Some thoughts and statements about why I make and what’s really behind my research
-It is not about animism. I’m not trying to convince the spectator that every object has a soul. But I am using animism as a technique to establish a more intimate connection between the human and the non-human*.
-It is not about recognizing that objects have agency and rights.
-I’m not trying to convince anyone about anything altogether. I’m not working towards imposing a specific philosophy or religion.
What I am doing is suspending the spectator’s pre-perceived reality for a moment. Offering a different way of interacting with the surroundings, working towards establishing a deeper connection, even if just for a moment. I see this interaction as a step towards kindness. Treating the non-human as a “you” instead of an “it”, understanding that we’re part of a whole instead of being responsible for something external, or only ourselves.
I’m thinking a lot about what is the audience’s physical and emotional experience of my work, more than what is their takeaway. I’m not looking to create a meaning, but more to exercise a way of being present, of living a space and treating it as another. Another presence. (what kind of presence?)
Some first thoughts on content of FRD
-Site-responsive reading, (to keep in mind: the book is also a material object that the reader is touching, what does that mean? To use that as a fact in scores or as a reference in personal writings)
Main body of content
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Body as a presence (what is there? Listening)
On being present as a human body, as a reader of this text. This chapter is preparation for immersion, opening up to the experiences that come later in the next chapters, an important part I also find important in the experiences I make. The importance of taking time (also for me as a maker, spending time in the places I work with and for)
How: Scores (my interpretation of Oliveiros and Tufnell and Crickmay) + my personal writings to introduce key concepts (definitions?)
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Touching (an entry point to connection)
How does touching work as a way to start connecting? (conclusions from experiments I’ve made, and readings ex. On Touching by Karen Barad). Why do I personally focus on touching? (hands often appearing in my work-uncosciously always focusing on touch) What kind of guidance is needed? (how does it work with impairing other senses?) (*be aware that the reader is also touching the page or the book as they read). explain through specific work of mine
How: Personal writings + scores that involve touch
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The space as a fellow body (intimacy)
Addressing the paradox of giving human attributes to seemingly non-living “things”, the non-living as a “you” instead of “it”, as a way to invite the participant of the experience to treat them as a fellow, to get closer, to evoke empathy. A way of connecting that happens in the audience’s imagination. How am I using this tool in my experiences?
How: Personal writings and thoughts, including reflections from experiments I did + Letters to and from “non-living” objects
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Ephemeral archive (the body of the spectator as a space, a keeper of experiences)
Thoughts on documentation as an inspiration, how I have come to understand that the themes I’m working with are hard to capture in “classic” forms of documenting art (photos, videos). Documentation vs proof, example of how I document and how the spectators/participants’ bodies are also documenting during the experiences, bodies as carriers of memories (references to Katja Heitmann)
How: Scores + Personal writings
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Zooming out moment (towards a non-human centered perception)
Short (more personal) note, thoughts on why I’m interested in these topics, positioning the work and the research in the greater picture, more specific thoughts on the discourse of de-objectifying the world.
How: Scores + Letter to reader
Conclusion
My writing from Daniela and Nirav’s “My research is finished. What is the conclusion?” prompt.
It is hard to communicate this feeling with words.
It is hard to communicate the processes behind the conclusions.
It is hard to communicate what happens in my body.
It is hard to communicate what happens in my mind.
The connections that to me seem so logical and oh, so obvious.
[…]
Not everyone sees the world the same way. I would be a fool if I expected you after this research to be completely changed.
[…]
Although it’s hard, it’s not impossible to get a glimpse of what the world can also be. Of what I know the world also is. For me, the world is a collection of details. […] Multitudes of energy[…]. Scaling up and down, zooming in and out, focusing and widening.[…]
I also understand that scenography can be found in everyday environments. Attention needs to be put on specific moments, to highlight them, as you would do on a book to not forget that one very inspiring sentence you just read.
What is needed is a change of perception. Guidance.
Introduction
My fingers are using a keyboard.
My fingers are typing on the keyboard.
My fingers are touching this keyboard.
My fingers are feeling the pressure of the keys against my skin.
You are reading words.
You are reading words I wrote.
I wrote them with this keyboard.
The keyboard was touched and I was touched by the keyboard for you to be able to read these words.
This document is an attempt to gather my thoughts on my scenographic research, articulate them and share them. These include assumptions, statements, concepts, experiments, references, descriptions, definitions… Most of them were formed during the last year and a half, during my studies at the HKU Master program of Scenography. Some of them I can trace further back, before I started calling myself a scenographer or claim that I perform research. And there’s also those that are left for future explorations, but are still influencing me in the current moment.
This moment.
The moment I’m pressing letters on a keyboard.
How can scenography facilitate moments of connection and intimacy between human and non-human entities within everyday life settings? How is the invitation for such an encounter formed?
This is the shape my research question has taken now. Rather than aiming for a fixed interpretation, I explore how scenographic elements (such as objects, surfaces and spatial arrangements) and the bodily presence of the spectator work together to hold moments.
These moments are where I find inspiration. I’m creating my own narratives within my interactions with what is there, the unnoticed, the unseen, the overlooked, the neglected, in our everyday life.
I find meaning in meeting an object not as a backdrop, but as a presence.
I feel part of something when connecting with my surroundings in a more intimate way.
I feel connected to the world as a whole.
These moments challenge conventional understandings of scenography as material(s). Within my work, scenography appears as a relational field, one that does not merely support performance but rather generates processes and connections, shifts the perception of the spectator of the world that surrounds their body.
These moments invite reflection of our relationship with the world. In a time when western human-centred perspectives dominate the way we engage with our environments, objects, and materials, there’s a need for an alternative. My work is inspired by de-objectifying the seemingly inanimate “things” that surround us, touching upon ideas found in post-humanism and environmental discourses.
Touching.
Like I am touching now the keys on this keyboard.
Like you are touching this page.
Throughout this document I will be referring to you, I will be addressing you. The reader. The listener. The spectator. The human body that senses. The body that stores information and archives memories. The one that feels and cares.
The maker working within the field of expanded scenography. The artist seeking alternative approaches to performing with space.
The friends, the family and the collaborators trying to make sense of what I have been trying to communicate.
And you will be addressed by me. Christianna. A human body with fingers pressing on keys on a keyboard. A body sharing their feelings. A researcher communicating their findings and their assumptions. An artist posing questions.
This document does not have a particularly strict way of “reading”. The audio companion will follow a more linear path through the text, using recordings and soundscapes.
At times, invitations to actions will appear within the text. Those are scores made for you, to enhance the experience and to communicate my embodied approach to scenography. You are addressed as a human body existing in a physical space.
A physical body that reads.
A physical body that listens.
A physical body that touches.
A physical body that exists in relation to space.
A human body that relates to a space body.
Body as Presence
[SCORE ON BEING PRESENT (BREATHE, FEEL THE WEIGHT, FEEL THE AIR ON YOUR SKIN)]
As I’m sitting at my desk at home in Amsterdam, typing on my laptop thoughts that have been on my mind for a while, I’m looking at the 9 stones I carried in my pockets for a week in Terschelling. The stones that I was carrying for weeks in my jacket after I came back. I remember reaching out to my pockets to touch them, to feel for a moment transported back to the island.
What is presence for me?
When I think of me being present in a moment in space, I think of my body and what she does. Being present, she is open to receive stimuli. She observes with all the senses what is there. She is aware of her own body within her environment. She feels part of the space. She is affected by subtle gestures, small changes, nuanced details. She is focused, without hyperfixating. She is relaxed, without being lazy.
I observe my impulses. I scan my thoughts. Because of course there are thoughts. It’s not a question of turning off your mind. It’s more about attuning - being able to observe what is there, inside and out. Letting down your filters, your guards, your knowledge of the truth. And just being.
So, how do I do it? How do I become present? And how do I know when I have achieved it? Presence is not something you can tick off in a box when asked how you’re feeling. It’s also not a scale - you cannot say how present you are, 20 or 90 percent. You either are or you are not. Or rather, you are always on your way to becoming present. It’s a process, not a result. It’s a goal you aim towards. The moment you become aware that you’re doing it, it slips away again. Then you start thinking thoughts connected to your previous knowledge, rather than observing what is happening in the present moment.
To be present is to be open to reciprocity.
Are you present now?
Listening
January 2024. During a 7-day workshop with Rachel Schuit at Platform Nexus I worked with a series of body and movement exercises to open up the senses. During one of these explorations, I had an experience which I could only describe as "listening with my feet". My soles became so sensitive to the materials they were coming in contact with that I felt like I was listening and not just touching them. I created an experiment out of this feeling, to be able to communicate it, to share the moment I had. Using a blindfold, the spectator is guided through a series of movements to feel their weight, to feel themselves being supported by their legs and eventually bring their attention to their feet. Then I would take them by the hand, walk with them passed different ground textures, until we reached soil. There we stopped and I gently put the weight of my body on them and on their feet. The feeling of listening with the feet was not so much communicated, but definitely they were attentive to how their body was perceiving their surroundings, without prior knowledge of what they were standing on or where they were.
This experiment was key to the development of my methodology of leaving visual stimuli aside and guiding the spectator towards listening and touching as the dominant senses within an experience. It was also the first and last time I used a blindfold. I am not interested in impairing the senses in order to strengthen the others, but rather incorporate a voluntary closing of the eyes as an instruction, a less violent way, more fitting to my practices and interests.
A few months later I dove into Pauline Oliveiros’ work and her Deep Listening exercises. Taken from “Deep Listening. A Composer’s Sound Practice”:
What is Deep Listening? The question is answered in the process of practicing listening with the understanding that the complex wave forms continuously transmitted to the auditory cortex from the outside world by the ear require active engagement with attention. […] Listening is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as listening. (page xxi)
Oliveiros’ work has been really inspiring to me. She also talks about presence, in the form of consciousness. I practiced with her Deep Listening exercises, also during my time on Terschelling and understood the value of training presence through breathing, observing, moving and sounding (definition in footnote?).
Presence and Spectatorship
Meredith Monk has spoken about how the audience of her works experiences them in a much more substantial way when they are present. (Conversations with Meredith Monk, Bonnie Marranca, page viii)
“There is something about when you are in the moment and you know that you are really present, that allows something to go through you, […].”
Looking at my scenographic works this past couple of years, I realize how I have developed a certain methodology around presence of the spectator as an invitation to immersion. In my work “Meditation Exercises with Space”, an experience for a group of 4 participants using headphones and a host/guide, I focused specifically on the first part of the audio experience being about the spectator’s presence. Standing at the entrance of Pastoe Fabriek in Utrecht, the participant listened to a calm female voice ask them the following questions:
“How does your body feel right now? Without changing anything, observe for a moment. Are your shoulders relaxed? Are you standing straight or slouching? Can you feel your legs? Are they slightly bent, loose or tense? How about your feet? How do they feel? Are you shifting your weight from one foot to another, or are you balancing on both steadily? How does the ground feel underneath your soles? Is it comfortable to stand on?” (Excerpt from the audio of “Meditation Exercises with Space”)
The process of the spectator becoming aware of their own body is an important threshold to cross before reacting to their surroundings. Even before asked to observe them. In experiments I performed where this preparation was done hastily or without care, there was not enough engagement on a level to be able to reach this moment of connection to which I’m referring to in my original research question.
Reaching the location of the performance “Binnenste Buiten” by Schwegman& we were greeted by a host. She gathered us all in a circle, sitting on stools. Then she proceeded to explain the experience we were about to go through (the performance was around the question of when does your own body’s borders end and where does the outside world begin), providing us context and a small exercises so our bodies could understand the concept of proprioception. What was happening in that moment, was an invitation to immersion, not so much through listening to the world around us (as that would happen later at another stage of that performance) but more through collectively being present, being aware of what our body can do, listening to one person’s voice and preparing ourselves. This way of preparation I find very inspiring.
Can you imagine yourself there?
In the open air
Under the blue sky
In the middle of a grass field
In a circle of people
Feeling with their own bodies
What does it mean being exposed to the world around us?
Presence and Making
As a maker, being attuned to the surroundings is such an important part of my process. By practicing presence I am able to stay “with” the space (Anne Karin’s “verblijven” and/or Ingold’s Human Correspondance although there he speaks more of human-to-human interaction. But if I also see non-human as partly human, maybe that’s fitting?), to connect with them, to listen and to treat them with care.
I work from and with the location. Even if the experience I work with in principle remains the same, there are always parts where specific interactions with specific elements of the physical space are invited. In one of the iterations of my work “Touch me like…”, I followed a specific script to create 2 different versions for 2 different spaces. In both of them, a small booklet with instructions was placed somewhere in the room. The participant was guided there through an audio piece and polaroid photos of the spot. The interaction itself was the same, what was asked, what was performed. Even the booklet was the same object used in both cases. However, the spots where the booklet was placed on where chosen after careful presence in the space, observing not only the physical attributes of them, but also the amount and quality of activity around them.
Part of my methodology is “auditioning” those spots of interaction. Being present in the location I’m working with before trying an experience out with an audience, allows me to come into closer contact with the space, to be open to nuances, to really get to know them. I’m not just examining the space, I’m interacting with awareness, observing what is there without adding.
TOUCHING
Look around without searching. Just let your eyes wander for a moment. What do you see?
Move your hand slowly across a surface nearby. Feel the texture, the temperature, the resistance. Move your hand on a different surface. An object. Back to this book. This page.
The act of touching
My work was already strongly connected to touch even before I realized it.
I use my hands a lot when I talk, as gestures, to mime objects that are not there, to touch my conversation mate, my clothes, my skin. To communicate. Having worked as a model-maker, I’m also used to my hands as my main tools to build scale models. I had to train my tactile sensitivity, to recognize nuances in various surfaces and to be able to tell the difference between materials that were seemingly the same.
In my work touch appears as a way to get emotionally closer to the non-human, to “shake hands” with space. This handshake comes with its social connotations of getting to know someone, being introduced, sealing a deal, showing you hold equal power. (FOOTNOTE: In this case I’m talking about the symbolism of a handshake and not in the sense it is used to establish dominance by how firm your handshake is). In contrast to the act of seeing, which creates distance, the act of touching establishes closeness, invites intimacy. It’s a point of contact, it pulls you in.
Marloeke van der Vlugt (The Tunnel as Urban Care-Scape, 2024) talks about the acknowledgement of the political dimensions of touching. I recognize this in my work since I choose to see the human as the only spectator. The experience is designed with keeping in mind the human body as the receiver. However, within the work itself, the human body is asked to enter a narrative where they recognize and interact with the non-human as if they (the non-human) are human as well. The hierarchy shifts within the work. The reason behind this research, the search for a moment when the spectator as a human can feel that they are not the centre of the universe, but rather to perceive themselves as part of a whole, connects to how I treat these political dimensions of touch.
Touch is not just about feeling, or observing. It’s about forming a relationship with the spaces we inhabit. A wall might seem solid, indifferent; until a hand meets them with care. When I place my hand on a surface and take time to touch, something shifts. I realize the reciprocal nature of this act, I’m also being touched. Karen Barad (On Touching-The Inhuman Therefore I Am) writes of touch as an entanglement, that to touch is never just an act of pressing against, but of being met, of being altered.
Touching to relate
When vision is impaired, like when there’s little light in a room, touch becomes the dominant way of orienting. Through feeling the space around us we can map it out, we can make a picture in our minds of where we are positioned. I would even say this picture is even better than being able to see that same space and paint it. With touch we understand distance, fragility, continuity. It’s actually more than mapping, touching creates an embodied, situated experience of a space.
In my series of experiments “Touch me like…”, I explored touching as a way to relate to the non-human. Using a small booklet which I had made by hand, with instructions for the participants written in my handwriting (with spelling mistakes and misalignments) I wanted to introduce the idea of an actual being there with the participant.
Much like you are now touching this page, I had also touched that booklet. It was important for me that I made it by hand, so that my own fingers had already touched it, felt it, left a trace. However, I didn’t want to make it the central point of the experience, so I didn’t draw much attention to it. It was effective, even though none of the participants was talking afterwards about how it was hand-made. I see it more as a tool which supported the narrative of the wall being a human-like entity. A way to give the experience a “face” (as the opposite of being impersonal).
Framing touch
Such focused, conscious, intentional touch needs to be framed. In experiments I have explored closing the eyes while touching a surface, using audio to guide the process, crafting a booklet with textual guidance and placing that booklet on eye-height in space. I see all these as ways to guide the spectator through the act of conscious touching.
Not all touch is meaningful. Through framing and drawing attention to it, but also through zooming in and holding time for it, touching becomes important. Without guidance, touch is habit. We reach without thinking and we come in contact without processing what is being exchanged in the moment. Touching with intention makes it matter.
Place your hand on a wall close to you.
Feel it as if it were another. Another body.
Be gentle. Feel the temperature, the roughness, the small bumps.
How would you caress it if it were a friend? A loved one? Someone who has stood here long before you arrived and will remain after you are gone?
My collection of time passed in thresholds is also related to this idea of framing. I was looking to collect moments of my body standing at the entrance of a building, exploring this space that we usually just pass by and never really take time to notice, through my own body. I quickly found out that photography was not going to be the right medium to express this, so I turned to something more tactile. I started collecting the traces of materials that can be found at the entrances of buildings. I first trusted my body, it felt like a gut feeling to fall on my knees and just repeatedly move my pencil back and forth to reveal the texture of the material underneath on my paper.
The time I spent in that entrance, in that passage, standing still, being in touch with the floor, the paper a lightweight membrane between us became a way for me to find a connection with that space. I made memories there that are related to that touch.
Using textual scores and intstructions (sometimes written, others spoken out loud directly from me or indirectly through an audio piece) I’m framing the moment of touching, bringing awareness to how it is done and what it can signify. Adding a layer of poetry (or fiction) I’m working towards creating a shift from passive observation to active connection, touching and being touched. This layer of imagination reframes the physical act and transforms it into something fragile and tender. An act of recognition of who we’re touching.
I do not work with touch because I fully understand it.
I work with touch because I am still asking, still sensing, still uncertain.
Because every time a hand meets a surface, something is exchanged.
Touch resists distance.
It insists on presence, closeness and entanglement.