What is meant by ‘sensation’, ‘perception’ and ‘reflection’?
What are the differences between the three?
Can you create
a shared
understanding
about what is
at stake
while
exploring
the body
through
Manipulations
or
Body Weather?
What
are
the
distinctive
types
of
knowledge
that
are
embedded,
enacted,
and
created
in
and
through
the
Manipulations?
How can embodied nonverbal information be shared with other dancers and people who may not have similar experiences?
What might be the implications of the knowledge and understanding that you have gained through Body Weather in relation to epistemological and methodological issues of artistic research?
What is the bodily knowledge created through the Manipulations, and how to approach a linguistic articulation?
How can we consciously transform our information of body sensations toward knowledge in order to build of that relevant dance knowledge in the dance and its related fields?
What type of bodily knowledge did you bring with this Glossary and what do you want to produce from it?
First voice-over (> 0’44):
In this research score, I am conducting a modified version of the Manipulations, a solo version, in which I am working on the role of the receiver, however, without an actual giver. I am imagining the giving: I am imagining to be manipulated and I am recreating the sensory experience of being manipulated - for example, the touch of the giver’s hands on my skin, the pressure on a body part when it is being compressed, the giver’s weight entering my body, a muscle being stretched and released, a joint being bent or rotated and the extension that is being created, an arm being lifted, a bone hanging, and so. I am imagining to receive the Manipulations and I am enacting the sensation of being touched, moved and manipulated.
At the same time, I am expanding the frame of perception and observation: I am paying attention not only to bodily sensations but also to thoughts and ideas. And I am trying to keep track of these reflections through writing.
In the research score that I explored most recently, I added yet another layer. Whereas before, the task in the self-manipulation was to observe sensations as well as thoughts, I now added another point of attention. In each session of practicing the research score, I reflected on one individual word taken from a list of words, the so-called glossary. So, somewhat similar to making muscle tension a main physical reference point for observing sensations of the body, in each session of practicing the research score I used one word as a mental reference point for observing emerging thoughts. And I documented these thoughts in the form of writing.
Second voice-over (> 8’23):
The breath to exit the chest
For the other
Creating the body that listens to the other
Another body with another mind
What are you doing with this body?
What is lost and what is gained?
Close reading
Word by word
Dissect the text
Cross-read
Skip
Follow the line of the giver
And observe how you read
The hand getting bigger
Growing
A misperception
A hallucination
Changing the situation for thought and thinking
Mind into body
Body into mind
Attention like wind
Melting and Crystallizing
Dualities
Writing as a form of dis-embodiment
Imagination as a performative mode of thinking
Melting inside and crystallizing outwards
Tracing the passage between the conceptual and the perceptual
Thinking from the awareness of the other
Made possible by a withdrawal from the self
Polarities
