How can I make physical movement visible in a way that lasts?
What do I want?
How can I integrate the trapeze into scientific research?
At what point does the menstrual cycle information connect to my "artistic practice"?
Is the topic overdone?
Do I actually just enjoy scientific research and want an excuse to spend time on it?
Do I want the paper research and physical research to be seperate?
What other ways are there to move on the trapeze?
Maybe make it more extreme?
How does my body move on the trapeze?
Can you "unlearn" technique?
What if hierachy of skills and expectation is removed?
What is there to do on the trapeze?
How can I control the trapeze swinging and orbiting?
What do I need to do on the trapeze to make it orbit from a side swing?
How do orbits work from two points? Shared centre?
How fast/how slow, how big/how small can I orbit on the trapeze?
Orbit sounds?
What if I attach a pen on a string to the trapeze bar to make the movement visible?
Use different coloured pens?
Change length of string?
Repeat and repeat?
I want to use all the different ways of using pen and string? Why restrict it to one?
Is there a way to combine things?
Can I learn how to block sounds out?
Meditate more?
Why am I resistant?
What can I do when I'm stuck?
What parameter to change?
Keep accumulating first?
circle/oval/ellipsis/line - how do I control them?
Skills?
Sound?
Text?
Who is the main character?
What does it mean going in circles? Looping?
If its silcence what kind of silence?
Why did the pen change course?
Change of gaze?
What happens after this moment?
Why start more new things when I can work on what I've got already?
How to incorporate drawing hands and feet?
Remake of baby?
Wrap different ways?
What happens if the drawing changes the trapeze?
Limit of circus?
Questioning what makes circus circus?
At what point does circus start and circus end?
What stays from circus when it goes durational?
What does durational mean to me?
Am I talking for the pen?
Am I talking through the pen?
How far can I get from the centre?
Soundscape with text?
Write more?
Practice through organised chaos?
Which part did you enjoy more?
What was missing?
Use string with hand?
Why do I come down?
Maybe move with the help of the pen?
Why use different coloured pen?
Restrictions, limitations and freedom?
Do I want the audience to have the ability to move around?
How do I think about the most enjoyable way of playing it?
Dimension
Direction
Cycles
Circles
Axis
Beauty
Angles
Waves
Tides
Seasons
Colour
Body
Relationships
Restriction
Frustration
Texture
Expectations
Centrifugal
Ellipsis
Scales
Centre
Planets
Attraction
Repulsion
Weight
Orbit
As I do every hour of every day in my life I asked many questions within the artistic research process. On the left is a small excerpt of the questions that surfaced throughout the process. The main theme I worked with was cycles. (see the words above for all the prompt words that were part of the cycle word family for me)
My attention was caught by wanting to work with the movement of the trapeze in space rather than the movement of my body on the trapeze, while still using my body to initiate and control the movement of the trapeze.
I also wanted to catch the performance physically, letting the movement leave visible traces that would last.
The element of cycles seems to be a returning theme for both my life and my practice -I am not sure if there is a point in differentiating between my life and my practice as they seem so closely connected that one is the other- Cycles influence me in my daily life but also seem to dominate my movement practice.
Furthermore I was interested in challenging the perception of circus.
Questioning what makes circus circus?
At what point does circus start and circus end?
For a long time I have been struggling with the expectations that seemed to arise towards me once I entred a professional circus environment. Within each discipline there are certain skills and progressions that follow one after another. I felt like there was an unspoken rule that if a performance didn't include a certain level of skill it lost in value. I realised that I had internalised expectations and standards that I always tried so hard to acheive and never questioned. I decided to try and remove these expectations from my practice and play, to find out if there was a way I could move on and with the trapeze that felt authentic to me and felt good in my body.
Writing.
I use writing, especially stream of consciousness, to figure out themes or poetry or word groups that I then use to generate material.
I also use writing to take note of all the information I receive and come up with.
If I don't write it down I will probably forget it.
Conditioning.
Moving my body helps me to feel like I know the edges of it. Without movement that challenges and activates my body I feel like I am living in a blurry jellyfish that is a waft of fog floating in space. Also doing my physical preperation helps me to make sure my body can do what I ask it to do when I need to do it. Especially physically exerting exercises help me maintain a good amount of mental health.
Experiments/Trials/Tasks
Doing a thing and seeing what happens.
Repeating actions with changed factors.
Reflecting on and noting down findings.
Factors I changed:
- Colour of the pen
- Duration of execution of the task
- Length of the string that attached the pen to the trapeze
- Different types of string
- Height of the trapeze
- Pen on string vs pen in hands and toes
- Placement of paper
- Amount of repetitions of a task
- Duration of time spent on the trapeze
- Playing music vs silence/sound of the room
- My position on the trapeze
Memories, Images, Sound, Dreams.
I like to draw on these for an inspirational prompt on how to move or how to contextualise an existing movement sequence.
Conversations.
I process a lot through conversation. Being able to talk things through, being challenged by questions, experiencing other peoples viewpoints as well as having to articulate myself well enough that I can be understood helps me to gain clarity and inspires me and often leads to new ideas to follow.
The main thing I found was that for me there was high potential in the pen and paper drawing and I want to follow its path further to see where it takes me.
But for the sake of it lets go into some detail with all the other things I found too.
Early in the process I was going to work with menstural cycles as my project. I very quickly realised that I wasn't able to unite the scientific research with my physical research on the floor so I decided to take a step away from such a specific topic and broaden the playing field.
I returned to the topic of cycle but viewed it as a much broader theme. Playing with cycles, circles, repetition, gravity, orbits and a few other words that shape this family for me. I felt more free in what I could explore and it allowed me to chose from different paths and slwoly get more narrow in my focus.
I started exploring me moving the trapeze in space rather than me moving on the trapeze in space. The challenge in keeping control of an object flying through space was very enjoyable and helped me reconnect and fine tune my relationship to the trapeze.
I got curious about durational work, wanting to delve into it further.
I wondered how you can prove that you have been doing an action for an accumulative amount of time if no one is there to witness it.
I chose to use a pen and paper to
a.) make the pathway that the trapeze takes through space visible and
b.) show the accumulation of movement, the real pattern only showing up after repeating the movement for a while.
I enjoyed drawing with my trapeze a lot.
Watching the pen trace on the paper is hypnotic and gave me a deep sense of calm.
I decided to get myself amongst the action.
Hanging the trapeze lower and wrapping myself up in it allowed me to hold pens in my hand and take more control over the drawing.
This opened a whole new amount of opportunities, being able to chose where and what kind of line to draw.
There was restriction in movement being attached to the trapeze.
The new game was - get as far to the edge of paper as possible in the whole circle you can reach.
I especially enjoyed the contrast of the different lines produced. When the pen was attached to the string it acted like a pendulum, providing very clear and geometric lines. With me holding the pen there was an element of chaos introduced which gave the paper a different sense of aliveness.
This is the point I got to in my research so far.
I know that I enjoy working with pen and paper.
I know that I like exploring the boundaries of circus.
I know that I can and want to keep working on this research.
I know that I like working on my relationship with the trapeze. Relationships are a choice and hard work to get right.
I know that I have learnt a lot about myself and how I work in this process.
This process went all over the place over the last few weeks. I found myself changing the focus of my research several times and getting lost and found over and over.
In the end I had somewhat of a full circle moment when I realised that all that I have done before has fed into where I am now. I unconsciously came back to similar themes but had reshaped them to fit my current research. Making movement visible in a way that lasts and working with circles, direction, repetition and orbits are all nods to my past creations.
I am curious to see if I find answers to more of my questions and in the process find new questions that crave for answers themselves.
One of the main takeaways from this project had not so much to do with the project but more to do with me.
I learnt that I can trust myself more and allow myself to get distracted and side tracked as sometimes the good stuff seems to be in the ditch next to the path I had planned to walk on.