quia crepitus, qui per sedimentum exeunt, ad is os allisi, cuculi vocis similitudinem effingunt


(1618, Riolan)




the sound of the farts that leave the anus and dashes against this bone (coccyx), shows a likeness to the call of the cuckoo


 


 


Dear visitor,

 

We are happy to welcome you here at the exposition 'Song of the Cuckoo'.

You are free to scroll, jump or fly through the exposition you wish. To make things a bit easier for you, we have provided you a gentle guide who is there for you to make you go from one place to another. The guide is this cuckoo that apears at every page of the exposition. Each time you see it, you can click on it and you will be guided to a new place.

Follow his song and you will get along,

 

 

Joost Vrouenraets and Joany Uranka

Madness

Maker

Hamlet

Ophelia

Foucault 

Spine

Song

Practice as research 

Process

Water

SHE

Vulnerability

Cuckoo

Ship of fools

Choreographic Love Letters 

Honesty

Inclusion

Ghost

Body

Performance

To be or not to be 

Alienation

180 degrees

Foramen Magnum

Construction

Middle

Dramaturgy

Author

Soliloquy

Shakespeare

reason

Reflection

Wisdom

Becoming

Dialolgue

Birth

Theatre

Transparency

Documentation

Imaginative anatomy

Coccyx

Dance

Maisel

Recording

Grotowski

History of madness 

Change

Drowning

Dens of the axis

Transformation

Providence

Search

Indwelling

Psychology

Core

Nature

Provoking

Within

Emerging

Since 20 years I am just obsessed by Shakespeare's Hamlet, there's no other play I know of that proposes such a vertigionously confusing, yet totally understandable figure as Hamlet. The Danish Prince is as extremely inward as he is theatrically expressive. There's no line in the whole play wich doesn't move me poetically, spiritually, intellectually. The following lines of Hamlet are -among many others- dear to me, but especially for its evidence of Hamlet expressing 'letting go', I find it so touching. And they are without doubt the best words to share with you for the start of this exposition. I humbly allowed myself to just change 3 words of Shakespeare's text:

 


fall = song

 

 

sparrow = cuckoo

 

Flowers

Center

Authorship

Overcoming

Roots

Axis Mundi

Hamlet.     There is special

providence in the fall  song of a sparrow cuckoo. If it be now, ’tis

not to come—if it be not to come, it will be now—if it be

not now, yet it will come—readiness is all. Since no

man, of aught he leaves, knows what is’t to leave

betimes, let be.


 

[V.ii.217-222]


 

 

 

When I create, when I make, when I search, when I research… I like to start from the middle, from a place where I feel to start from something that resonates in me. It might not be the literal middle, but it feels as ‘a’ middle, it could be a core, a centre, or something that just is sitting somewhere centered.  

In my body, I can only think of my spine being that place where all can spring off from. My spine stands right in the middle of my whole body, it holds me together. My spine gives me direction, it negotiates up and down and offers motion to rotate. My spine gives me the strength to stand and resilience to adapt. My spine hosts and protects my nerves that travel to and from my brain and the rest of my body. My chest, head, shoulders, pelvis, legs and arms are the offspring of my spine.

My spine is the middle from where I want to start from.

 

My spine helps me to go back to the memory of being an unborn child. Being surrounded by water and dwelling inside of another body, inside of my mother’s body. I see myself upside down into her body, atlas down, coccyx up. My spine had just one single curve; my head peacefully being in close distance to my knees, my spine curving inwardly pushing against my mother’s uterus wall.

Seeing the daylight was the start of my spine to become what is is now, standing straight, coccyx down, atlas up, 180 degrees turned from my situation before. My strong spine, resilient with its constellation of coccyx, sacral, lumbar, thoracic and cervical curve; in continuous performance to bare the slings and arrows of life.

 

                                                                                                   




                                                                                                   


                                                                                                         


                                                                                                                             my spine  



 

                                                                                 my spine became



 

                                                 my spine emerged from within



 

                                                                     my spine is



 

                                                                                    I am



 

                                                                           I am my spine


 

 

                                                                          from the middle I became

Sparrow

Atlas

Womb

from

the

middle

Expressive diamond

SACRAL CURVE



Song of Madness


 



CERVICAL CURVE



Song of the spine



LUMBAR CURVE



 Song of Ophelia

 


COCCYX


Literature sources