ACTION
Performed/staged actions and gestures
Gert-Jan, Breg & Siebren take a Bolt taxi to Pakrantė
Arrival at Pakrantė
Gert-Jan, Breg & Siebren place the wood blocks which serve as the positioning points in the walking experience
WhatsApp message Breg to Siebren: ‘Can you take the last positioning point with you?’
Last preparations in the gallery space by placing the chairs in pairs all over the space with a paper on top with three questions to reflect on as spectators/performers duo.
First workshop participants arrive at Pakrantė. Breg invites them in the foyer and show them the way to the lounge where they can wait to start immediately the walking experience. Gert-Jan waits outside to take them in pairs to the start of the trail. Siebren is the host in the gallery space to invite them to reflect on their walking experience.
WhatsApp message Breg to Siebren: ‘On your way back to the gallery space?’ (during my walking experience together with Julija).
Group reflection on the walking experience
Introduction or check-in: each participant present him/herself plus the imaginary friend they brought to the workshop
Duo-exercise with the task to create a composition with an extraction of one HALL project out of the (Live) Archive. The exercise is about reflecting on the material and after this organizing the information in a self-chosen order or composition.
After this each pair communicate this with another duo.
Lunch break: everyone prepares their own food in the kitchen of Pakranté
Continuation of the (morning) exercise (in pairs), with the task to organize the HALL information on the right-hand wall of the gallery space (in a time frame of 5 minutes). The different compositions create a timeline or a re-enactment of the HALL projects from 2012 till now.
Two rows of chairs are placed in front of the wall in the gallery space. Each duo present their own intervention on the wall. Gert-Jan and Breg give more information about some details, but also about the main ideas and strategies they conducted in the different HALL projects.
Gert-Jan & Breg divide the group in five subgroups, which correspond with five aspects of the dramaturgy of a walking experience: 1) introduction; 2) paths & signs; 3) perspectives; 4) outro; 5) overview/management. Each group has their own sheet of paper on the windows inside the gallery space. The participants gather together in the Pakrantė community garden to think about possible trajectories to create a new walking experience. The participants explore the community garden next to Pakranté.
Tune-out with the group: we create a circle with all participants on the terrace outside (in front of) the gallery space. Each participant shares how he/she/x has experienced the workshop.
Aftertalk with Eglé (Vilnius Gediminas Technical University), Gert-Jan, Breg & Siebren about the first day of the workshop. We share ideas to work further on in the future with a more environmental approach, and explore possible linkages with the Technical University of Vilnius. Breg and Gert-Jan talk about the performance installation they constructed during the last edition of the Sansusi Festival (august 2019), with turf blocks as the main construction material. Eglé sees opportunities do do architectural and environmental research about this construction (material), with architecture students from the university. Also the idea of using local materials (such as clay from the local environment instead of turf), and the idea to work in one of the city parks, such as Vingis Park, is suggested by Eglé. She sees opportunities to work with students doing there bachelor’s or master’s, as part of an internship or research trajectory.
Gert-Jan, Breg & Siebren take a Bolt taxi to the historical city centre and walk through the city, in the search for a place to eat.
Dinner in a restaurant in the historical city centre of Vilnius (name?)
LIVE ARCHIVE FOOTAGE
Footage printed directly from http://www.taat-projects.com.s3-website.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/
REFLECTIVE NOTES
Questioning/thinking on meaningful and critical moments
If I describe the walking performance as an immersive (participatory) performance, it’s important to pose here some dramaturgical questions:
How am I addressed as a spectator? How am I situated in the performance? The invitation to step into the work is one of the most important things in a participatory performance. Also in this performance there is a staging at work of the performers and spectators. How is the relationship between the performer and spectators staged? How is the relationship between the spectators/performers staged? How is the outro organized/staged? The outro is about the walk back to the gallery space and reflection on the embodied experience. The reflection starts in pairs and after this we share(d) this with the whole group. (Vraag: wat zijn de exacte vragen die gesteld zijn aan de deelnemers?) (S.N.)
Possible critical moments:
The moment when the collective exercise around the live archive started to look more like a lecture performance. Although in this rather passive constellation (the listeners who sit down and watch standing speakers/performers), there was still enough interaction created. This exchange created also a possible overview how the work of TAAT has evolved over time (till now).
The moment when the decision fell to organize the exercise outside at the end of the first day, to continue with this on the next day. It seemed for a moment that there would be almost no time left for a collective reflection moment to close the first day of the workshop. (S.N.)
EXTRACTION
What are the revealing threads, connections and relationships?
Step into the work
The goal of the co-creation of yesterday's score - between Gert-Jan, Siebren and I - was to invite the workshop participants to step into the work immediately and immersively. The invitation for this 'direct introduction' was incorporated in the welcoming procedure of the workshop. We decided to not address the group as a group, to not welcome them collectively, but individually.
You came in, I said hi and introduced myself. I told you to put your bags in the wardrobe, but to keep your coat with you as we were going to start the introduction outside. We made a little chat about where you were coming from and how the trip up to Pakrante had been. People gathered in the foyer, some of them grouped together, others not. You probably didn't realise the workshop had allready started.
Then everyone was individually invited to walk outside with either Gert-Jan or me for a 3-minute personal introduction to our work, or just a spontaneous chat. As much different conversations as there were people. I would like to address two 'mechanisms of staging': (1) the personal welcoming and (2) the immersive introduction. (I will elaborated why I'm addressing these small relational interactions as 'staging' on a later moment). Let's start with the welcoming ritual. Taken in account that most participants were students with different ethnic backgrounds, operating within a rather hierarchic educational frame, the act of making personal contact with every participant had a grounding quality. At least for me, as one of the 'workshop leaders', I valued it as an act of acknowledging every participant as a person, and at the same time an acknowledging every one-on-one-relationship as a basis, a first building stone, of a greater network of connections. I believe that the consciousness of this intersubjectivity is a condition that is to be installed meticulously within the frame of such a workshop, considering that every step in our practice is a part of the allover relational dramaturgical strategy.
Moving towards the score itself, as a second staging mechanism,... (elaborate) A participant declared afterwards that the 'spontanious step into the unknown was stimulating an opennes for unexpected things to happen' during the whole workshop.
Key moments in the workshop dramaturgy
4. Welcoming the individual participants
In our first encounter we need to first esthasblish that you're a workshop participant and I'm the workshop host. There's immediate contact, no in between moment of arriving at the space, adjusting to the situaion, find your own rhythm. Who am I to invade that private space? Hi, welcome. We don't make it a big thing. We're walking around, greet people and explain what is necessary to explain at that moment.
5. Making pairs/ introduction with pairs
How do I choose? Did I register who were together or not? Who has been waiting the longest? What (fluid) characteristics decide on the 'succes' of the match? The second thing is to esthablish that I am really just talking with them. This is not an act. Is there a difference between an introduction and an act? I customise each introduction, testing a little bit how people respond, what they show/not show, to what extend they are willing to jump in, waht do they need in this moment? Where do I position myself?
6. Participants return to the Lounge
They were supposed to reflect in the workshop-space. But some magnetic force drew them back to the lounge. Was there no sense of safety in the workshop space? Was it not clear that this was the exact spatial surrounding they needed to be in? And/or what information did it give us to know appeal of the lounge. We let it happen. And invited everybody to the workshopspace when everybody was there.
7. The introduction of the 'fictional other' opens up space
This happened in two steps: First, the sharing of everyone's fictional workshop participant created a sense of relaxation: sillyness, artyness, the personal, the intellectual, the emotional, everything was obviously allowed to be there. Second, doing the LA-exercise gave permission for a very playfull approach to the exercise. Adding to opening up a field of possibilities, the fictional others also connected the group/process with a larger audience, a larger consciousness
8. The moment of organising outside (1st prototype)
We had to give the responsibility to the group. Obviously, that turned out to be a big responsibility. After a slow and ackward start, and some subtle intervention, they got to doing. This way they ran into all the bigger and smaller challenges that are part of creating such a walk. It was great to have them experience that first hand.
9. Overruled: Rain is not an issue.
We had an alternative programm ready in case of rain. But anything less than creating a walk was clearly not accepted. This was a beautiful and powerful moment of the group taking responsibility for the process.
10. Closing circle
I wonder if we choose the right position for this closing session. In a way we went back, we tried to link the beginning of the day with the present. But the process had already moved beyond the initial walk.