Coil II involves the embodiment of the imaginary beings – of imaginary bodies; it explores how performers possess and be possessed by them.
In this step of the research, I used the material from the book of beings created in Coil I and asked performers to improvise while embodying these previously conceived imaginary bodies.
In this Coil it was essential for me to collect a toolbox of pathways and guidance to help performers to explore “wild” states. I asked the performers to let go, to abandon themselves, to entrance themselves, to dear to push themselves out of their comfort zones, to play with the idea of going crazy and flirt with the idea of madness.
I gave each performer one of the beings and I designed 3 different scores that would guide the performers to embody the imaginary bodies, motivating them push their limits and undo familiar patterns of movement in order to try to disclose unknown pathways of improvisation.
This stage demanded of the performers to empty themselves to receive a new identity – the imaginary body.
The creation of this toolbox started with the observing and reflecting on what were the specific stimuli that allowed the performers to take the step into this wild/unknown/entranced new state and to spot what techniques amended to unleash their intuitive impulses. This happened through the reflection of the material obtained by the experiment, but also by the somatic and psychological experience it traced in their agglomerate bodies.
The imaginary body is the medium -
between the imagination of the performer and the body,
The body of the performer is the medium, between the wild and the audience.
The body of the performer surrenders, empties itself,
Dears to taste madness through the medium of the imaginary body
Embodies the imaginary body
The spectator embodies the body of the performer embodying the imaginary body.
A turning wheel of what is imagination and what is body improvises its way in the present moment
unveiling potential, unravelling trapped dogmas
Releasing an imprisoned body of toes, shoulders, lips, nails,
pelvis, vocal chords --- tumbling into a familiar unknown.
Through the embodiment I aimed to create a context where the physical and the imaginary blur – the body and the mind – the hidden and the seen – the inside and the outside - the imaginative flow and the physical movement into a stream of uncensored improvisation.
Methodology – Scores of Embodiment
In Coil II I proceeded with 3 scores which invite the performers to improvise the embodiment of their assigned imaginary body alone in a room, unwatched by other humans. The scores focus on the feeling of being unwatched to let go, in opposition to the current social system which maintains self-discipline through surveillance or the feeling that you are being watched. As Foucault puts it when describing the panopticism, the mere fact of knowing you could be watched makes you behave the way you are required to in order to not be punished (Foucault, 1978, p. 221), creating a sort of internal individual surveillance. This explains the choice to give the task to the performers to do in a safe space, alone ad unwatched, giving them the possibility to feel comfortable to explore the delicate spaces I ask them to enter.
1 – AUDIO SCORE:
The audio score consists of a 20 minute voice recording that guides the participant into the embodiment of one of the beings.
Before sending the score to the performer I gave the following instructions:
- The score must be heard for the 1st time during the improvisation.
- Warm up 10 minutes before hearing the score
- Wear clothes that are a bit unusual to you (this makes it often easier to switch identity and is a very good tool in using the body differently, since costumes have a transformative effect)
- Take a camera, record yourself during the 20 minutes – and allow yourself to decide at the end if you want to send it back or just delete it. (this point is important for me because it allow the person to feel less watched by the camera and freer.)
The Audio Score (example on the side) guides the participant to:
- Massage their own body for some minutes.
- Take the time to be present in a meditative silence of perceptive listening.
- Listen to the “being” that they will embody.
- Move in the space with their new body.
- Take this body further and further into the unfamiliar, into the bizarre, take it to unexpected places.
- Take a moment to write down/draw something on a paper reflecting your thoughts, experiences or associations during the exercise.
(this method allowed the people to improvise just from the words/concept)
2 – TEXT AND DRAWING
The second way of giving the task was to give participants one of the pages of the Book of Beings, explain to them the process and objectives of my research and asking them to:
- Wear clothes that are a bit unusual
- Make a warm up
- Read the descriptive text and look at the drawing for the 1st time in the studio prior to the improvisation.
- Take a camera, record yourself doing a 15 minutes improvisation embodying the imaginary being – and allow yourself to decide at the end if you want to send it back or just delete it.
- Take a moment to write down/draw something on a paper reflecting your thoughts, experiences or associations during the exercise.
(this method also allowed the people to improvise just from the words/concept, but gave them more freedom in the structure)
3 – DRAWING
The third way of giving the task was to give participants just the drawing of one body from the of the Book of Beings, explain to them the process and objectives of my research and asking them to:
- Wear clothes that are a bit unusual
- Make a warm up
- Look closely at the drawing for the 1st time in the studio prior to the improvisation.
- Take a camera, record yourself doing a 15 minutes improvisation embodying the imaginary being – and allow yourself to decide at the end if you want to send it back or just delete it.
- Take a moment to write down/draw something on a paper reflecting your thoughts, experiences or associations during the exercise.
(this method tests out what happens if people use a visual representation rather than words/concept representation – also in a free structure.)
In this phase, I decided to work with people that I know and have worked with before, this aspect allowed me to go faster into the actual work due to the time limitations I had. The fact of knowing them also allowed me to choose for each one a specific body that I thought would take them out of their comfort zone and push them to explore unusual possibilities. However, I do believe that with more time and more in studio work, any of the beings would be inducing new material from any performer, therefore I highlight the fact that this methodology that I used was strictly tied to circumstantial realities.
I received the video of exploration of 12 different people and their physical reflective material on paper. All of the participants decided to send me their videos. After watching and analysing the material, I chose 5 specific experiments that I believed would create a constructive output to coining methodology for inducing “wild states”; I selected these particular 5 because each had an important element and they were very different from each other allowing an interesting diversity of results. With these 5 people specifically, I continued a longer conversation in which I shared my observations and listened to their notes regarding them. We focused on many aspects, some more physical and some more psychological, questioning whether they found movement or voice material that they had never gone through before and if they were able to push their boundaries and explore things they hadn’t touched on before through the embodiment of imaginary bodies.
Follow the line to watch some extracts of the experiments made with the performers, my reflections, their reflections, our thoughts and their drawings.