Een ontmoeting vindt plaats.
Een ontmoeting vindt plaats op een plek, maar vindt dus in eerste instantie plaats.
Het is belangrijk te bedenken welke plaats dat kan zijn.
Voor dit deel van HALL 12 is één van de eerste plaatsen Amsterdam.
De plaats van de fysieke ontmoeting.
Maar ergens moet het denken ook plaats vinden.
Een plaats is niet een weg. Een weg heeft een verloop. Een weg gaat van naar.
Een tekst is een weg. Van linksboven naar rechtsonder in ons geval.
Een plaats staat het toe te verdwalen. Zelfs in een ongedefinieerde ruimte.
Een plaats gaat nergens heen, maar geeft ruimte te bewegen.
Op de plaats die de ontmoeting van ons denken vindt, moeten de dingen ook ver weg kunnen zijn.
Moet ruimte zijn om te dansen en de weg kwijt te zijn.
Op een plaats kan gelijktijdigheid bestaan.
Distance: things got more intense when we walked close to each other. Walking across the street was definitely interesting. Especially in the crossings when one space has to cross the other to keep the rule of distance.
Time (or Timing): setted a game of figuring out where you are in relation to the other and... trying to catch up?... to lead?... to not lead?...
Arriving at a splitting path was interesting as someone has to make a decision.
Stoping: feeling the change statically, feel the other and if the relation has changed.
A comment as an Experiencer
or
Looking back at my drawing, after 3 weeks of having walked with Lotte
It's interesting to try to locate the walk with the path. It's definitely not like looking at a map, in which the relation of the traces in the paper relate to the distribution in the city. It feels like reading a script of how the walk was based on the decisions that we took in order to navigate, our drifting together.
Somehow these traces are like a snapshot of how we related during the walk. The most interesting part comes when I cannot locate what I was drawing. Like in the park close to where the pigeon king appears, that kind of a square within a bigger square with a line that doesn't really end nowhere. It took me some time to figure out that what was happening there was that I wanted to leave but somehow felt that Lotte wanted to keep walking.
Looking back at this was interesting because even though that memory is located in the city, in a very particular place. That place takes a spot in the drawing, just when it also locates a spot in our experience of walking together. This somehow makes it traceable weeks later.
Something different happens when the lines are "random" or labyrinthic. There it was pure drifting. The space even if it was still playing a role on how we related, don't create in me a traceable experience. Maybe we were walking comfortably, maybe we got some kind of agreed rhythm and the path became homogeneous.
For me it is interesting to be able to notice how space gets shaped when we perform it. It gains a kind of location that doesn't relate to geographical location -like the one in my memory, or the paper or as relation with the encounter- that makes it a tracking position within a map. These locations somehow take importance as they affect us and with that mark a point on how we relate with the other.
Things that work:
- The balloons
- The table with the signs
- The bridges
- The separation
- The reserved table at the end
- The warm tea for the cold
- The letter in the mailbox
Things that might be a problem/challenges:
- The very bussy streets
- To get a diverse group of people, not just theatre-arty people.
- The cold
- The rainy/snowy weather
- Travel restictions
- Coronavirus
- How to draw in a rainy weather
- How to get the ballon to the participants
- How to avoid cancelations
- How to make it accessible for a wider audience
- How to propose an online portal for sharing
- How to connect to a wider comunity of walkers
and the whole HALL12 project.
A moment of free exploration
A moment of negotiating the route
A moment of following the path
A moment of separation
A ritual of arriving to meet the other
A coffee together
A meeting takes place.
A meeting takes place in a space,
but therefore has to take some place in the first place.
It is important to consider what sort of place that could be.
One of this places is HALL 12 is Amsterdam.
The place of the physical meeting.
But somewhere else this meeting might also take place.
A place is not a road.
A road has its course.
A road goes from - to.
A text is a road.
From the top left to the bottom right in our case.
A place allows us to get lost.
Even in an undefined space.
A place does not go anywhere,
but gives space to move.
In the place where our thinking meets, things must also be able to be far away.
There should be room to dance and get lost.
This place gives room for simultaneity.
Losing each other
Finding back
Starting from different points
Very big distance
Very small distance
Difference in elevation
Difference in types of paths (concrete-grass)
Play with speed
Decision making
discussion
Goal - Risk - Communication
Change of atmospheres
Stop
Caring about the other
We are doing this together
Having enough agency
Need of keeping the other
Starting the walk with as a ritual
Details are important as they give security to the audience. Like serve to locate them into a constructed (or maybe delimited) experience in which they can relate in a specific way. To say, the table that has been saved for them gives them clarity of an ending of the experience and opens time and space to reflect of the walk, of the city, of the other and of its relations.
Somethig similar happens with the balloon, it frames the encounter with an image, but also becomes an element of identification with the other and the space that is being created.
Small details can be interesting elements to propose ways of interaction, reflection and to slightly shape the experience.
