7.9.2012 | 6.6.2012 | 4.6.2012 |
Friday 7. September, Theatre Academy, Helsinki
A week of practice in the 532. Dark space. Working with randomly choosing the keywords (previously ‘scenes’) and mixing them. In body practice. Working with some music. Feeling bit lost with all. Trying to figure out some structure. Eventually had some idea of using a little bit sci-fi costume. It came from this flick: Pumzi [link].
thought about the style, Spalding Gray, but also more fictionalized Vito Acconci.
About the minor gestures, and the thought that practicing with obvious tools, such as chair and tabel, will lead to certain moves and performance. Links to certain machines, does certain cuts to performance. So, how to look for the unfamiliar, i.e. to a different references? By practice and repetition, and noticing the familiar?
6.6.2012 Bytom
What comes up is my own nervousness, or my own refrains.
Representation of women and happiness and health are dominant refrains everywhere. Also Banks.
Are we a network or a system? I dare to disagree. Are we managed and performing well or bad? I doubt that’s the way to perceive this particular situation. We are confused. Also, all metaphors (from Deleuze) of a swarm, or wolfs huddling in a ring by a bonfire, are not correct, but in fact disturbing. We are not side by side, we are in a mess.
I would not like to use any metaphors, but talk directly about materials, of the machines of the troubles. A metaphor takes me away from the difficult contradictions, and from the distinctions, as well. If a metamodel or schizoanalysis or any other model becomes a system, or a map becomes an explanation or directive for what seems to be so, then they lure me away form these difficult contradictions. There are only singular and particular problems.
Why I am stuck, because I pay attention only to major refrains, to the obvious: bank, representation of women, mines, fear, traffic, commercial city centres. A task is to try to get in touch with the minor, not obvious – in the minor as well. This is not clearly discursive, signified, or symbolic. It is on the periphery of the obvious, as a fuzz and actual mess. Hard to get in touch with.
I should get into details, of the refrains of post-industrial, not that what I know, what I actually thus want to find out, but that which is not obvious.
There is the obvious Bytom, of major refrains, and there is the difficult to grasp, unclear Bytom. The obscure mess, which photographs are not directly grasping.
As it was for OuLiPo, Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; the workshop of potential literature, would this be the workshop of potential politicis, potential performance, potential — ? But this is not enough, to my taste. It is a tool to approach something, but as a disadvantage of any tools, it will blur the minor, even into insignificant. It cannot be universalized, neither the schizoanalysis can become anything universal.
After Bobrek
I feel tired now, bit confused, what could I really do here. What can performance do, what can artist do? Nothing, unless it checks what is the social structure and context it is connected with. It can be pedagogical, which here would have a huge function. Nevertheless, the structure of the society does not necessarily permit any access to culture. It needs to be building, which Kronika is already doing.
I am not sure if it is correct to say, at least for Radek and Piotr, life is not precarious, which is bit surprising. There seem to be no worry about the economic collapse. Maybe precariousness is more linked with the more well doing places, like Finland, where service economy is already developed much further.
What is sure, that what was once build around the factory, the community is now gone, and there has not become anything to replace it. That’s why, it makes artistic practice, or agency to be developed so difficult. Art has never been singular weird thing, but integrally connected with the social and political device. Right now, this epoch makes artist to choose, either continue to be an entertainment producer, or then choose to build this social connection, with all the contradictions, which are apparent.
4.6.2012, Bytom
The first workshop. I arrived too early. I am not sure if there will be any participants. Bit nervous about that. Had made a plan how to proceed. If no-one comes, I had to create an alternative plan. What is my Bytom? How does this city work for me, what kind of flows and territories it work for me? What are the machines, which make me nervous?
Thought about the different sites of capital flow: Supermarkets, smaller shops, the 24-hour shops, individual sellers, pawn-shops (Lombard), banks. Images of these sites. And tomorrow, since the workshop will be in the evening, I could make myself a tour, and research Bytom according to my own questions, in relation to flows.
