“If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then the next day you probably do much the same again—if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time."
Ursula Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
CONVERSATION IN VERMONT: LISA NELSON
Nouvelle annotation
Filming the practice of The breathing archive necessitates a special video setting. One camera is recording "from within". It is placed on the table at the same level than the pages and the manual activity thus breaking down the hierarchy between the visual and the tactile and establishing a common ground for their interaction. This camera can be moved unintentionally by the practice or activated by players. A second camera is activated by a video artist from the periphery of the table. Video recordings stays as a trace of the different sessions of the practice in various contexts, developing yet another type of documentation.
Below are three video documents of The breathing archive that put at play different bags (set of texts) at Bains Connective and Contredanse Documentation Center, Brussels (B), and ICK, Amsterdam (NL) for MIND THE DANCE on-line publication.
THE BREATHING ARCHIVE , Contredanse Documentation Center, Brussels, March 2018
Players: Sonia Si Ahmed, Justine Maxelon and Anouk Llaurens
With the participation of Yota Dafniotou and Florence Corin
Images : Anouk llaurens and Elli Vassalou
Editing: Elli Vassalou
This session puts at play a selection of texts from Sarma's anthology about Lisa Nelson (Conversation in Vermont: Lisa Nelson), dialogue about my own research and and movement scores that engage hand-eye coordination.
THE BREATHING ARCHIVE
A project by Anouk Llaurens in dialogue with Sonia Si Ahmed and Julien Bruneau.
With the participation of Maya Dalinsky, Emilie Gallier, Justine Maxelon and Elli Vassalou.
Developed as part of the artistic research on Poetic Documentation of Lived Experience ( 2013 - ...)
THE BREATHING ARCHIVE - CQ UNBOUND Conversation entre Lisa Nelson et Anouk Llaurens
Touch
Touch
So "silence"
what ?
Now the important points are coming in red
Stillness
that's why I recopy everything,
Open
Close
Touch
But it's also the "receptivness" of it but
Touch
which would be more 'See' then 'Look'
Yeah See, Look then, should I put also See?
May be don't put too much.
Too much.
Look,Touch,Smell
Look, Touch, Hear Hear is with and "H" hein?
Hear
Fear, Ah! Ah!
Fear! Ah!Ah!A!
Smell
and Read was nice
Yeah it's gona come
Read
But, we can also do things without having to name them, or...
No, yes, I know but, of course...
But I would really... because you know, there are so many possibilities ...
I would really rather focus on this.
No but you mean like whenever I change my focus
I always have to say?
Yeah, if you notice
yeah If I notice
And you can also choose to change your focus
So it is not only
Like, yeah you have both
You can be willful or just it's happening to you.
Yeah
And then there is Crumple and Un-crumple, as a...
Crumple
As a constant
and un-crumple
This is all about communicating
to the space, you know
also to ourselves , like you know what you are doing and ...
Open
Look
Touch
Hear
Stillness
Close
Sound
Look
Touch
Read
Close
Silence
Read out-loud
Touch
David and I met in Bennington in 1970
and worked together for some years,
often with the voice sometimes both moving.
This concert and all this elements.
I had been working with vision for many years at this point
and I like the photo
cause it captures a moment
when the only thing holding me up
is my eyes
Look
Hear
Read
Close
Open
Close
touch
open
close
hear
Read out-loud
Sometimes I saw things on playback
I hadn’t noticed while shooting,
but on second view had clearly guided me.
Evidently, my movement was shaped
by reactions to signals from the space
that were invisible to me.
This cast a light of doubt
And changed my perception of space
while dancing:
I was swimming in signals.
Look
Read out-loud
English is my second language,
dance is my first.
In a sense, I didn't learn to speak
until after I was 19.
I was very slow to learn to separate
the meaning of words
from all the other activities
involved in speaking.
Traveling to other culture
puts a demand on our senses.
As you cross a border,
you have to be flexible enough
to open your senses,
you have to figure out the cultural signals
to learn how to cross the street.
It is always fascinating to go to a new place,
to flex new muscles
to learn how to shape your communication.
We shape it
and wait
and listen and
feel
Open - Read
Read
Read out-loud
Second phase
When the Poetic Documentation Center
will be more or less stabilized,
I would like to open it to visitors
and see how it affects them.
I will propose different ways
to experience the center
from the most distant position - eye
to the closest one - hand.
The opening time will be long enough,
several days,
for people to come back
try different entrances to the work
and for us
to take note of what happens.
Close
Hear
Touch
Read out-loud
...or sharing things.
Yes, sharing
but destroying the documentation center,
I mean, destroyed,
would be shared.
I think it can be a great idea.
Look
Read
Cyborg camera.
Use the camera as an extension of yourself
to visually explore your environment.
Notice what enters and exits the frame
Read
How does your body and attention
Hear
Composes your frame?
How does the frame
composes your body and attention?
You can decide if/when
you want to push the rec button
and if you want to take fragments
or continuous shots.
Touch
Read out-loud.
I don't offer great details.
I try to give enough
physiological references
to the genetic design
of the human sense organs.
Open
Close
Read
Read out-loud
We learn the immediate predictable consequences
Open
of the call through practice.
Many things have the same basic effect.
For example "End", "Restart" and "Exit"
empty the space.
The same call can be used
to satisfy different desires,
stemming from which aspect of the dance
one is attending to.
For example, I might call "Pause", if,
while tracking my experience,
I notice am overloaded
and need time
to re-engage my imagination
Close
Smell
Read out-loud
I am dancer, often I retired the camera
a performer
I observe my eyes activity while eating
a teacher
laughing, thinking
a researcher
walking through
and a shiatsu practitioner
familiar fields, down foreign city streets
since I have encountered the work
dancing and watching anything
my dance practice shifted
noting their patterns
from exercising the body
I play with altering, altering them
to exercising the attention
on entering a crowded room,
I observe my eyes instantly
seek out the empty spaces
a research on poetic
safe path to navigate through
polyphonic
a pattern I thought yet
and multi-modal dance documentation
a pattern I forged when very young
Close
Open
and the interaction or the movement itself
open
nothing about the dance itself,
Look
nothing about the dance itself because there is "S
and I know the language
Smell
but we don't know what the other will do with it.
How long have you been "S" and you
working together?
It's all a surprise at this point in the piece.
I don't know whether "S"
is going to dance a lot,
he doesn't know whether I am.
He doesn't know whether,
I'll be just a part of the environment,
make myself into an object the whole time
whether either of us
will get involved in some internal character
like it seemed that "S"
Open
did last night.
Close
Read out-loud
...the wood grain flooding her screen
like the tribesmen of the rain forest
who never having seen a large clearing,
read distant animals
as close range miniatures,
she registers the surprises
of an unconditioned perception.
The eye's desire
One could think It could be doable without guidance
but it's a long process,
you don't learn it in five minutes.
Let it move you
I am thinking about that
because I am used to guide
when I give a dance workshop
You can get closer or take distance,
for example zoom in and zoom out
Resist the temptation to take things with your hands I think it is good that i guide the breathing archive
For me it is also a movement practice
Let the whole body adapt and move to support your eyes desires
I can not let people alone.Mostly dancers don't use their eyes to look at things,
you don't have time.
You are engaged completely physically
and you use your eyes to look
for the empty spaces.
Touch and Close
Peripheral
Read
Sound
Play
Open Open Play
Read out-loud
The implication for me
is that you are making something
when you are improvising.
Listen
Read
Close
Read out loud
The Tuning Score
is an ongoing research process.
It offers
a communication feedback system
to an ensemble of players
that makes explicit
how each one senses
and make sense of movement.
As an improvisational composition practice
it is a performance in itself.
This writing
is a fragment of explanation.
a remembering of a practice
that is designed to teach itself
by doing.
Close
Stay Look
Open
The eye's desire.
Look at the space around you.
Follow your visual interest,
let it move you through space.
You can get closer or take distance,
zoom in and zoom out.
Resist the temptation
to take things with your hands.
Let the whole body adapt
and move to support your eyes desire.
Lisa Nelson
Open
Look
Read out loud.
There was controversy
about which way to take
and also the role of authorship,
about the heritage
and questions like that.
I think it is very recent
that choreography
have been included
as intellectual property
and the way of registering intellectual property
is very different
than what is singular to dance.
There were many years before
ways of transmitting the dance
much closer to a kind of stewardship,
reference persons
system of
practice very strongly
what was superior
by the
by the
but not
and the first
technical you
know
what.
Touch
Sound
Hear
Open
Look
Read
Open
Read out-loud
What do we see when we are looking at dance?
Play
A first answer that comes to mind
is that tuning scores cast light
on dance itself.
They inform us of dance possibilities.
This may be so.
But it is not the answer
I am looking for.
It doesn't satisfy.
For one thing, it is not surprising to learn
that the tuning score method
will teach us about dance.
The question is whether dance,
explored using tuning scores,
can teach us about something else,
for example about the mind.
How breath influences
the many of subtle inner shape changes
in the cavity,
mouth, chest, abdomen of the body
and find where the relational change
that occurs look/
in different configurations
of limbs, front head.
The breath influences body shaping
in relation to mobility/hear/
and stability
through the concept of anchoring and
welcoming...
concept involving use of the body's natural weight
... as an anchor, or foundation
for increasing mobilization ...
close ... body
Open
Read out loud
Open
I wonder what people like to watch.
I love to watch people sing.
The way the face moves
to tune the sound.
The eyes look out, then in, then out,
then somewhere I-don’t-know-where.
I can see the feedback looping from throat to ear to throat
and back and forth.
Sometimes the face seems to turn inside out.
Sometimes it floats on a still pool of vibration,
small shaping of lips, a glimpse of tongue.
I see the sound shape the singer
—the ear tuning the body as the body tunes the sound.
When I watch this tuning,
I see what I want from dancing.
...lightens up when you breath
in and deflates and meet the floor
more intimately
each time you breath out.
Acknowledge that you are made
of trillions of cells
that are also breathing,
inflating and deflating,
expanding and condensing,
touching each other
and exchanging informations
through their porous membrane.
Spend a moment paying attention
to the subtle internal pulse.
Let it expands
and contaminate the entire body,
reaching the extremities
and less visited areas.
When you feel ready
open your eyes
and see what you see.
Silence
End.
Photo 1: Fabienne Cressens
Photo 2,3: Sol Archer
Performers: Maya Dalinsly, Julien Bruneau and Emilie Gallier
Video 1: Image Elli Vassalou and players
Editing: Elli Vassalou
Players: Sonia Si Ahmed, Mila and Anouk Llaurens
With the support of Bain Connective
Video 2: Image: Elli Vassalou and players
Editing: Elli Vassalou and Anouk Llaurens
Players: Sonia Si Ahmed, Justine Maxelon and Anouk Llaurens with the participation of Yota Dafniotou and Florence Corin
With the support of Bain connective (B), Contredanse (B) and Reflex Europe Project
THE SKIN IS THE MOST EXTERNAL LAYER OF THE BRAIN
A video document of The breathing archive applied to two of my contributions for MIND THE DANCE played with the Reflex Research Team (Bertha Bermúdez Pascual, Defne Erdur, Eszter Gál Sabina Holzer, Andrea Keiz, Kerstin Kussmaul, Friederike Lampert, Anouk Llaurens, Ulla Mäkinen and Martin Streit) The film was made in collaboration with Andrea Keiz for MIND THE DANCE.
THE BREATHING ARCHIVE - a.pass book
Project for publication "In these circumstances, On collaboration, performativity and transdisciplinaroty in research based practices
SPECIAL THANKS to Sonia Si Ahmed, Maya Dalinsky and Julien Bruneau for their on-going collaboration and support for this research
The breathing archive has been created within the frame of my artistic research on Poetic Documentation of Lived Experience. The research passed through different contexts and artistic residencies: a.pass post master program, Contredanse documentation center, MIND THE DANCE documentation project... Each of them gave form to its own set of texts, contained in a tote bag, that can be played by The breathing archive’s practice.
"How can a dancer approach documentation from her embodied perspective ? How does an archive look like when processed by the skills of the dancer, usually more concerned with the fleeting, the evanescent, the impermanent than with conservation ? Anouk Llaurens puts these questions literally on the table with her poetic documentation practice The Breathing Archive. "
Julien Bruneau
The breathing archive invites players to edit collectively an ephemeral document that is contingent to the present conditions. The core action of the practice is to crumple and un-crumple printed A4 pages. This simple action done with care wishes to send us back to the basic life’s movement, like the movement of cells breathing and heart beating. Before crumpling and un-crumpling the pages, players are invited to pay attention to their own breath as a continuous support for their action. Breathing as a ground induces an attentive and open presence that favors the emergence of a poetic experience made of sensations of paper, flesh, sounds, words, images, table, colors, smells, emotions and thoughts. Playing The Breathing Archive, one might live a suspended time that is no longer about past nor future, a time to live the ordinary as extraordinary, a time to celebrate being, instead of having, with others.