The recounting of memories is a process of difference within repetition, the view expands and recedes like a tide as one move towards the object of reflection, other images, sensations act upon the memory leading the storyteller elsewhere, each movement of memory surfaces some other detail. The telling is very much dependant on the time within which it is being told, the present moment and all the sensations of that moment, no one account is exactly the same as another although the focus remains constant. Looking back on a life through a tunnel of existence, it is a strange truth that often those events farthest from the present seem the most defined ‘I remember it as if it were yesterday’. The listener interprets through their own memories and experiences, the connected listener, daughter, granddaughter, sibling, or bystander with similar beliefs, reinterprets part of the narrative as their own, connects it to the system of beliefs already beholden to them and makes it part of their identity. To identify oneself with a certain though or feeling and to take on the story of another as ones own is to feel a sense of belonging and to position yourself within the alien otherness of the world.

The certain space I know as home is a space I return to constantly in my mind while away and yet find myself constantly trying to find the edge of while within. It is a ‘look out’ a static, solid harbour with a view of the horizon from which I can safely master the world and hope to build a place of my own. I am caught there, rooted to daily function and routine, people and roles.
When in alien territories, foreign spaces I am seemingly free, unconnected, dislocated, looking about me with awe and amazement, un owned, outside, watching from the train window. But I find myself searching, walking the streets of cities free from any routine or reference I look for them still, I look to recreate a certain sense of self, of belonging, universal references to what constitutes home, signs of habitation; kept gardens, shelves of books, spaces defined by an existence comfort me.
The transient existence within the city, the rented apartment, shared house lack stillness. I find it momentarily in small gestures or activities that I try and repeat. Lacking place leaves us shaken, wandering, picking things up and discarding them, looking towards an ever-expanding horizon. The trace we leave is a whisper within the clamour of voices; it exists scratched into brick walls, on road signs, amongst the dust accumulating on a box of unpacked books or the rubbish spilling from upturned bins, it talks of encounters, miscommunication, feelings discarded or secreted away under furniture and between buildings.

i'm not very good at keeping this thing up to date..... but i will strive to do better. I've found the assesment process very useful in clarifying my thoughts after christmas.... i really want to start making work and testing ideas.... but i fear i have still to abandon a fine art mind set when approaching this(although not entirely).... some days i really wonder whether this was the right choice for me but then i realise it is me that has to keep adapting..... i don't have to create numerous finished pieces of work and i can't do all my ideas at once, but i am excited about workshoping ideas and documenting this process too.... i think this will open my work and thought processes up and help me develop something which is both art and performance but not necessarily performance art.... i will try to post my research proposal... only thing is it is in an apple document and i don't have internet access at home.... i feel so low tech, no internet, no laptop, an ancient computer...... should i take out a loan and invest in technology at this stage or can i survive on college resources for the rest of the year... decisions decision....

I've just posted my fisrt five hundred words that i sent to Amanda.... the discussion with her was very useful and I feel things are all going to change over the christmas period.... regards other things... It's just completeling this collaboration now and then taking time to reflect... I think it's been a good process for understanding the tricky elements of negotiating creative minds and time. It's been fustrating, and i think maybe the number of us working towards one out come hasn't worked but we are yet to see how it all comes together and i am still very currious about this.... i'm a bit unsettled by the idea of having to collaborate for my own research ... if something came about naturally then fair enough but it wasn't what i was expecting when I started this year....

Feeling Space: the place between us.

What is feeling? Where is it situated within us? Is it a product of our survival instincts or a condition of habit and socialisation? I have been struggling to pin down my question for some time and this idea of feeling seems to be at the crux of the matter. My reading so far has taken me into anthropological study of space and place, ideas of the ‘lived body’ experience, embodied space and the interaction between inside and outside.

I am interested in the physical nature of feeling and how it is expressed through the body. Whether this physical formation of feeling can be interpreted universally or is distinct to culture, climate, social conditioning. Whether feeling is a unique facet of human nature? In particular, the concept of empathy and our ability or inability for mutual understanding. How has our physical language developed, is it responsive or conditioned, universal or culturally defined?

“The space occupied by the body and perception and experience of that space, contracts and expands in relationship to a person’s emotions and state of mind, sense of self, social relations and cultural predisposition.” Sondra Horton Fraleigh

Body language is the interface between internal and external space. Our internal space affects how we view external space and vice versa. I am looking at Situationist ‘deriver’ and notions of ‘inscribed space’ which focus on how various scholars define the fundamental relationship between humans and the environment they occupy, implying that humans ‘write’ in an enduring way their presence on their surroundings. That we map space through our lived body experience, through our desires and needs and that the landscapes we inhabit also become part of our internal world and affect our physicality.

“People are influenced by the environment that surrounds them and take qualities of that environment into themselves.” ‘The Anthropology of space+ place: Locating culture.’

The Communicating Body:

INSIDE ------ OUTSIDE ------- INSIDE

PERFORMER -------- SPACE -------- AUDIENCE

FEELING ------BODY ------SPACE ------BODY/FEELING - FEELING/BODY


Where is feeling/ emotion sighted? What is its relationship to memory? The physical sensation and the meaning we place in that sensation become inseparable, emotion is sensation although we interpret it. Are the physical signs that we use to express these sensations universal or are they constructed signs particular to culture and creed. Are there still remnants of our primitive instinctive self within our physical language, subtle movements that we perceive in the unconscious mind, but which go unnamed?

In turn we could question the idea of a ‘universal communicating body’ completely. We relate to each other through our own body experience so how is this line of communication affected by gender, age, size and physical ability? What about the blind or the partially sighted? How is feeling communicated and felt? How closely linked is the physical self to our sense of identity? Notions of feeling, what they mean, and their function within society have developed through culture both verbally and physically but after this process how do we start to re-interpret? How far can we then trust that what we think we feel is true?

I am not sure how to use this Blogg space, I was inspired by Ming's review of Rosas on screen as I also saw it and thought it was amazing. I hope that we can start to arrange some group nights out to the Theatre this term which will open up a debate about contemporary performance.... after Christmas Knee high Theatre are at the Lyric with Cymbeline...this is a great physical Theatre company, always experimental with their use of space, set and costume.
Regards my own research it is taking me a while to whittle down my ideas.... I keep finding too many new points of interest and departure.... I feel I need to start somewhere a bit more personal and have started developing an idea which looks at particular individuals I have personal relationships with... questioning concepts of self and other and how we attempt to break down this barrier in performance/ art /dance.... my themes of actual bodily space, dance and the way it communicated are the same but i hope to draw from these particular relationships and respond to them through my own body experience....first physical experiment is to dance blind folded as a way of testing my own physical boundaries and developing an understanding of how we perceive space through the body....I would like to develop this with other bodies...maybe a blind duet as my work is to bee about relationship between self and other... so if anyone knows of dancers...?! I went to a dance class at the place on Wednesday- it was so good to dance again.. I hate the fact I can't afford to do it regularly.... anyway enough said for today.

With regards my own research project my ideas are in a very embryonic form, currently I am reading about Dance and the 'lived body', the existentialist body, as well as a book called 'The Origins of dance'... I am hoping to discover a practical way to explore ideas about movement, the experience of movement and it's relation to space, place...I am also looking at a book about the anthropology of space/ place... I have a concept for a 4 camera piece which plays with filming a moving body or bodies from four angles in close range.... An intimate space for a solo or duet....Also would like change the space of the dance and the dancers relation to it.... as well as the viewers relation to what they see, be this recorded or live.... distant, intimate...
bodies in relation to each other, with a given language, dance is primordial but also culture.......Universals...
conversation....the remembered body, an image or rather a collection of moments.... within the lived moment- a changed relation... people can exist to us in two spaces...
Questions....where does the individual exist? The desired individual? A lost/ loved person...... a present experience effecting those desires... Where do we place them? Mapping desire within the body and the city.... Derive'..... situationalists... Walk with no end in sight..... from one point to another in the least logical path.... like dance.