Acknowledgements

 

I am grateful for the feedback I have received by my colleagues at AREAL Berlin and at the Performing Arts Research Centre (Uniarts Helsinki) in the course of creating this exposition. Many thanks for contributing in various ways, and at different stages, go to Undine Eberlein, Erin Manning, Dagmar Frohning, Otso Huopaniemi, Riikka T. Innanen, Tashi Iwaoka, Liisa Jaakonaho, Simo Kellokompu, Paula Kramer, Leena Rouhiainen, Vincent Roumagnac, Josh Rutter, and especially to Outi Condit who not only raised the initial question captured in the title, but also pursued its taking form through her constructive criticism and persistent dedication.

 

 

Fi                                                                                  

 

 

 

 

 

The model of inscription

 

The dominant idea of the body as

 

Diffusion of confusion

 

A passive surface of inscription

 

Who is doing the writing?

 

What is the power of this?

 

 

 

Timelines of thoughts

 

How would we think together?

 

How is that thought coming into being?

 

How do we coalesce?

 

 

 

 

 

Coming together not quite in the right order

 

What kind of thinking is enacted here?

 

Hand-written

 

What kind of ideology?

                                       

 

Thinking together

 

 

Not in your own voice, but in the voice with someone else

 

Writing with hands

 

Ventrilocating       

 

With similar points of contact

 

Fig                                                               

 

Is it a co-articulation across gender?

 

Who is included?

 

Who is excluded?

 

 

 

Together and apart 

 

And at the same time full-body writing

 

Breathing through the winds of ghostly voices

 

Sensations pouring like ink

 

 

 

Does it speak with authority?

 

Is it open to critique and to

 

Finding together

 

Its deconstruction?

 

Breathing into and through the bones

 

What is it bracketing?

 

Is it joyful?

 

No hesitation

 

Fi                                                             

 

What kind of emotional tone does it have?

 

It seems to be so serious

 

Cracks

 

Does it allow for play?

 

 Fissures

 

Through textures

 

 Neighbours

 

Weaving in through the touch, the weight

 

Hosts and ghosts

 

Giving the weight

 

The direction

 

Only what it needs, and exactly only that

 

Would it be in any another situation?

 

If sensations can pass through so can thoughts

 

How different is it really?

 

Always to the point, finishing the line

 

Does my touch change it?

 

Does it affect your thinking?

 

Clarity

 

 

 

 

 

To call that ‘writing’?

 

 

 

I can’t quite get through you

 

Words not always come together

 

How it could be

 

 The quality of its touch

                                    


 

Sometimes they seem to surface, but then

 

Searching for yet another mode of entering

 

It is a bit dense, there - maybe you can loosen up a little

 

 

 

 

 

Composing

 

Words

 

They retreat again

 

Shared authorship

 

 

 

Creating the space for appearance

 

They reach towards

 

But then decide

 

Co-absence

 

Creating a different ecology of mind

 

To depart, to take another route

 

Becoming susceptible for his humour, his wit, his

              

                                                                                           

 

A technique

 

Enjoy that place!

 

Knowing how to do

 

To decompose again

 

Without pushing

 

Compost

 

Give it the final touch

 

Composed

 

Without forcing

 

Be composed

 

 

 

Is that mind extended

 

But with some

 

In the sense of being expanded?

 

Determination

 

Spatially and temporally and whatever?

 

Writing from the place of touch

 

Where sensing and thinking are touching

 

Or is that mind a condensation, a crystallization of coagulated minds?

 

                                                                                

 

Collectives

 

Streams of consciousness

 

Emanating

 

With care for the other

 

Begins with a care for the self

 


Selfless selves

 

Co-existence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To call that 'writing'?

Diffracting the notion of writing with the research score

 

Diffraction troubles dichotomies, including some of the most sedimented and stabilized/stabili­zing binaries, such as organic/inorganic and animate/inani­mate. Indeed, the quantum understanding of diffraction troubles the very notion of dicho-tomy  – cutting into two – as a singular act of absolute differentiation, fracturing this from that, now from then.


Karen Barad, “Diffracting Diffraction: Cutting Together-Apart”, Parallax 20 (3) 2014, p. 168 (original emphasis).

 

Diffraction denotes the phenomenon of interference generated by the encounter of waves, be it light, sound or water and, within quantum physics, of matter itself. Such a superposition of waves produces a diffraction or interference pattern that records, i.e. incorporates the trajectory of waves. Donna Haraway draws on the optical phenomenon of diffraction as a metaphor and a method for knowledge production, because diffractions crucially differ from reflections. Whereas reflection is bound to ‘repeating the Sacred Image of the Same’, ‘diffraction patterns record the history of interaction, interference, reinforcement, difference’, as she points out.

Melanie Sehgal, “Diffractive Propositions: Reading Alfred North Whitehead with Donna Harraway and Karen Barad”, Parallax 20 (3) 2014, p. 188.

 

 

My doctoral research started out as an investigation into one of the core practices of Body Weather performance training—the so-called Manipulations.* Conducted in pairs with alternating roles of ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’, the Manipulations is a hands-on practice that draws on a range of diverse Eastern and Western somatic practices such as yoga, shiatsu, acupuncture, and manual therapy. As a pre-performative training practice, the aim of the Manipulations is to make the performer receptive and available to be moved by (human and non-human) agencies within and without the body.

 

Initially, one objective of my research was to articulate the impact of the Manipulations on the practitioner, and the bodily knowledge created through that practice.** The so-called research score became my main practical tool to accomplish that. The research score is a translation of the beginning sequence of the Manipulations from a duo into a solo practice: alone, the receiver recreates—with as much detail as possible—the sensation of being given. In addition and simultaneously to the task of physical recreation, the performer-researcher attends to the process of thinking and instantly articulates thoughts that arise in relation to a word or a concept chosen beforehand. The verbal articulation happens within the practice of the research score. Hence, the voice acts as a writing tool that is recorded on the spot, and transcribed afterwards.***

 

 

* For a video registration of Manipulations No. 1 & 2 see http://theatredanceperformancetraining.org/2015/11/body-weather-manipulations-no-1-2/

** See Joa Hug (2016), “Writing with practice: Body Weather performance training becomes a medium of artistic research”, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 7 (2), 168-189 as well as Joa Hug (2016), “Modes of Knowing in Body Weather Performance Training”. In: Enderlein, Undine (ed.), Zwischenleiblichkeit und bewegtes Verstehen: Intercorporeity, Movement and Tacit Knowledge (Bielefeld: Transcript), pp. 367–380.

*** See Joa Hug (forthcoming), “No solutions: The research score as a medium of artistic research”. The present piece was created on the basis of a series of six research scores that were recorded, transcribed, edited, and (re-)composed into one single track.