Please, touch me (PT/EN)

[*Alberto Pereira Jr. first made ‘Please, touch me’ for a 2019 workshop in São Paulo. His production notes are the third in a series that also includes a project abstract #movingtarget and creative writing, ELE. xo, Todd]

PT

Instigado por um workshop realizado no instituto Itaú Cultural, sobre estigma e produção artística contemporânea em relação ao tema HIV/Aids, realizei a minha segunda saída do armário: vivendo há 10 anos com HIV, criei a performance “Por favor, toque-me”, revelando meu status positivo e convidando o público a ressignificar a imagem pré-concebida de um corpo positivo.

EN

Instigated by a workshop that was realized in the Itaú Cultural Institute, on stigma and the contemporary artistic production in relation to the theme of HIV/Aids, I realized my second coming out of the closet: living with HIV for over 10 years, I created the performance “Please, touch me,” revealing my positive status and inviting the public to resignify the preconceived image of a positive body.

PT

A performance-instalação “Por Favor, Toque-me” reelabora, no contato entre criador/performer e público, as possíveis imagens pré-concebidas a cerca de um corpo que vive com o HIV. Característica ou estigma, a soropositividade de Alberto Pereira Jr., é autodeclarada em seu vestuário, tornando-se física e passível de toque. Tocar para apreender, para expurgar, para reumanizar? Cabe ao público participante investigar suas novas ou antigas convicções. Integra a parte instalativa da performance, um tapete costurado tal qual uma colcha de retalhos, com peças de roupas de pessoas que vivem com HIV.

EN

1) Activity title: Please, touch me

a) Objectives: The performance/body work “Please, Touch Me” re-elaborates, in the contact between creator/performer and audience, the possible preconceived images about a human body living with HIV.

b) Description of activities: Characteristic or stigma, the seropositivity of artist and activist Alberto Pereira Jr. is self-declared in his clothing, becoming physical and susceptible to people’s touch. Touch to seize, to purge, to rehumanize? It is up to the participating public to investigate their new or old beliefs about human relations, about HIV and the prejudice that follows people
living under this stigma.

c) Material: There is an installation part of the performance, a rug sewn like a quilt, with garments of people living with HIV, inspired by the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

d) Format: The performer’s body will be touched and he will touch as well the people who touch him. The encounter between the audience and the artist will provoke a new narrative of infinities possibilities.

e) Expected Outcomes:Wherever the performance is performed, it generates empathy, listening and affection. A moment of resignification of preconceived ideas from the public and also of empowerment for the artist, who has been living with HIV for 10 years.

f) Experience/expertise: Alberto Pereira Jr. is a Brazilian social artist, who seeks intersection between theater, audiovisual, body work and literature for a dialogue and friction of contemporary themes such as blackness, homosexuality, HIV and affectivity. He created and directed “I now pronounce you…” (2012), documentary about LGBTQI + families in Brazil, awarded and funded by the São Paulo State Secretariat of Culture. Born and raised in the outskirts of São Paulo city, he is the founder of Domingo Ela Não Vai, one of the biggest street Carnival groups called blocos, part of the official line-up of the city. He also organizes various cultural events, such as Queermesse, a party that reunites LGBTQI + collectives. He created Subtle Lashes Festival of Margins Arts, sponsored by Levi’s. In its first edition, held in April 2019, the festival had a line-up with only black, trans and cis women, LGBTQI+ community protagonism, with music, talks and free workshops. As a journalist, he worked for six years at Grupo Folha Publishing Co., one of the biggest Brazilian media outlets. Currently, besides performing in theater, he has been working as a screenwriter and creative manager for TV and film projects, producing content for Discovery Channel, MTV, Fox and others.

considering attach-ability (#2)

hi guys,

So, I’ve had an idea for you both for around 6 months now and have regrettably failed to share it in a robust form. I would like to do so now. 

We may thank Brad Walrond for texting with me overnight (why he was awake, I do not know:).  Jonathan, Brad archives Pony’s work and/or that of his house.

Jonathan, remember when I mentioned I wanted to talk to you on insta the other day. Well, maybe we can do that in person on February 9th. I want to invite you to a performance at the home of Livia Alexander. It is rumored that Brad will perform there/then. Pony, you are most welcome also. 

Pony is the maker/father/legend of the House of Zion. Jonathan I presume you know a bit about the NYC and global ballroom/voguing houses. 

Pony, do you know Battery Dance?  BD is a lot of things. If I may: anchor dance/thought leader in downtown (for how long now, Jonathan?); key role in post 9/11 ‘being’ in downtown; cultural diplomacy/choreography/peacebuilding/dance … Well, they have a site where you can read all this:)

They use a tagline, ‘Dancing to Connect’, and I do feel that is an understatement!

Jonathan, Pony’s is a very special house. In 2015/16 I began researching types of exchange in ballroom thinking about local work I was seeing in São Paulo on HIV, public health access, and other right to the city concerns. Just before this period, I contracted HIV in São Paulo. So that also made the site of Lanchonete.org (a project on the right to the city) likely to consider HIV as one of its themes. We did this through Cidade Queer, a year-long series of encounters in 2016. I visited a site in Lecce, Italy to see Pony offering a workshop, and shortly after invited him to be a part of Cidade Queer and its culmination in late 2016. After a group production of the first ball (of its size) in São Paulo (called Ataque, September 2016)–something made by many people at once–Pony invited a Brazilian mother and father to take the reins of the new House of Zion-Brasil. 

In 2019, Pony returned to visit the house (along with Brad Walrond), and participated in the Ball: Vera Verão put on by Coletivo Amem and House of Zion-Brasil. I think perhaps Brad will perform the (not same:) 1986 piece on Feb. 9 that he did at this ball. 

In fact, Jonathan, I think I introduced you to the Coletivo Amem / House of Zion-Brasil guys on e-mail once. It was around the time that I first had this idea…the one that is coming. But also Pony was a part of the launch of my project Luv ’til it Hurts on HIV and stigma (back in October 2018), as was Brad. This collaboration led to their visit in January 2019.



I remember this email because I spoke of dancers and choreographers in the ballroom world ‘aging out’ … like that moment when the body won’t give the same as before. Of course this is different for each person, each dancer. 

These encounters–2015, 2016, 2018, 2019–allowed Pony and I the time to get to know each other. And, now I follow him on Insta:) Pony, am I right to say that VogueFitness is taking off? And, dude, you are looking buff!!

I remember what you told me of your idea. I luved it!! I hope I can ask you to share it here with Jonathan (and me again) … as I’m sure it’s changed / developed a bit since we last talked. 

Jonathan, it would not surprise me if you have also thought of concepts and solutions on this broad spectrum of wellness, professional transition support, public health issues, NYC, fitness … wellness. 

So, what I’m proposing is that you two guys might have things to talk about, ideas to make together. That is if you don’t already know each other. Uptown … Downtown.

Recently I was talking to a festival curator about a possible LUV ‘entry’ late this year. I don’t really have anything to offer. I have ideas, but some are limited by living far away in São Paulo. 

You know that place where ideas reside, usually early in the morning. An idea was there, and it recurred some times. If you two came up with a concept, perhaps LUV could present it to the or at the festival. Or vice versa. I don’t know. 

Would you guys have time to speak about this the first couple weeks in February and, please mark Sunday Feb 9 (LUV Iemanjá) on your calendars … if you are around?

luv

todd

hiv / art / establishment (#1)

[*The pink elephant image is borrowed from a Facebook intervention made by Niki Singleton and Todd Lanier Lester several years ago called Coming out of the Web 2.0 Closet.]

There is definitely an HIV art establishment. I have met it in a few forms over the first 3/4 of Luv ’til it Hurts, a two-year project that also aspires to elicit a few forms. In fact, I guess this broad ‘establishment’ may have factored into the form of LUV in the first place. I am an artist who works in organizational or immaterial form now for almost twenty-years. This can also be other things at the same time, like ‘site specific’ as was Lanchonete.org or a field-invading ‘sea change’ as I hoped freeDimensional would become. For the purposes of this field note, I would say that content or theme or issue inform the form(s) that are aimed for. LUV aspires to forge a philanthropic device (or mechanism) that can be taken and used freely at the end of the two-year process, which will be around July 2020 and when it is fully explained. I also think that style, affect and notions of gesture inform ‘forms’. In my own practice I understand that these styles, affects and attempts at gesture can be rehearsed over years and in different contexts. 

This explanation should pick up pace around February 14 2020. And, hopefully LUV will keep going in unimagined ways after its official ‘end date’ in July 2020. Here I want to talk about the philanthropic device (of things); however if you would like to see how LUV is also research, take a peek here in How LUV is research, in part (Part 1).

I was working for the blackberry foundation. It uses a clever name to suggest artist support, and indeed it does do things with artists. In Portuguese blackberries are a part of the broader group of ‘frutas vermelhas’ (or red fruits). So, yeah it’s a bit confusing to work for a social art, money-giving outfit that turns out to have a charred, atrophied heart. I read this great quote which I’ll cite when I find it again (it’s on a piece of paper I picked up at Bard a few years ago at T’s graduation) that goes something like, ‘it is the institutions of our life that hurt us.’ 

This idea of pain provision fits a de Certeau-esque mode of seeing organizations and institutions (from The Practices of Everyday Life). And for sure my response of making a ‘philanthropic device’ for two years while also mourning this particular ‘blackberry’ engagement does constitute form for me and (if I understand correctly) a ‘tactic’ in de Certeau-esque terms. The foundation ‘strategized’ upon me, and talking about it (writing about it) is my humble ‘tactic’ in response. I liken this tactic to a meeting in NYC in January this year when I broke down crying amidst a mild argument amongst colleagues from two different organizations. There were a few reasons to cry. It was for all of them, including the uncomfortable position I was being put in by my colleagues. One allowing the other to chide me while knowing that there were more details involved, and some of which were not on me. To call out these details would only make the argument more ‘hot’ and so I just let myself have a good cry. It resulted in a sorta prayer circle with my two colleagues, which, hey, worked for me.

However, the smaller actions (in fields of production, publishing, editing, grant-raising and re-distributing, curating, administrating, criticizing and so forth) that comprise the Luv ’til it Hurts project’s two-year calendar of milestones, well those are more related to the topic or theme of HIV and stigma and are meant to be performed for quality and mutual value. 

In fact in many ways what I knew how to do for the blackberry crew is what I know how to do for the LUV project. The Cidade Queer project is an example of a Lanchonete.org ‘episode’ and multiply-curated (as was the curatorial ‘bringing of’ Publication Studio to São Paulo) during the period of my foundation engagement. During this multi-year, contractual engagement, I was called a few things, such as Director of Partnerships. I have an immersive practice, which I term durational. This is most nuanced perhaps for Lanchonete.org, the five-year project on the right to the city from a lunch counter in São Paulo. So while immersed in (um) São Paulo and Lanchonete.org as a ‘container’ of produced ideas questioning the right to the city (in different ways through a collective approach) I was also in business with this blackberry foundation, and therefore sharing my immersive tendencies between two big projects that were choreographed to intersect at times. I also did things outside of Lanchonete.org yet in Brasil and many more things for the project internationally. I was helping them start an online publication thats about arts, everywhere (in the world). Having over 20 years experience making art, and producing that of others all over the world made me qualified to help such an artist-centered online publication, which would be the signature new project of the foundation. Its branding and brand awareness would grow to merge with that of the cleverly-named foundation. In true immersive fashion, I opened up channels of info and knowledge and connections to the already well-equipped foundation. I mean I doubt I was essential for this project, but in that I was invited to help as an internationally-networked artist to build such a concept. Well, things grew to be indelibly bound (up) quite quickly. While I do not claim that I was the lifeblood of the project, I do claim to have helped breath life–vital life–into the idea for publishing arts, everywhere. I recognize my signature on and inside the project to promote arts, everywhere.

The lawyer on the board of the outfit, the one who visited our multiply-curated projects in São Paulo and who has long worked on AIDS-related art she informed me. She did let me know to be careful in using the name of the foundation after I was let go. I do know that lawyers yield a certain power, so I will heed her warning. When I think of the blackberry foundation, I see red. So, you can imagine how the Portuguese translation imbibes me just a little. Frutas. Vermelhas. The LUV site is red, but I have failed to find a direct reference to anything except familiarity with organizational and institutional ‘seeing red’.

The other staffer allowed me to show him around Dakar, a city I’ve grown to know rather well since I went there the first time for Dak’Art 2006 with my ex-wife. I was performing some official duties for Res Artis on whose board I served. On the 2017 site visit to Dakar, the other staffer bemoaned the challenge of getting another $20 million transferred over from the donors to the foundation. He feared that the son would be a factor. I didn’t need much more context to understand his trials and tribulations. We were laying by the pool in a fairly plush hotel spread. Maybe I helped him buy gifts in the market. I enjoy bartering with the merchants and love to see the crafts and art work and old flea market finds out in the African capital street. I once bought someone’s stamp collection in the weekend market of Bangui out in front of the church, not so far from where the students burned tires on the day I flew back to Yaoundé. I had finished the condom commercial in both French and Sango in various media (TV spot, radio spot, photography potential for billboard usage). I had swooned over Lumumba (oops, I mean Eriq Ebouaney) in the hotel lobby. Bassek ba Kobhio let me tag along in similar ways as Eric Kabera and Imruh Bakari would later. I had a thing for African and Third Cinema and I suppose my curiosity was operational. Like picture white geek wanting to know something from black intellectual. My intentions were genuine and oft worked. Since there is really no other way to tell you that I once shared a taxi with Nicolas Cazalé in Ougadougou when Le Grand Voyage was premiering at FESPACO, I will do so here. My coming out was a long and arduous journey of star crushes. However, I only started starfucking in earnest when watching Hugh Dancy dance with a Tutsi woman at a backyard evening party during the filming of ‘Shooting Dogs’, and again more recently with LUV

My wife and I were living with Jay in the capital of Cameroon in this period, and I would travel for work in the region. Sometimes we would travel together as we did to East Legon (Accra) to help set up the Academy of Screen Arts. We worked at the first AIDS conference in Durban as volunteers and would later present a poster on our AIDS/HIV related work (in Cameroon) at the Barcelona AIDS conference a few years later. Sometimes she would travel first for work and I would tag along. This was the case in both Rwanda and Sudan. My hometown newspaper, the Cannon Courier said we were missionaries in an article after we first went to Cameroon for the Peace Corps. I can assure you we were not!

Cameroon is rather accessible in the center of São Paulo by way of a few African eateries that cater to frequent new waves of African / Diaspora arrivals to the city. The Burkinabe experience (and perhaps Abdoulaye’s) is a bit different than that of Nigerians, Senegalese, Haitians and Cameroonians. The rougher Cameroonian bar near Arouche, that’s where Edgar and I went the other night. Manu told me he was kicked out for kissing a guy there, which perversely excited me. However, Edgar and I would not be kissing. We sat with some female patrons. We chatted with others and along the way Edgar became a bit startled. As we walked away, we stopped at the next bar to discuss the mise-en-scène we’d just passed thru.

My wife and I were already back in NYC (and me at the New School) when Christopher called from Rwanda to tell us that Jay drowned off the coast of South Africa. I had caught Jay once at a house party when I saw his eyes roll back, signaling the onset of an epileptic fit. Once Thom’s boyfriend Ben got his finger caught in Jay’s mouth thinking that there was a risk of him swallowing his tongue. Jay told him after that this is physically impossible. Jay suffered a head injury once in Morocco when falling down a few steps in his apartment. I have a volcanic rock from Goma somewhere (I know I kept it) that Jay gave me when CRS sent him from Yaoundé to the DRC for volcano aid atop other years of humanitarian disaster. Our long-time friend, Brad who had met Jay in Cameroon heard from him when he was in S. Africa. Maybe I can share what he said in that final email here:

>> > Subject: long time…from Jason
>> > …..
>> > So now I_m in South Africa.  I_m going to finish
>> up
>> > some final reports this week and then head around
>> the
>> > country visiting some friends that I haven_t seen
>> for
>> > a while.  I_ll head to Mozambique from here.  All
>> in
>> > all, I_ve got about 6 weeks to play with, and
>> would
>> > like to spend a chunk of it on the beach.  I
>> figured
>> > that Malawi would be a bit sad to visit these days
>> > with the famine going on.  I_ll just have to make
>> it
>> > there next time.  In any case, I can learn to
>> Scuba
>> > dive in Mozambique the same as I can in Malawi, so
>> I
>> > am looking forward to it.  My sister also has a
>> couple
>> > of friends that I know living there.  So I_ll stop
>> by
>> > and visit them.  There is some hiking that I_ve
>> been
>> > meaning to do as well.  I_m starting to get really
>> > excited about this.  It_s been a while since I_ve
>> been
>> > backpacking or hiking.  I had hoped to start on
>> this a
>> > bit sooner, but even now I_m finishing up the
>> work, so
>> > there wasn_t too much chance of getting done
>> sooner.
>> > But 6 weeks will be better than 5, which certainly
>> is
>> > better than 4.

But back to the blackberry foundation and the HIV establishment. I helped conceive large program ideas that focused on different facets of HIV, such as but not limited to Cidade Queer in partnership with the blackberry foundation. I forgot my meds on a trip, one of eight I made with or for the foundation in 2017. When my ‘life breathing’ services contract was nearing its end (aligned w/ the 2017 year-end), I asked for an incidental raise to account for the growing workload and to cover travel insurance. In so doing I disclosed my HIV status to the organization. I was dismissed from the outfit (and my various titles such as Partnership Director) rather quickly after this point, sometime in September 2017. I had flown to Canada to attend the Creative Time Summit where Queer City had a book and film launch; something in the Maritimes; and Primary Colors, an indigenous artist and first nation leaders summit out in BC. I was invited to things like the Maritimes big art convening on my own artistic credentials and merit (I assert), but all such trips would want to have one of the various foundation titles co-branded alongside my name, and naturally so. I allowed this. This was a symbiosis that at times worked out well for me over the ten years of knowing the outfit. And in turn I gave my ‘all’ to the making of this new face or new phase of the outfit’s existence. I counted the other staffer as someone who would lay by the pool with me in Dakar (where I ran into this other Todd I know); someone who would host my husband when he passed through the guy’s city to meet me on a work trip; someone who wouldn’t get weird on me whenever I decided to disclose my HIV status. And, yet things got really weird for me. 

Somewhere along that rocky patch of understanding the foundation no longer needed me, and within close enough chronology to my disclosure that (and given no other justification) it stands to reason HIV was somehow involved. I make projects that I really care about. I mix things for different results. I would not have wanted so easily to be severed from the HIV-related projects I was helping or had come up with for the foundation. No, that would have hurt very bad. That these projects continue in some ways is not a bad thing. No, as I said some did not bear my ideation. For some I was to incorporate them into exchange and site-specific work from São Paulo. I wasn’t forced though, no it was collegial work that I was paid for, as an artist… from here, there and ‘everywhere’. Ok, I’ll give an example. An art space in Brasil is going to do a pedagogic /school year in Athens during a big art event. A series of writing is commissioned from its international cast of ‘participants’. It is arranged by me with the head of the art space, and implemented by another Brasilian friend who happens to be a participant of the intervention. I am glad those pieces exist.

I thought I was building a year or two more-future with the outfit. It was even discussed. But instead I was pushed out rather quickly. Let’s say it had nothing to do with HIV, or like the foundation just wanted to work on HIV but not have a poz staffer. Seems like the other staffer would have waited a bit to let me go. Seems like he wouldn’t have wanted to keep the other staffers I trained for him. I mean if something was wrong, all major decisions I made for the outfit would be called into question, right? Like what if they were infected by my style or what I consider to be signature. Signature style? Gosh, that’s high-concept, and–ya know–art is different, everywhere. 

So, like, maybe the establishment was right there .. in that morass. When I first opened the LUV project, a young artist told me that a curator wanted to know if I was poz. Since I assumed the young artist had told him I am, I just considered what a ‘pink elephant’ disclosure and the ‘hot stuff’ around it would become throughout the LUV project. I have more to say on this, so maybe I’ll write a book about the pink elephants of participatory art, in methodological terms (that would be pretty cool), or maybe I’ll pursue my new stickering career and fahgettaboudit. I’ll let you know.

Some tenets of Elpenor thought (part 2)

[* For the LUV site, this is part two of a set. Let’s call it the Elpenor Set. See part one, here.]

1) It never ceases to baffle and amaze me whenever an association between Elpenor – a decidedly minor character in Homer’s Odyssey – and an idea of methodology crops up in my presence. Akin to being caught midfall (pants down). It is a kinship that plunges me from a secure apex, a terrace (a spacing out) of experience into abstraction, the amplest of falls, towards the world. One thinks [during the fall]: what exactly is a methodology? What is it made of, what are its parameters? Solid and well-built as the Achaen ships, wouldn’t a methodology forcefully entail global applicability – or, better still, isn’t the efficaciousness of any given methodology ultimately tested in and by socially intricate contexts? Elpenor translated, carried over into a methodology. For me, it seems startingly easy to squash a methodology: one minor incoherence is enough, one dicey corner, one false move. It seems to me even easier to destruct a model. If, on the one hand, I am capable of recognizing Elpenor’s potential as a “conceptual character” such as the ones presented by Deleuze and Guattari in “What is Philosophy?”; if I am able to interpret him as a body of diligences and prescriptions – a sort of lens through which the world into which we are falling is simultaneously sought after, a world that grows more and more clear-cut as we approach the asphalt –, it is also my innermost guess that an identical link could be established between a certain postural inclination and the harmless Choreocampa elpenor caterpillar, one of the mimetic insects listed by Caillois in his Man, Play & Games. The caterpillar in question, if perceived to be threatened, operates in itself a physical mutation termed terrifying by the author; in taking upon itself the likeness of a serpent, it manages to fend off lizards and small birds. Through an act of camouflage, a momentary absence from “self”, the caterpillar postpones its death. The analogy doesn’t seem that far-fetched once we take into consideration that both beings have developed (evolved) strategies to go unnoticed – in the mythical world and in the natural world. Were it not the case, how else could we justify Elpenor’s survival through so many dangers – a character repeatedly referred to as inept at warfare and somewhat dumb? Both Elpenor and the caterpillar that echoes his name help compose a gallery of beings unfairly flattened into the singular episodes they are at the forefront of – in most cases, episodes taking place in other people’s lives – the predator’s, the hero’s – in a supposedly general circumstance that divorces the hero, the “true” virtuous hero, from all those who surround him; characters which seem to exist solely in relation to a stilled organizational nexus oft emblemed by a protagonist who is in some way exceptional. I think of counter- types such as Bartleby, the scrivener – the Incredible Shrinking Man – and finally Jepthe’s daughter, an anonymous character from the Hebrew Bible who seems to serve the single purpose of illustrating a most dubious idea of sacrifice. Characters about whom we know next to nothing; characters we know just enough about, however, so as to feel compelled to side with them, to defend their opacity.

2) Since moving to São Paulo, I have been supporting myself mostly by
ministering a workshop devised a few years ago called Exercises in the Other. Originally comprised of five sessions, but congenial to contractions and dilations according to my interlocutors’ agendas, it consists of a series of activities in the course of which I seek to send the enrollees back to the idea of a mythical, non-historical past as well as towards a notion of “deep futurity” which can be thought of almost as mythically as what we conventionally refer to as the “Homeric World”. I usually begin – and this is as good a time as any to explain that we are not talking about classes here in the strict sense; rather group dynamics, communal readings, outbursts of “savage hermeneutics” and guided discussions around which chaos seems to be constantly lurking – aiming at redacting a handful of notes that, once shared in a non-hostile environment amid equally interested interlocutors, might eventually resolve themselves into text – I usually begin by telling the story of Elpenor. The importance of orality here could hardly be minimized, but we do resort to texts throughout the sessions whenever the occasion calls for it. I tell them the story of Elpenor and ask them to tell that same story to someone else. With this is mind, we attempt to position ourselves individually in relation to concepts as virtually unsaturable as myth, epopee, heroism. The important thing is, in this inaugural moment, that people put forward their own version of the tale, their own perversion, that they relay and recirculate this particular “type”, trying to secure it some sort of afterlife, or at least a life beyond the one episode it is most commonly known for. A most striking correlate of the communal mindset we attempt to achieve is the respect and the sense of responsibility that seems to stem organically in relation to the texts, as though these poems commenced in a workshop context were indeed the only ones to survive a possible global catastrophe. I ask then, to put it shortly, for Elpenor to be displaced to the center of a foundational narrative, so we might try and come up with texts of consequence and political resonance not so much thematically, but political in the sense that these might eventually compose the mythological matrix of a polis yet to come. I invite all interlocutors to imagine what a sociality would be like if it were held together by unheroic myths. What worlds can spring from an Elpenor-foundation, as opposed to an Achilles or an Odysseus-foundation?

3) In “Notes on the Cinematographer”, a book by French filmmaker Robert Bresson, we come across a maxim that is extremely impressive, just, precise and, so to say, “true”: “To respect man’s nature without wishing it more palpable than it is”. No other filmmaker – save for Chantal Akerman – could ever have chanced an adaptation of Melville’s novella – in all cinematic adaptations I have had the occasion of watching, it is precisely Bartleby’s “impalpability” cinema shies away from in terror. It is a fun exercise for me, trying to envision what these two filmmakers might have done to Elpenor. Certainly his antiquity says something to us – its textual permanence cannot be entirely accidental after so many centuries of oral elaboration – surely it is not merely a lesson in temperance – and even though Kirk, in his famous “The Songs of Homer”, chalks the whole Elpenor episode up to a “structural anomaly” in the poem, placed there in order to distract us from the lack of any real motivation for Odysseus’ visit to Hades, this “anomaly” succeeds in bringing to the foreground the opaque ones, the species of the opaque, without having that particular trait taken away from them. A flash of something that absolutely does not flash. It only falls. In truth, the fact that Elpenor’s appearance is taken to be a structural anomaly by some scholars only makes him even more interesting in the broader scheme of things. In the general context of the poem, Elpenor cuts an emaciated figure – remembered by Odysseus at the court of the Phaeacians in the midst of his first-person account of the misadventures he had to endure after leaving Troy, Elpenor is at the head of an episode that conjoins the comic to the terrifying and instigates a certain specimen of reader to fill in the biographical blanks. It was precisely the idea of a biographical blank, repeated time and time again in workshop situations, which seems to have motivated R. the most – R. being a transsexual visual artist currently living in São Paulo. Elpenor, in R’s text, suffers an invasion in the Elpenor sign, being penetrated, shot through with the adjective “minor” and morphing into Elpeminor. R, however, refuses to carry over this “minor” sign to Elpenor’s physical build, which would have made for a facile solution. Instead, in the following line, also the last one, R. is quick to point out that he must have been over six feet tall. I distinctly remember the enthusiasm I felt while listening to this kind of counterstatement, as well as the strength of the scene that was playing out before the lot of us: R., who had absconded with her body from the commonplace of bodies in general, fiercely and rightly ridicules the Apollonian body, the heroic body, opting to make it barbarous by intruding upon its very name. Another interesting case that rechristens, perverts, continues and conditions this mythological continuity for Elpenor to a perversion in the realm of signs is the case of poet and translator C. A., who, in a classic Duchampian move, appropriated a poem titled “Elpenor” by contemporary Portuguese poet José Miguel Silva and limited herself to changing the name Elpenor to Elpenora.

4) Interesting cases are by and large the majority, but I would like to meditate briefly on two more, because of the reflections they might occasion regarding the malleability of myth, its processes of actualization and a few formal questions. For T., an American conceptual artist who also specializes in safety practices for artworkers facing political persecution around the world, Elpenor’s story was transmitted in purely oral fashion, since, at that particular moment, we did not have an English translation of the poem handy. I was especially interested in the results, since, with T., an ulterior moment of textual engagement would not be possible due to the language barrier. I wondered what components of the tale would stick, cleansed as they were to the max, and how he would rework them. The moment we began sharing our texts, T. presented a poem in which Elpenor did not figure nominally, none of the episode’s particulars were immediately identifiable, a purposefully gossipy tone predominated, and the proposed “I” sought, if not to order, at least to sequence in a vibrant manner circumstances of such an intimate nature that at times the text read slightly impenetrable. Slightly opaque. And then I thought: opaque. And then I thought: gossipy. During all of T’s exercises, I had the impression that the world he was putting before us was a world of voices. The “I” did not play protagonist – it dramatized itself, instead, as being bombarded by the most various recollections, associations, anecdotes. It was a world of voices and asides. An oscillating world of precise referents. A world the group knew nothing about, but that unfurled before us with utter clarity. In this first reading round, it was already possible to detect that T’s mode was precisely the elision of an axis – the “murder” of the hero become the murder of a traditionally dramaturgical conception of the poetic text or even of the Romanesque mode (of which the Odyssey can be deemed a precursor, at least according to Jaeger), which tends to run with a given theme until it fatally funnels into a denouement or climax. T’s text was perhaps the most radical interpretation, from a formal standpoint, of this forceful effacement of the hero-figure from the epic scheme in favour of a minor approach. Devoid of orthodox feats and bearing no sign of restitution, the poem gave rise to a most important discussion on a practice T. himself called “queering the text”. While T. expounded on this mode of writing, I could not help remembering poet Ana Cristina Cesar’s work and her constant “play” between intimacy and opaqueness, between delivery – from the point of view of signification but also of a physical surrender – and withdrawal. The experience of deviation, of a textual practice which places itself in opposition to patriarchal writing, is formally grafted onto the text by way of an illogicalness over which there never ceases to hover a certain aura of “scandal”. But this promise of a reveal is never to be fulfilled. One skates over the idea of intimacy, the waiting, one can only skate over personhood. But at no time are we entirely convinced of the text’s confessional nature or even of the possibility of a confessional text per se. It is this unfulfillment that makes T’s world vibrant and multiple. It is this bargaining, this irreducibility of the text to an unambiguous reality, that function as the lines of force of the text – translated stylistically into the intimate illogicalness Ana Cristina Cesar so rigorously practiced, along with her refusal of linearity and her disconcerting vulnerability to sudden memory (to voices) and the accumulation of not-quite-hierarchized events that seem to connect to memoir or diaries.

“I present to you the most discreet
Woman in the world: the one that has no secrets.”

5) In a different workshop-situation, before an interlocutor who seemed to be having some difficulty grasping what this first exercise was about, I thought it a good idea to list – both for him and the rest of the class – some particularly interesting results I had come across since the beginning of my activities as a professional instigator of sorts. I then proceeded to tell them about P.C., a singer-songwriter who composed a lyric poem espousing Elpenor’s voice addressing us from limbo. His version – in which Elpenor had always been secretly enamoured of Odysseus’ – was impressive not only because of the unexpected romantic overtones – the style, however, was epic –, but also because of the subtle mirroring P.C. created vis-à-vis Penelope. One awaits her husband’s return so the status quo and domestic bliss might be re-established – the other one awaits cremation in the hands of the man he has always loved secretly. While telling about P.C.’s take on the exercise, I was surprised to hear a remark from another interlocutor who was just outside my field of vision: “Better not to even try, then”. I had had more than one occasion to note that this particular interlocutor, whenever faced with interesting results that were not hers, would always contrive to find a way to manifest resentment. During our last group session, I grew impatient at this and told her that sort of environment was not propitious to competitiveness. Telling these stories, commemorating them, making visible and known examples of near artistic brilliance from relative newcomers who are typically extremely apologetic about their own work can only discourage those who have already been hopelessly poisoned by the inherited notions of heroism we are actively trying to combat in the atmosphere of a creative writing workshop. To think about Elpenor is to think about how he survived the siege of Troy and all the grotesque mishaps that he passed through anonymously until his arrival at Circe’s island. If Elpenor can lead us to a method, a mindset, a worldview, then they must take into the account the many and sundry opportunities for glorious death that were offered the seafarer in question during his ultimately incomplete nostos – opportunities for straying, for utter forgetfulness, for permanence amid unknown peoples, barbarians or otherwise – opportunities passed only so that he could die the most pathetic death conceivable. An Elpenor methodology must then celebrate chance, slapstick and a lack of favour from the Gods. It must not fall into the trap of setting up an anti-hero in relation to which burlesque figures of grandeur parade about. It is a question, I believe, of defending opacity and the fundamental, nearly holy loneliness of the unexceptional.

How LUV is research, in part (part 1)

[* For the LUV site, this is part one of a set. Let’s call it the Elpenor Set. See part two, here.]

The purpose of this ‘entry’ is to introduce Ismar Tirelli Neto. I’m writing a book right now. It’s called Variations in Worldmaking. I can’t wait until it’s finished because it might be driving me crazy. It’s like birthing a set of gremlins … or so it presently seems. The book covers the span of my three durational, multi-stakeholder, rights-focused works. freeDimensional was a ten-year focus on free expression, artist safety and shelter. Lanchonete.org was a site-specific (São Paulo) five-year focus on the right to the city. And, Luv ’til it Hurts is a two-year focus on HIV and stigma. I chose to begin the book in the same time period as the two years of LUV, July 2018-2020. I thought that one process might help the other. At least in my head. They are both (art) works. I am applying a methodology for durational, multi-stakeholder, rights-focused projects that has been developed over the course of freeDimensional, Lanchonete.org and in giving support to other projects, in the making of Luv ’til it Hurts. I think the same can be said for the making of Lanchonete.org drawing on lessons learned from freeDimensional, but I was not concurrently writing criticism in that instance. Ishmar is working with me on the book, and also features in the book. We started conjuring these relations during a poetry workshop he offered at São João Farm Residency in Rio State (Brasil), and now we meet weekly for a writing class. Below is Ishmar’s ‘opener’ from an excerpt of the book in which I describe its 20 characters. 

After reading his LUV intro, I hope you’ll check out Some tenets of Elpenor thought , a text I refer to in my research. When we met in July 2019 I was already thinking about the role of ‘hero’ as it pertains to the art world. And, after we set on working together, I noticed it coming up again in a Whatsapp discussion with egosumfrank (Part 1 and Part IV) and MetaMorphineFuriosaXXX, one of our esteemed ‘coalition’ members. Therefore I mention Ismar’s work in these as well as a previous LUV piece, Character Development à la Proust

***

I met Ismar Tirelli Neto at São João Farm Residency in Rio State. He offered a poetry / writing workshop on his ideas around Elpenor, the youngest of Odysseus’ co-patriots. He is building up a body of thought and writing around Elpenor and other anti-heroes. We spoke of a quest for methodological understanding, and too about levels of protectiveness of text. I am not protecting the text right now. I am letting it flow rather unbounded. The numbered characters are a parameter as are the set of ‘devices’ I’ll share next. The characters and devices intersect in a matrix. I am coming up with this approach and language while also asking Ismar about his approach and the literary form it takes. We are both attracted to the Elpenor character and able to discuss it in terms of contemporary politics and a natural tendency of the art market to both crave and manufacture heroes. We ask ourselves together how does one share observations, texts, gestures, forms and/or criticism under today’s societal and market-enforced conditions on expression. In making a durational project, the idea cannot be immediately revealed. The idea is becoming, but already imagined. There is no need to rush it. The timespan is tailored for it to have enough time to fructify. This holding back as conscious effort brings ones awareness to territorialisms, competition, ranking, showboating, acceleration, pedigree-toting tendencies that can result in hero-making by default. The market needs the heroes because they are brand names, and that sells in primary and secondary art markets as well as through affiliation. Power and money are traded along these lines. It is not often that these resources can be convened and deployed for a social urgency. The market cannot both destabilize and stabilize in perfect ways. If art wants to make a radical work or gesture, it must first pass muster with the relative patrons who hold the purse strings to the semio-capital that BIFO speaks of. The same resources may be enough to resolve social ills or convene urgent conversations. It would first need to be configured or sequenced in a way that these social priorities held priority over sales and relation to market. Let’s face it: such a set-up is very rare. So, what of the ‘art hero’ role, and can it be bypassed while still offering up big ideas for the future. And to a public.

Using one ‘project’ to see another

This article is a field [luv] note to Luciérnagas and friends in Bogotá. I was there for a project by Daniel Santiago Salguero and his HIV+ peers. Fireflies, this is the word in Spanish for fireflies. 
 
Speaking of fireflies, I met some luminary folk while in Bogotá Like Jackie … as far as I know she is the only woman in Luciérnagas, well, except your costuming friend (Daniel). I would love to publish a text or reflections on process by her for the 2020 Love Positive Women holiday (Feb 1-14).  We will be putting up 14 days of woman-authored content on those days early next year. Can you ask (or work with) Jackie to make a text? Let’s do in Spanish, but also we can translate on our side. If you will agree to interview her for the site, then you can also be a bit instructive w/ your questions. Just make it about the lab process. In that way you both support Love Positive Women. 
 
When I got back from Bogotá, a group of us (somos) began meeting for drinks on Tuesday nights. The first meeting in late October or early November yielded an idea for a collective group which would first make a Sarau Transante on November 30, Saturday evening before World AIDS Day, the following Sunday, Dec. 1, 2019. I have been very excited about the game ever since it came up on my trip to Egypt in March 2019. 
 
I had thought it would be in Taiwan for a show in this period. The process took longer than expected. As long-time friends, Adham and I had a lot to discuss before getting on with the next ‘work’ project. He also has a project of the BIG variety–a museum of sorts–that I want to be involved in, a project also taking its own pace over a multi-year timeline. 
 
When I came back from Bogotá, I was planning to pretend to be LUV and invite other very active artist friends who are positive to meet for drinks and then perhaps LUV would help to amplify the outcome. LUV is a small project led by an independent artist, but it does already have some trappings (on its road toward / becoming a philanthropic device). I have been rather tired since the end of Lanchonete.org, and also having made AIDS Day / period programming in 2015 (beg. of Cidade Queer); 2016 (ending of Cidade QueerEXPLODE! and ATAQUE); 2017 (Neighborhood Museum with Amber Art & Design); 2018 (@Esponja w/ Coletivo Coletores + Colectivo Amem); and now 2019 with Somos and also a partnership with the Municipal Secretary of Human Rights for the AIDS Walk and the performance /public space where the walk ended. It changed a 1000 times, yet I’d say it all went very well. It was also possible to see what other artists were doing for AIDS Day. 
 
Daniel, I remember when I was in Bogotá in October. You already had interest from a municipal authority to do another performance or intervention on /around World AIDS Day, December 1. We haven’t been able to talk directly since then, so I don’t know if this panned out in the end. Can you share with us what happened next?
 
You probably saw the interview LUV did with Juan De La Mar last week? This is a field note to you, but also it has questions for you to answer in a follow-up piece. So, see it as advice (at times) and feel free to answer the questions indicated in orange
 
My strongest advice is to help the group become what it will be next. It takes a lot of energy to do what you did. I bet you are tired. Exhausted even. So, save your energy. Help to hold the idea together but hand it off. Now that I’ve interviewed Juan and given the aforementioned idea for Love Positive Women (and Jackie) … as well as my next idea for El Santo, I can also offer to help you take this next step. What I’m saying is that it’s obvious that some of the Laboratory group will make their own works as artists, and other Positive artists and allies will come around and want to be involved. There are members of your group who could grow to need the affiliation of the laboratory. It may even seem like a support group at times. These are not certainties, but they are the ‘good likelihoods’ if you can help make the space for it.
 
When I came back from Bogotá, I did not plan to create or co-create yet another thing. I was willing to catch some new ideas with the LUV apparatus. As we got up to the Sarau with Somos (and when I specifically didn’t want to assume or seem to assume leadership/sole ownership) it became obvious that my closest allies felt it was my ‘show’ … there were a range of signals (including direct conversation) that revealed this to me. Given that my intention was the opposite, I have asked my colleagues to share with me how they see it. I’ve asked them to help me with my general research on how people get together and do things, in a social sense. Artists and others. Activists among them. 
 
There was tension in this process. I have also experienced tension (and outright conflict) in previous AIDS Day / Periods. In some ways, I think it is bound to happen. In other ways, I want to consider how for it not to happen. It is not enjoyable. 
 
I have a lot of faults, but one thing I try to do is to apply some community organizing and publicity logic to social causes. These are useful tools for urgent situations. But I fear that the so-called ‘art world’ that we (at least, partially) act in, is not so good at identifying urgency. And by not doing so it cannot offer appropriate care. It is not a complete ‘world’ in this sense. It does not take such good care of its workers. I talk about art world concerns in Relatory Bogotá and other pieces
 
Daniel you may get an opportunity from this art world that is useful to the Luciérnagas Laboratory group. You may not decide to use it yourself, but it may still have value to your peers. You may find other ways to nurture or help with the work of Juan, Jackie et al. There will also be new people who come around inspired by your first pass on Oct 25 at the Botanical Gardens. Making space for them will be up to you as a leader of the project, because first you have to admit (or say) if the project goes on and under what conditions. 
 
So for example, let’s say that El Santo didn’t make a pin for World AIDS Day as discussed. But I saw his ‘resist’ plates on Instagram. Maybe that is the item we attempt to merchandise with the future LUV platform and shows. It can work. If El Santo agrees to something like this, we’ll need to move fast. If it’s the plates (El Santo) I would need high resolution photos very quickly. I luv the plates by the way. 
 
Just as I attempted to do when in the midst of your context, city and project, Daniel, I will meet you where you are. Let’s say you did nothing for World AIDS Day. Cool. Let’s go?
 
I must admit the idea that came up from you guys (Daniel + El Santo) was powerful: the idea that we need new representation beyond (or next) to the red flag. This could be more specific to Bogotá, or World AIDS Day, but it would seem to come from those of us newly making or having voice on HIV and stigma. So, newness is perhaps just good. So when I got back and got my hands in all these pots, one of the most ‘new’ and nice experiences was coming up with the cloth heart that mimics the heart tile in the LUV game
 
What if you took on the challenge of doing this re-branding of the red flag just because I ask you to?  What if we use the HIV2020 meeting, AIDS Day 2020, AIDS conference in San Francisco, Love Positive Women, and the ending of Luv ’til it Hurts, including the intended Schwules Museum prototype show in 2021 … all to popularize this new symbol. And what if it made money for other folks working on and thinking deeply about HIV and stigma? 
 
It could, guys:)

notes on starfucking (v.1, not to be confused with ‘resource fucking’)

I do luv this term: starfucking …. star (*) fucking. While it is not used (as such) it is something that is present in the Sontag biography I read. Like people considered whether she liked to know famous people. I was once at a church party with Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams, and to explain it further would be inconsequential. Conditionally, I like to know famous people. I would say.  Edmund White’s hand on my leg, but that won’t work for showing pure happenstance. A chance encounter with Kele Okereke on the LES, but I think I was considering straight fucking on that occasion. But my ex showed up and blew the scene. However, when I consider the ‘starfucking’ as I’ve heard it bandied about, I’ve decided its not necessarily a sexual thang. Once at the Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration in Shelbyville (TN), I decided to pass by Zsa Zsa Gabor’s box seat and casually ask her for an autograph. She declined. Queen. It’s ok because I got out of it what I wanted. I wanted to be close to her. I don’t know why a 14 year old gay kid wants that, but I did. In fact she obliged what I really wanted with a lick of rudeness in her curt refusal. 

I suppose there is also a thing something like ‘resource fucking’ … once at a powerful house party (of funders) this other scavenger kept breaking into my one-on-one chats with her pitch. I am an introvert and so by the second time, I wanted to fuck her back. I mean it took a lot of energy to get through the small talk. So, I fucked her back by asking if she would continue to follow me around that night and bounce ideas off the people I was resource fucking. She did not come back around and the Soros lady smiled at my style. 

It’s been a while since I’ve known about starfucking. Sometimes ‘stars’ and famous people deserve their cache. Sometimes I find that I want to know them (like over coffee) and others I just want something from them. I want them to do something specific. Right now and for the Luv ’til it Hurts project on HIV and stigma I want some powerful, wealthy and famous people to put their ‘goods’ together and make something bigger. Something that might unearth HIV-related stigmas. I’ve been meaning to write this first note on starfucking for a while, but it occurred to me this week I should do it sooner than later. It is not a note to brag about the ability to code shift, or to get close to known entities. I’m a conditional starfucker regardless of whether I’m making an art project or operating individually. I make rights-focused, durational, multi-stakeholder works for which Luv ’til it Hurts is an example. Given that I’m HIV+ and have experienced some of these HIV-related stigmas firsthand, I decided to deploy the personal skill of starfucking toward a project goal: a LUV Fund.

Luv ’til it Hurts imagines faster resources for HIV-related activism. With serious questions about art-making, stigma and political economy, the two-year discussion is geared-up to leave behind a business plan for unearthing HIV-related stigmas. It starts out as a simple game. Made by artists and others. And, most likely for the Elton John AIDS Foundation. As a Tennesse-boy it occurred to me I should ‘look locally’ a bit before attempting to ‘reach’ Sir Elton. OK, I will. But this is because it is good strategy. Speaking of strategy I’ve been shopping around for a graphic artist to take on ACT II, which is a publication that reveals the whole starfucking gameplan. I admit, I’ve been starfucking a lil in order to find the right artist. I think I may have slam-dunked it (or maybe it was an ‘alley oop’), but I won’t say who I’m fucking yet. That’s because one has a bespoke plan for reaching each star one wishes to know. I have received a hint that my graphic artist would like one-on-one dialogue for now, and so I respect that by not naming said artist here. This graphic output will land on February 14, 2020, the North’s valentines day and the last day of the global holiday, Love Positive Women. So, eventually you will know of whom I speak.

 I admit that I’ve begun using a little of this starfucking logic in my previous project, Lanchonete.org, and maybe its working. But what I’ve seen on both occasions of the graphic artist and an architect I’m trying to reach with Lanchonete.org–and maybe I learned this from the interrupter figure at the aforementioned (money) house party–is that the gatekeepers haven’t heard of starfucking and they don’t easily yield their positions. For one they don’t want to be displaced. If they are idea people on how to use the money and power one is aiming at, they will need to be brought on board at some time, or perhaps removed as sentinel. Sometimes they simply freeze in the spotlight of a new idea, and this is not always a bad thing. ‘Removal’ as I call it, can also be simply moving around them. Getting into the ‘idea crack’ they are not filling. You must admit to yourself however if knowing personally the star is essential to the idea. It usually isn’t if played right. So, considering embarrassment is normal. But you may also consider that you will never meet the star you are fucking. But that you may fuck them nonetheless.

The idea of starfucking is not implicitly rude, and rudeness is not necessary in order to be a professional, successful starfucker. Nope, not at all. 

What you are doing is getting their attention. However you need to:)

It’s sorta like genderfucking or queering a space … but with stars and comets and asteroids involved:$)

So there are some categories: those you want to know personally (because you need to work on something together) and those who you don’t need to know personally; there are ones whose identity is kept a secret for a while (it’s a negotiation) and those who are named boldly. Sometimes naming them is a strategy, and you never have to get their attention. I saw Elton in a great comedy drug film on a flight to Bogotá where the LUV game was launched recently. He is brilliant. It is obvious he’s having fun, and he is hilarious too. The way he tricked those future dogs is awesomeeeeeeeeeee! Dollie Parton I’ve seen you partner up with Ke$ha and Reese Witherspoon lately. You are divine. Queen. Zsa Zsa ain’t got nothing on you. You are the Tennessee home state queen, and I bow down. I genuflect exponentially my queen!!

A few months back, I suggested to you on the Dollywood Foundation Facebook page … a social media, I’m told. I suggested you follow the Buffet principle and pre-donate or -guarantee a rather large sum of money to the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Your position may be to say ‘no’ and tell me rather what you want to do. I have also offered to use a special Nigerian money-doubling trick I learned while doing Nollywood research in Llagos (Surulere) and Enugu (where I stayed with the pastor I met through the Club of Rome and dear dear Ndidi). I’ve boasted that I can make $10 million look like $20 million. Well, ya gotta give me a shot, my queen:) Ms Parton, did you know that my first international job, the one I took after minoring in German at David Lipscomb University (Nashville)? I worked for the TN Dept of Tourism as an ‘agent’ in Germany. Well, at first I honed my German care-taking 6 children and 6 pets in Heppenheim as aupair. Ever had a two-year old set of twins be all cute and bilingual when saying (in unison) ‘fuck you’? I went on to Bielefeld to an office where I would represent TN tourism. Mostly I’d answer the phone in a southern twang and be sent out to truck driver conferences to push country music-related tourism to TN. Dolly, you and Don Williams are big big in that demographic. I also noticed that you, Kenny and Don are well-known in various corners of Africa whilst performing my next career incarnation as an aid worker. This is when I began my HIV-related work. When I was in my 20s some two and half decades ago. I contracted HIV about five-years ago in São Paulo.

I’m super busy with the World AIDS Day activities we are making locally in São Paulo. We are making these cloth hearts, and I’ll save you one. May we speak in December sometime after December 1st. I’ll come home to TN if you need. Lately things have been tense at home in Bradyville. My parents have handled the news of my HIV pretty ok. I’m not so sure about my brother. It only came out in a fight with him, so I need to work on that bit. My mom is cute. We all drink those out of these 10 ounce Dr. Peppers or Sundrops and leave the remainder in the fridge. I noticed my mom has started labeling mine with a black sharpie. It gave us the chance to speak about communicability of HIV, but it really wasn’t so cute. Maybe we can Skype? You and me. I’m about to watch Islands in the Stream, the live version. I need to talk to you!!

Relatoría Sesión #7 – Cuerpos Fluidos

Laboratorio Luciérnagas
Relatoría 7 septiembre
sesión #7
cuerpos fluidos

artista invitado: Juan Manuel Mosquera
lugar: Jardín Botánico de Bogotá


Taller
Exploración de las posibilidades expresivas del cuerpo a partir de un reconocimiento y una apertura del espacio sensible.


Actividades
Reconocer y explorar las tres llaves del espacio sensible: el peso del cuerpo, sentir y hacer consciente la respiración y permitir la consciencia del cuerpo en su totalidad (sentir su totalidad en el momento presente.
Ejercicios de composición instantánea: sentir y escuchar mi movimiento y el movimiento de los otros cuerpos en el espacio. Esta idea se exploró a través del ejercicio “eje” un trabajo en parejas y grupal al mismo tiempo que busca la escucha y la coordinación permitiendo una composición coreográfica. Ejercicios de contacto: reconocer el movimiento a través del contacto con otro cuerpo, se invitó a los participantes a desarrollar pautas de consciencia y descubrimiento del movimiento a través de entrar en contacto con otro cuerpo, la potencia expresiva del toque, del masaje y del movimiento en contacto a través del espacio.


Actividades que no se pudieron realizar
Introducción al “Authentic Movement” (AM) el cual es una técnica que permite reconocer en los participantes las posibilidades expresivas y los ritmos del movimiento propio.
Se había planeado ejercicios de AM en parejas, los cuales permiten una dinámica y una estructura de observación, movimiento y retroalimentación de lo observado tanto en parejas como en grupos.
Se había planeado también ejercicios de composición instantánea en grupos que serían desarrollados a partir de pautas espaciales, temporales y de cantidad de personas.


Visita colectiva al espacio performativo:
Se realizó un recorrido colectivo por un espacio dentro del Jardín Botánico que se ofrece como posibilidad para la presentación del gesto final del laboratorio, un
lugar posible para accionar grupal e individualmente lo cual sucsitó una discusión colectiva sobre e las
estructuras posibles y el sentido de las mismas.


por Juan Mosquera

____________________________________________

Luciérnagas Lab
September 7th Report
session #7
fluid bodies

invited artist: Juan Manuel Mosquera
place: Jardín Botánico de Bogotá

Report:

Workshop

The exploration of the expressive possibilities of the body, departing from the recognition and opening of sensitive space. 

Activities 

To recognize and explore the three keys of sensitive space: the weight of the body, feeling and being aware of breathing, allowing the body’s consciousness in its totality (to seek its totality in the present moment.)

Exercises of instantaneous composition: to feel and listen to my movement and the movement of other bodies in space. This idea was explored through the exercise “eje”, a work in pairs and groups, that search for listening and coordination, allowing a choreographic composition.

Contact exercises: recognizing movement through contact with another body, participants were invited to develop points of consciousness and to discover movement by getting in contact with another body, the expressive potential of touch, of massage and of movement in contact through space.

Activities that were not able to be realized 

Introduction to “Authentic Movement” (AM), which is a technique that allows to recognize in the participants the expressive possibilities and rhythms of movement itself. 

There had been plans to do AM exercises in pairs, which permit a dynamic and structure of observation, movement, and feedback of what had been observed both in pairs and in groups.

There had also been plans of doing exercises of instantaneous composition in groups, that would be developed based on spacial and temporal matters, and on the amount of people.

Collective visit to the performative space: 

We realized a collective trip to the space in the Jardín Botánico, which appears as a possibility for the presentation of the lab’s final gesture, a place which is possible to activate as a group or individual, which gave rise to a collective discussion about possible structures and their meanings.

by Juan Mosquera

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