Holding Open Space

Nicola Visser

This practice-as-research (PaR) project explores how we use our eyes in seeing and being seen within the context of the mover and witness roles, as practiced in the ‘open space’ segment of Contemplative Dance Practice (CDP). As a dance artist-researcher, I am interested in how a witness holds space for another in ways that go beyond the concept of ‘non-judgement’. My PaR was animated by the question: How do we hold ‘open space’ across distance? Framed in the context of Covid-19 social distancing, it opened up a research inquiry into practices of looking for the witness and leads me to propose that witnessing is not only an embodied technique but an improvisational skill. Witnessing is a co-creative act, how we look changes what we see. My study was invigorated by the theoretical frameworks and writings of key thinkers—including Erin Manning on the Minor Gesture (2016, 2022, 2023), Eugene Gendlin’s practice steps of a Process Model (2017), and Lauren Berlant on transformational infrastructure (2017)—and finds re-orientation with/in the project of decoloniality. My methodology includes studio practice of MoverWitness relation in the open space segment of CDP, parallel methods of close reading, close talking (Schoeller 2022), ‘close drawing’ and ‘close dancing’, and interviews with artists about how they use their eyes in their practices. Ultimately, my PaR project formulates a principle and practice that I term Slow Seeing. The study of looking, attention and perception lead me to detail findings that contribute to ways of seeing as an epistemological concern. The insights are arranged into three broad fields. These include, first the practice as it pertains to contemplative dance training, where I propose a unit of embodied technique called ‘easy eyes’ and an improvisation score for the witness in a MoverWitness relation. Second, a reframing of CDP as a transformational infrastructure and a place of radical hospitality for fugitive gestures. And third, reflections on the socio-political implications of this eye practice and its potential to delink dance praxis as part of the project of decoloniality. A key insight is the notion that the eye technique and practice levers a shift in the sediment of our habitual unquestioned ordering of the world and cultivates courage in doing and knowing other-wise. It is strikingly significant because it wedges up a fulcrum and shifts the way we perceive small and big things —where we sit, how we stand, which tea we buy, movement, relation, migration, borders, identity, capitalism, power paradigms, ideology, the far away-nearby, love, everything-everything. So small. It makes a rupture, a crack, a glitch, and a fertile place for lively possibility

'Soft Eyes' Research Group

8 participants in total. People attended when they could.

Meetings took place in Studio 1.4 at Folkestedet, Aarhus, Denmark.

Two days prior to the session I would send a reminder. The reminders are pasted here.

16:00 - 18:00

21 April - 30 June 2022

'Soft Eyes' was introduced in the first session along with a reminder of 'Five EyePractices' from Barbara Dilley. We included the following invitations at different times:

What if...with 'soft eyes':

You spoke to the witness before you moved, saying what you wanted of your witness?

You spoke to the mover, saying what you want to offer the mover in your witnessing?

You witness from the 'field' so that you witness both the witness and the mover?

You witness up close through moving closer or through binoculars?

You let nature witness you?

Observations

I recorded observations and comments in a journal.

Below is a journal page of participants comments about what they wanted from and for a witness.

Field witnesses observed that after a while, their witnessing shifted to become participatory. They expressed interest in the 'freedom' of being a field witness, with a feeling of responsibilty lightened, as though the frequncy of witnessing had shifted and was less heavy.

Witnessing with soft eyes gave a sense of the whole body being ore available in the act of attending, not just the eyes. L remarked that she felt her skin could also see.

Sometimes participants saw things occur, which they somehow anticipated. They could not explain this further. An oft repeated comment was that someone unexpectedly moved with a feeling the witness held so that when the witness chose to move, they no longer needed to do that quality of movement. In other words, the mover seemed to move them.

We made homemade binoculars of toilet rolls and at times used the phone to record through them, but not all the time. The photographs are included. Interesting to note the inclusion of the roof of the studio and the outside view, the shadow. I enjyo th equal value given to different objects, objects loosen their definition and movement includes amny aspects of the context.

Participants thought that nature does witness, however when a human witness is present, in nature, it is possible to work 'more deeply'. J described kayaking and pulling into the shore of a bay. Here she would move and roll in the sand. These were her best days yet she still wished, even in the quiet early morning, to have a human presence. 'I still hold a little something back when I am alone'.

Research Inquiry

Five Eye Practices from This Very Moment, Barbara Dilley (2020:123)

Notes from observation journal. Overheard comments from 'soft eye' inquiry.

Session 7. 'Soft Eyes' Inquiry Research Group, Aarhus, Denmark

Session 5, 'Soft Eyes' inquiry research group, Aarhus, Denmark

1st session, research group. Aarhus, Denmark.

Session 3, 'Soft Eyes' Inquiry, Aarhus, Denmark

Session 8, 'Soft Eyes' Inquiry Research Group, Aarhus, Denmark

Session 6, 'Soft Eyes' Inquiry Research Group, Aarhus, Denmark

Session 2
Research Group 'Soft Eyes' Aarhus, Denmark

Session 4, 'Soft Eyes' Inquiry, Aarhus, Denmark

'This is how the earth must see itself'

This changing focus in the eye, moving the eye itself when looking at things that do not move, deepens one’s sense of outer reality. Then static things may be caught in the very act of becoming. By so simple a matter too, as altering the position of ones head, a different kind of world may be made to appear. ……how new it has become! In no other way have I seen of my own unaided sight that the earth is round. As I watch, it arches its back and each layer of landscape bristles - though bristles is a word of too much commotion of it. Details are no longer part of a grouping in a picture of which I am a focal point, the focal point is everywhere. Nothing has reference to me, the looker. This is how the earth must see itself.

Nan Shepherd The Living Mountain

This is a video of session two. Eight people in the room making four MW partnerships, and myself as a field witness. There is a voice over to the video describing elements of the session. A camera was set up in the corner and anyone could move the camera angle whenever they wanted.

The witness was playing with using 'soft eyes' and changing their distance to the mover. They were invited to be as far or as close as they wished, to the point of touch. They were also invited to be comfortable, and find ways to support their body as they witnessed.

Some significant observstaions were made this session which we carried forward into the next sessions. We introduced a chat between partners before going into the movement exploration. The directions for the chat were for the mover to say how they wanted to be witnessed/what they wanted from their witness. The witness could then say to the mover, how they wanted to witness. They found a shared understanding before beginning.

Everybody had a lot to say about this part of the process and it imformed much of the bakckground to the next step of the research. Here are some of the observations:

I want you to say to me , inwardly - 'I am interesteed in what you are interested in, my attention goes with your attetion, You dont have to make it somethign speical for me'.
Help me corall my attention, Anchor me. Do not stray too far in your thoughts.
I want you to hold, so I don't have to recall - that would be nice - to not have to remember everything.
You don't have to remember anything.
I want permission to just be BLAAAAAH
I think of the floor as a witness too.
Look after your own body's comfort.
I want to behold and not judge you. You can sleep in a corner the whole time. I expect nothing. You dont have to reach for anything.
As a mover I dont want to give anything and as a witness I dont want to give anything.
We gave each other permissio to come and touch if wanted.
Settle yourself however you need to.
I wish for the witness to not feel she has to see everything. Its ok if you drift off.

There was something for the participants - a new level of trust they said, a 'softness of permission' that came to their experience in both roles. They said that speaking to each other about what they wanted gave a 'certain freedom'.

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