of each day to collectively reflect through artistic expressions inside the frame of the sculpture/installation Continuous Project Altered Daily (CPAD). In this improvisational frame they could bring any of the working material from their day in dialogue with the other groups materials and the materials passed on from the Time Capsule (TC) from the previous LTTA  held in Cologne. To create a similar relaying structure for the mentors we created mentor duos that would visit the working groups during their sessions. The working group could decide how they wanted to make use of the mentors. What we accomplished with this structure was very much in line with our goal to introduce everyone involved to a multitude of perspectives. The mentors met a different perspective through the other mentor and the learners could see them negotiate  their impressions and, as each day the mentors would be paired up differently, they would also become more aware of their own similarities and differences between them.

RELAY content/space/content

relaying

The itinerant and nomadic work mode of shifting work spaces during the day gave the working groups a chance to increase awareness of situational logics of each visited context. It also meant that in-between moments of shifting spaces were built in to the work, creating small gaps and time pockets for the unforeseen.

RELAY content/form/content 

relaying

In any artistic endeavor it can be productive to analyze the relationship between form and content. In the LTTA2 we used the overall conceptual structure of RELAY to propose a working format. This in turn affected what sort of content was produced. The form of the projects became a content for thinking the structure of the event, which in turn produced a form that affected the content produced. This back and forth analysis of form/content creates both organizational efficiency and fruitful frictions.

SCORES

TRAVEL SCORE

Today you are traveling. As your environment shifts, you will begin to digest the past weeks.

At one point, take 10 min to do the following task to create a message to another participant:

Close your eyes. Notice what you hear.

Let your hearing drift until you want to listen closer to something. Listen to it for a while. 

Write it down in one word.

Look up. Notice the first thing you see. 

Let your gaze drift until it lands on something. Let it stay there for a while. 

Write it down in one word.

Adjust your position. Notice how your body feels. 

Observe your sensations until you want to stay somewhere. Is this sensation still or moving?

Write it down in one word. 

Make a voice recording where you tell the receiver something… something?  something!

The three words should somehow be included in what you say. At the very end of your message, name the three words in the order of the task. 

After this task, think about how you want to spend your time during the rest of your journey. If possible, do it. 

Send the recording.

ACTIVATING THE TIME CAPSULE

What draws your attention?

Spend time with it

Imagine it as an instruction

Take the instruction with you

Go for a walk without talking

Set a timer to 12 minutes

When the timer goes off

Return on the same route

Find an object that relates to the instruction

Place the object in the studio

Consider H O W and W H E R E

The time capsule is activated

It is now a sculpture

Place your body in the sculpture

And spend some time there

When you feel done

Leave the sculpture

Observe how the sculpture changes as you leave

ACTIVATING THE SCULPTURE

Enter the sculpture in silene

Move

Add

Separate

Merge

Remove → Recycling pile

Body - Movement - Sound

Are part of the sculpture

Observe how the sculpture changes as you leave