Podręcznik warsztatowy

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Unstable spaces. Two day workshop proposal.


Description
This workshop is about exploring the practice of relating to space. Space is understood both as a material structure and as system of attributed meaning and associations. Through practices participants will notice and observe existing special relations (distance and proximity, similarities etc.) and begin to explore and manipulate the perception of these relations. It is about looking for possibilities to speculate about constructing different spaces within the space. Through moving, looking, touching, imagining and speaking, the continuity, complexity and network connections in space will be investigated. Fiction will be used as a strategy to shift perspectives.

Through the workshop we will work on different ways to represent and experience the materiality of the space. Space wrapping your body, space cushioning it, your body wrapping the space, cushioning it. Practices will allow you to experience intimacy and otherness of material encounters. Through the time of the workshop they will layer and accumulate towards expanding the perception and experience of space.

A part of the workshop will be dedicated to the Earth. The Earth will appear as the basic structure of our material being, as the physical and symbolic base for human spatiality. We will look back at our personal connection with it. We will start from revisiting the biography of our relation with Earth. To explore this bond further, to think with it and share its problems we will develop performative situations.

Aim of the workshop
The workshop aims to engage its participant in the practical exploration of relations in the material space. By ‘practical exploration’ I mean getting knowledge, experience and skills through physical engagement in activity. The aim is to expand ways of perceiving and representing space through the work with body and its senses.


DAY ONE: ‘INSIDE’ (happening in the studio)

1. Warm – up practice: Seeing as touching. (30 min)

(The person leading talks through the exercise while practicing with the group.)

Instructions:

I. moving through space
Move through the space (take it as simple as it is).
While moving through the space move with the space.

Prompts (given at this stage, but can be repeated throughout the practice, as needed):
Never come back to the same exact place.
Radically change places.
Move through the center as well as through the peripheries.
Move up, down and in-between.
Close your eyes for a moment and observe, feel spaces inside of your body (what shapes have the caverns? Are they empty or filled with something? Is there any movement inside? Is there any pressure?); move the space inside of your body?
Notice the special relations you are entering (what is close/far/under/above to you? ) and make them change constantly.(move through the center, peripheries, down and up).

II. seeing
See what you watch passing through your gaze. See it for real.
Make your gaze sharp, noticing, receptive.

See what is passing through your gaze: details, shapes, colors, texture. See the space but also your body if it passes in front of your eyes. See how surfaces change, go from one to another creating one space.

III. seeing as touching
What if seeing is a way of touching? So when you see you also are touched. How do the things you see touch you? What reaction does seeing evoke in your body? It can be tiny – it might be softness, vibration, attraction, repulsion, curiosity, memory… To give it a chance stay with one landscape, a surface for a while. Let what you see pass through yourself, let it transform you.

From time to time invite your gaze to lead, to be the driver of the movement so you can trace the reality of the space – it’s 3-dimensionality. Follow the appetite, the curiosity of your eyes. Go under the table if your eyes have appetite to see its bottom, go around or behind to see the other side of a 3D object, get close to look at the fissure in the wall. If you need to in order to see – move physically closer to what you are watching.

If you come across a hole, fissure, discontinuity in the surface go there with your gaze and assume your gaze can go further than your physical body, to see what is inside, what colors, textures can touch you there.

Continue moving through space seeing-touching and from to time giving the lead to the gaze. Follow it’s appetite, don’t be lazy, be eager. Slide your gaze – like a touching hand through space, your body and those invisible spaces. Keep on discovering this landscape.

IV. being seen
Keep on moving fallowing your body. Let it move as it wants now. You are being seen now. You are being seen by all objects, matters and entities that surround you. Notice what and how watches you in every moment. Allow this gazes to see you. Observe them seeing you, observe how does this condition influence you and your movement.

VI. being touched by what is seeing you
Keep on moving, but assume that what you are watching is touching you. How is it to be touched? How does this objects touch you? What touches are these? Play with seeing and being touched as you want.

VII. closing
Continuing what you are doing arrive to a place to sit or lie down and close your eyes. What are the remains of the seeing-touching in your body and mind? Do you have a sense of any directionality of space? Do any qualities of the experience resonate – any sensations, any qualities of this space, of its structure? Do you have a memory of any specific moment, place, surface?

Open your eyes. Find a partner and talk to them for 10 minutes about what you experienced (then exchange roles).


* elements of this warm up practice are inspired by practices shared during workshops by Jeanine Durning and Anna Nowicka


2. Touch as a love relationship (60 min)

Read the whole instructions beforepracticing.

What if we consider the relation of our body and all it is in touch with a love relation?
What if our touch with other surfaces is an erotic touch? What if there is a desire and even greed on both sides of the touch?

This practice is to be done in couples, in turns: one person is practicing (practitioner), one is watching (companion).

Erotic is a human notion. Here we exceed this meaning of it. Connect ‘erotic’ with desire, pleasure, experience but not necessary interhuman sex. Assume: different matters touch you in different ways; each of these touches is erotic in its own way. When we touch with the matter we are affected by its features, i.e. temperature, texture, density, shape or color (if we have open eyes). Touch and discover what kind of pleasure it is in each case. Be the partner in this play -play it on your own rules, listen to your partners.

Practitioner:

Choose a place in the space that attracts you. Choose a postion. To start, close your eyes and arrive with your attention to the body. Take 5 breaths and with each exhale allow your weight to drop more and more. Feel the weight of your body on the surface supporting it. What body parts, body surfaces are in touch with something? Notice, what sensations appear on the surfaces of touch.

Choose one surface that you are in touch with and follow this touch – start moving to experience it, follow the sensation or stimulate it, discover this touch. It might take you to engaging with different body surfaces or body parts, bigger surfaces of the skin, changing the speed of movement or it’s character (sliding, putting pressure, squeezing, spreading, bumping etc. ). You want to experience the other surface or matter fully, with the whole body at once. You are curios and open to receive.

Whenever you feel touching each other was satiated or you discovered that actually you are in touch with something else, move your attention. Maybe you can be in touch with multiple entities. Maybe with something that is under something and you can’t touch it directly.

If you don’t want to be in a certain touch – leave it and try another.

Touch the matter as if you don’t know it.
Erase the memory, knowledge and image of this space and preconceived ideas on what is erotic. Don’t doubt, dive/immerse into touch.

Give yourself 20 min to explore the space in that way.

Companion:

Take care of the doer moving through space. Observe yourself in watching – what takes your attention?

After each round both the doer and the witness exchange about their experience of the space (they can talk, write, draw etc.). What was meaningful about this experience of space? How did you experience this space?

Or

After each round both close your eyes and do the 5 min of reporting each (or right at the end?):
1) Doer: Talk about how was it to be with touch with what you touched and what were these spaces you were in
2) Witness: Talk about what you saw.

Both speak with eyes closed, in present tense (revisit the experience)

3. Guided tour through space (in pairs) (30 min)

‘NARRATING SCORE – A guided tour of a mental space’ a score by Philipine Hoegen, (from: Another Version: Thinking Through Performance)

'A score for 2 or more people, to be executed in a space you would like to explore.
Find a place within earshot of each other and lie down on your backs.

Take a moment to look, hear, feel.

Close your eyes and, taking turns, give each other a spoken guided tour of a space as you remember it or would like to imagine it.'

4. Experience through language (50 min)

One person leads the practice through giving instructions step by step. It is important to take time for each step.

Instructions:

I.
Look through the space and discover an image of your body somewhere in the landscape of the space (choose the place and imagine your body there).

II.
Sit or stand in front of this place, look at it. Carefully look at this space from outside:

What position is your imagined body in?
Are you there because you are doing something or the reason is not known?

Look at the place where you situated your imagined body. What structures can you see there?
Of what and how the landscape of this place is composed? What constitutes it?
What matters, textures are there?
What material layers can you see?
Can you distinguish any particular spaces within this space?

IV.
Enter the place with your real body. Take time to arrive to the imagined position. Spend there some time, exit.
Do it again. Make your gaze receptive, see the space which you enter – see shapes, colors, details; notice and sense what you touch (textures, temperature, shapes) on the way to and in the final position. Exit.
Do it once again, but this time change the perspective, observe what and how touches while you enter the image.

V.
Do the process of entering the position describing the landscape you are crossing. Talk about the outside of your body (the landscape of which the body is a part) and how it physically interacts with the body.
Describe things as:
- What do you touch and what touches you as you move?
- What colors, shapes, patters, shapes appear in front of your eyes?
- What movements that appear?
- What uncovers, reveals to your experience as you travel through the landscape?

Start with the opening phrase: ‘When I enter this landscape (or place/room/…).’ Always describe from the perspective of the body, from the moment and place where the body is. Take as much time as you need in any moment of the trajectory (when something on the way takes your attention give it to it, give words to it) . Finish with staying in stillness in the final body position.

Do this practice minimum 3 times.

VI.
Separate text from the physical action. Tell what you were saying while doing without doing. Write it down (maybe the key elements) in a way that you can repeat it.

VII.
Come back together as a group. Go through places chosen by participants one by one. Group sits in front of the place and the practitioner tells the created narration of entering the place (without doing it). The rest is listening while watching the empty place. Don’t talk in between the presentations, move in silence from one to another.

VIII.
When everybody is finished take any place in the space that you want and spend 5 minutes
sitting quietly. Keep on watching the space and observe what remains of what you heard and saw resonate in your body and mind.


DAY TWO: ‘OUTSIDE’ (happening outdoor)

Conditions:
Forest, park, field, (nature, something with earth).
Up to 10 people
Bring comfortable clothes, a blanket, pen or pencil
The leader brings: post-its, extra pens, extra blankets.


1. Warm – up:
(To be executed in silence, leader can give additional breathing prompts, tips on relaxing the body)

Find a comfortable spot to lie down (take a blanket if you need). Relax your body, with each exhale let your body fall to the ground, with an inhale take in new energy that will bring you to the moment coming.

Notice the movement around and inside of you.

(approx. 15 min).

2. Warm – up (continuation):

I.
Start to move, not too abrupt, small movements in a comfortable manner, move feet and hands, roll to one and the other side, move your spine, open your eyes and notice images that enter your perception.

See what is passing in front of your eyes, realize what you notice, what you are looking at. Without searching or hunting, allow your gaze to flow, as you continue the body movement keep noticing the shifting view. (10 minutes)

II.
Stop your movement, look at what is in front of your eyes, and without any hesitation adjust with your body to what you see, i.e. allow the quality, energy or movement of what you see move you. Become it. (7 minutes)

III.
Keep on moving and keep repeating II: when you encounter the next thing adapt to it…etc. (10 minutes)

IV.
Take a moment to calm down.

* the warm up practice is based on the work shared in the educational context by Ria Highler

3. Confession (30 min)
Choose a partner and find a nice place where you can both talk. Tell (one by one) the autobiography of your relationship with the Earth: the history of your experiences of the earth, as in globe or soil (optional, whichever is more meaningful to you), you can include different understandings of Earth, switch between them. It is important that you talk from the personal perspective about YOUR relation, not about possible relations, not about problems you see in relation human – Earth, not as humanity, but as you. Tell your story.

Helpful prompts:
Start from your earliest memories, think about how you spent time in proximity to earth / soil. What kind of earth was it: was it sand, rocks, were you in the mountains or are you more connected to water? Or was there a lack of contact to earth if you were in a city, and if so, did you notice this lack?
What is your relation to place, did you stay in one place or did you travel a lot?
If so, you could think about the conditions for these travels, why, how did your cross the earth, who paid for it…?
Did you (and do you) use or have objects, tools, attributes, (you can think also of things used for nutrition, warmth etc.) that came directly from the earth?
Then you can think about what emotions are attached to these memories.

After take notes on post it (What touched or moved you? What took your attention?)

4. A WALK LOOKING DOWN
Inspired by ‘LOOKING INSIDE OUTSIDE - Fine Weather Score’ by PHILIPINE HOEGEN (from: Another Version: Thinking Through Performance)

Go for a walk outside, individually. Look down while you walk, keeping your gaze directed towards the earth. What do you notice? What moves you ? What do you step on? What do you fallow? What do you avoid? During the walk take notes on post-its, choosing your words selectively.

(30-45 min)

5. ‘Pick & Paste – poetry writing score’ by PHILIPINE HOEGEN (from: Another Version: Thinking Through Performance)

Come back together as a group. Bring your post-its and fallow the score:

'Collect all the post-its from the former score on a wall. Study the wall, then pick and stick a selection of the post-its in an order that makes sense to you. Consider the outcome a poem.”

(10 min)

6. Perform a poem
Choose a poem that attracts you or feels meaningful to you. Work on a small performative event with the poem: make an installation, build the space or create a performance. Make the poem part of it - decide if you will read/say it aloud, ask someone else to read it or make it be present in the written form (to be read by the audience).

(20 min)

Come together. All together visit all the performances or installations (one after the other).

(20 min)

7. Check-out / feed-back
Come together and talk about the workshop. What changed in your perspective or experience of the environment? What thoughts were triggered? Which practices were affecting your way of perceiving space?
(10 min)

Enveloped inter-home gathering. Practice of appearance in time of disappearance.


Duration: 2h
Place: participants' homes , online, via video communicator

what you need
a place where you can feel at home; where you can lie down or sit comfortably.
an internet connected device with a working camera, screen and audio
a smartphone/ photo camera
at least one, preferably a few blankets
a notebook and something to write

Everybody need to read the whole manual before the practice. There is no leader during the session.


1. Opening
Welcome each other online. If you don't know each other - introduce yourself.

2.Preparation
Arrange the place of practice (preparation 3 min; until we are all ready)

Choose a comfortable place for the practice. It can be a bed where you usually sleep, but might be a sofa, an armchair, a chair that you like or even a spot on the floor if you like. It’s important that you feel at ease there and you can relax. Take the laptop/device and a phone/camera with you.

Spread the blankets on the bed and sit on the bed. After you read the fallowing, but before you start set the alarm for 40 minutes.

3. Practice (40 min)

When you check that everybody is ready, start the clock and start together:

Find a comfortable way to sit on or between blankets where you can release, ‘fall’, but still have some mobility to reach blankets, move them without changing you position very much.

Watching

Look at your own body. Travel with your gaze through its landscape. Move your gaze freely. Allow images enter your perception. See what you are watching. Make your gaze receptive. Observe the body as you don’t know anything about it. Watch its’ shapes, colors, texture of the skin and clothes. Look at how does the clothes lie or fold, what details and patterns you see when you watch the body.

Then take a few minutes to watch the blankets in the same way. Look at its physicality. See how the blanket folds, wrinkles, waves, what colors, textures it has etc.

Observe and imagine how the blanket could enfold, match the body, how it could enfold it, how it could work with bodies’ qualities – shapes, negative spaces, surfaces and how it could move on or around the body.

Enfolding

Pick one correspondence or a match between body and a blanket. With your hands, move the blanket and bring it close to the body to make the match visible, to amplify it. Then look at the figure of your body and blanket as it is now and choose another one, make it come together, and choose another one, and another…. The blankets might surprise you bring in new information when you touch the, propose ways to sculpt them.

Work with the qualities of the body and blanket(s). Keep on enfolding the body and observing appearing and transforming figure and landscape.

Excavating

After a while take a moment to look at the landscape you are part of as you would see it for the first time. You can keep on working with ‘matches’ but also start to explore it. To discover what is in between the folds, in dark corners, how the blanket will move… Touch the shapes, enter in between the folds, pull the fragments, uncover the hidden parts, reshape it fallowing the propositions of the materials…. Do it with attention observing how matters move, how the landscape transforms, and what sensations does it rises.

Uncover the landscape and explore it with “matching” interchangeably. Enfold and unfold the landscape as it appears in a continuous process.

Close - open eyes - continue

Close your eyes for a moment and stay with your sensations. If you feel like – move slowly changing the position. Let the movement last as long as it needs. Then open your eyes and continue the practice. Open and close eyes as you wish, experiment with movement also with open eyes. Enfold and unfold the landscape in a continuous process incorporating all the elements for last 10 minutes. Be curious, keep on watching and rummaging. Keep on enfolding. Keep on discovering new possibilities to enfold and reformulate.
Observe sensations, but also associations, or images. What place are you now?

Alarm: Closing,

The end will be signaled by the alarm sound.
The fallowing few minutes are for you to recognise the situation you are in, to inhabit the excavated figure – how you are, what do you sense, what do you see.... Take a moment for this and then, expand your attention to the space. Move your gaze gradually from what is very close to you towards outwards.
Take some pictures of yourself enfolded, of fragments that take your attention, maybe of space.
Arrive to meet all together.

4. Silent meeting – being together or writing together.

A 10 min long silent meeting. There are two optional ways of holding this meeting.
A.
Stay together in silence in front of screens. Anybody at any moment can say something (sharing the experience or thought about it), but the statements stays without any comment. There is no discussion, when something is said the group gives to it a moment of silence before another statement is given. It can happened that nothing is said at all.
B.
Stay together and write about the experience. Keep connection with the screen (be together).

Scores used for writing in the publication (to discover a fossil on your tibia; scories and other mutations of scores)

Imagine telling the biography of your relation with Earth. The moments you were looking down to the earth, looking into what you saw, looking at yourself looking.


Noticing movements. Noticing their traces; imagining further movement in the same or opposite directions. Observing the imagination and imagining further.


What if you would build a shelter now? A shelter for this moment built with what is accessible to you. Imagine observing this shelter.


What if your body is a stone? Be with this stone, observe it.


Sit or lay down to take a rest. After a while, notice the position of your body, acknowledge the surface you are on. Observe your body. Observe it’s position, as if you are looking at it from outside. Observe your closest surroundings in the same way. Start to read your body and the place as a situation you don’t know, but just see. Imagine it is placed at a different location, in the future. Imagine other companions as you wish. When you do it, reflect on the kind of relations your imagination comes up with?


Choose a place that is familiar and intimate to you, eg. your bed. Discover its geography and geology. Watch it from a distance and while you do what you usually do there. Choose one simple movement or action that you do there and describe it picturing engaged entities and following, step by step physical process, events, and encounters of matters that happen. Invite geology and its language to help you re-visit this moment. Observe the material structure and the landscape of the place.


You can use this score to watch and re-discover a place. That can be a real place, a photo, or a memory. Watch it as you would watch a natural landscape—look at its material structure—building elements, land relief, special relations. Discovering its geography and geology, explore how you could invite geology and its language to help you re-visit and describe this moment. Write down your description. Did it make you see anything differently? Where did it bring your attention?


Spend a moment in silence wherever you are. Be there, see what appears in front of your eyes and listen to what you hear. How long does it take to start to imagine?

Daily practices: Scores for the crisis of imagination


1. Spend at least a minute with at least 10 plants daily (a minute per plant; full focus on being together, try different ways of being together). Make notes of what comes to your attention within yourself and outside of you.

2. Go to the forest and learn something. Let the forest to propose the thing to learn. Write down what you’ve learnt.

3. Chant ‘Anyway I’m going to dye’ for a while during the day when doing some daily arounds (np. cleaning the table after dinner, taking a shower, taking garbage out). You can play with intonation and melody. If you want use the melody of any song you like. Stay with the words you are singing, don’t make it automatic. Don’t make it dramatic, treat it as a verse to discover it’s meaning. Stay with the words you are singing, don’t make it automatic. Observe how it goes into dialog with other objects of your attention (np. the dishes you are cleaning). Observe in what relations does it place you? What thought, perceptions does it activates?

Option: Chant it as one of the objects that is in you surrounding?

4. For a period (e.g. from getting up till breakfast), sharpen attention to notice all of the micro-desires of your body (a wish to sit, scratch your back, eat a fruit that you see, watch something closely, touch a wall, a fabric that you see, stand next to something). Don’t judge these appetites, accept, enjoy.

5.Observe how you move or not move through the places throughout a day. What do you recognise as a place, a room or a pavement tile you are standing on? Are you getting attached to any of them? What makes you attach to them? Are you a visiting stranger or an explorer? Do you belonging to them? Use the micro scale – a place can be a room, but it can be a pavement tile you are standing on, a body position, or a hand touching the cup.

6.When you walk from one place to the other during your day focus your attantion on the ‘holes’ and ‘openings’ that you encounter. Notice then, look at them and into them, imagine you see inside them… What is there? Write down the associations, imaginations, memories, thoughts that this provoke. Do not censor.

7.When you take the garbage out stay for a minute in the place where you drop them. Close your eyes, don’t move. Observe what flows through you. After a minute take some notes.