Lygia Clark 

Cadu Writings

It was through a conversation around illness that paying attention became possible. I was listening and understanding and being able to talk. This is being really rare lately. A real struggle to build a sentence. To connect phrases. And react to them.

Abundance can be overwhelming. And so do inventing techniques that activates events and participation that is not by ADDITION. Abundance can be overwhelming. But it is really dangerous to misplace and merge this overwhelm with the one of an individual, of order, of neoliberalism. By individual, order and neoliberal I mean the overlapping relations inside my body. A huge self underlies my depression in such a way when indifferentiation is overwhelming, the body misplace the need of some kind of organization by the need for a call to order.

When writing and thinking becomes overwhelming, a neurodiverse layer encourages a radical experimentation with language. It is with an overwhelming feeling that one may think one needs a workshop on perfecting the paragraph.

Abundance can be overwhelming but it’s not the overwhelm feeling that comes from institutions, outside and inside. 

Cadu Writings

I don't want a body

the I doesn't want a body

Whatever I do or whatever I think leads deeper and deeper into itself. . . . Everything I do is a map of itself, everything I do is a part of itself, every part leads into itself. . . . I’ve got a thought in my mind, and then I see something in it, like a dot on the skyline. It comes nearer and nearer, and then I see what it is—it’s just the same thought I was thinking before. And then I see another dot, and another, and so on. . . . Or I think of a map; then a map of that map, and each map is perfect, though smaller and smaller. . . . Worlds within worlds within worlds. . . . Once I get going I can’t possibly stop. It’s like being caught between mirror, or echoes, of something. Or being caught in a merry- go- round which won’t come to a stop.

Dear Rose R., 

I heard that nothing can make you think your way from absolute movement to displacement. And I think… how do we do this? How do we make relation, elation, when we don't want a body cause we can't find our way through this body, the present one, and the one that is yet to be made, always, in this endless labyrinth sounding for me like the movement you describe: it comes nearer and nearer, and then I see what it is - it's just the same thought I was thinking before.

I've been woken up by thoughts. The same ones. They start the day. I go for the coffee thinking this is moving, and the coffee becomes another thought. I go from the coffee to the activities, one by one they are the same thought I was thinking before yet I hope they will be different.

You know Rose R., we don't have post-encephalitis syndrome but we have the syndrome of not wanting a body… the syndrome of feeling too much. Feels so much that you get numb and you take that for not wanting a body that feels too much. Words hurts us, its organization in paragraphs. No empathy from too much empathy. How do we love with that? How do we write with that? Undifferentiation from a day to the other, from a task to the other. It's like pulling a tread and it gets stuck because there's a huge entanglement, intertwinement of things that get pulled all at the same time with this thread. It makes each single action the same action. Stuck one into the other. It wakes you in the morning and you didn't even open your eyes.

How do we work with these materials that our lives are made of? You want to write about this feeling too much but you can't write because you feel too much. The thread.

We paralyse in absolute movement. Someone will put us in front of the stairs so we can give the next step. And we fall, or each step is the same in this infinite stairs. Relation, striation in this labyrinth of smoothness, of absolute nothingness, all event meaning no event or just satisfaction. Relation, striation, satisfaction, action, we don't want a body Rose. It's an obsessive idea in it's failure. But there's a rhythm Rose, a beat, some sort of vibration that tell us in our inertia that there's perception, with perception, relation, elation, elation…: "to take the next step, you need to feel the experience of relation recomposing beyond the inertia of being".

This is about activation. This is about riding a titan called "page" and a gathering of titans called "book". This is about dismantling the metaphor of war, it's war itself and not a metaphor. This is about the impossibility of soft landings and abrupt cuts instead of smooth shifts. Where does the event want me to be? This is about the trap "me". It's about putting something different from the bermuda's triangle made of "volition, intentionality, agency" and yet enact something.

It's about a house of funny crazy tiny people baring eternity for each single gesture as cooking breakfast and eating it for dinner. Tomorrow as a deadline for the necessity.

Stella Manhattan

OKRA OKRA OKRA OKRA OKRA AROKA ARKO OKRA OKRA OKRA OKRA OKRA OKRA AROKA ARKO OKRA OKRA OKRA OKRA OKRA OKRA AROKA ARKO OKRA 

Propositions in process by 

Carlos Eduardo de Carvalho Mello, Ellen Vanderstraeten & Mayra Morales

1. performative acts and performativity other than “performance”. 

2. re-figuring the somatic or not a body 

3. practices in the making and a non-presentational quality.

Nonconforming writing - Cadu

1,2,3 Go! Just write. Put a piece of paper on the computer screen and write, just write. Or fade the light of the screen away, don’t look. 1,2,3 Go! Now it will work. It’s not. Maybe close your eyes and touch the keyboard. Keyboard settings. QWERTY Portuguese(BR) English you’re enjoying French lessons oh no better see a film www.youtube.com something light maybe? A cook video yes maybe will give you an idea about cooking something for dinner… maybe tomorrow.. I will have all those spices and seasonings when I grow up are you?

Someone told me once that the world is collapsing because people watch too much cooking videos but this doesn’t help people to cook. It doesn’t help me. The more I watch those videos the less hungry I get. Not true. Sometimes I starve and I go watch these cooking videos oh what a stupid thing to do when you’re hungry… I promise myself I’ll cook something nice.. something simple tomorrow and boom! The promise nurtures myself and I don’t cook tomorrow. Then I starve, of course. Nonsense that promises nurture people, of course they don’t. I should write something. Something simple… something nice. Make a blog and start writing why not? Just write something that hasn’t to do with your ph.D. but oh everything has to do with a ph.D. that’s why it’s such a good research project.

Activation. A soaped frog I try to catch with my hands. Oh bollocks why did someone had to put soap on the poor frog. Who did it? It’s already so hard to catch a frog…. Don’t you mess with the frog.

Activation. 1,2,3 Go! Just write. You better catch that frog. I don’t want to put the frog on the stable instead of a cow. Ribeye stake. Vegetarianism. I feel anxious. Very anxious. What’s the colour of your anxiety? Bogars.. A tumor. It’s been now one year and a half waking with this feeling.. that I have a tumor inside my body.. inevitably will have cancer. Everybody is having it. There’s no more time to get a grip on life. Oh boy. No, not boy. Gender nonconforming. Put a piece of paper on the body and write, just write. Or fade the light of people’s eyes away. “Tequila” mocking bird. I’ll write about this spectacular event. When I was 14 (I’m inventing that, I don’t know how old I was) I heard “Tequila” instead of “To kill a”..  oh girl that’s gonna be a text.

Activation. Body nonconforming. How do things hold each other when a body is nonconforming? Dress yourself and roll through the day. This day. I’ll write today. People went away and I felt like crying. Sometimes I like to cry but I don’t, it gives me a sense of a body nothing more sad then this for a nonconforming body.. luckily when tequila mockingbird is out of the stable the sensation fits the body.. it can be soothing.

My sister. I brought her earrings hoping this could restore her dignity. Her body was so cold. Fade the lights of the screen away. I put the earrings. Dignity restored, of course not but yes. I don’t even know if she liked those earrings anyway. I go out of the hospital. The sun is shinning I feel good and no one’s gonna stop me now – you can chose 3 songs for the cremation. Oh body 3 songs. A funny one, a touching one and one that will echoe through generations. Such a stupid weather for such an occasion. It’s hopeless, so hopeless to even try. Hopefully it’s not about trying.Piled on the collection of images inside my memory. Not a fair trade her body gone and this image present inside my memory… last time I saw her body no it wasn’t her body. What do I mean by dignity anyway…?

So this is how my body stopped…

The only reason I can think of… something’s gotta make sense about those mornings of desperation waking my body for the shining day. So exciting weather why should you stay 72 hours inside the house? You better go eat something but the kitchen objects… oh they are so scary cause they have their own life… no this has nothing to do with sharp or pointy objects… they are scary because they don’t cook. They don’t do what they are supposed to do. Useless. Like a pen. Like trying to write. Like research. Like therapy. Like… earrings chemo radio food sanitized  nonconforming.

What is the shape of enthusiasm after this? They say I was already depressed longer ago before it happen..

Does conformity has a gender anyway?

….

Cadu Writings

It starts with my difficulty of connecting thoughts.. fear of objects.. or disorganization.. words make a Cadu happy but a paragraph scares.. organization  scares.. to have a body.

I dream a nightmare.. I jump into the "staring myself blind".. the coma.. the body object.. paralized.. wanting to say but not being able to.. trembling voice.. trembling gestures.. trying to manipulate objects.. trying to give use to objects but the objects rebel in front of the eyes and the hands.

There's a snow storm here since yesterday. I wait for the bus but the bus is 20 minutes late. I enter the metro and there's no metro in 1 minute cause they say the breaks were pulled causing a delay. I'm trapped by words.. I'm trapped by silence.

A good day for me. A good day to be all my favorite colours that I don't even know anymore which are. But I'm happy to learn French yet they speak to fast.. yet someone pull the breaks.. such a provocative gesture for a life that is moved by the breaks.. 

Streaming over the edges 

of the cup 

onto the table 

soaking the dish towel. 

Cecilia Vicuña

This is not a Lygia Clark proposition. This is a Lygia Clark proposition. This doesn’t have to be. This is a relation. This is not an object. This is an object. This is not writing. This is something wanting to communicate so objects can rest.

-what is philosophy ‘percept, affect and concept'

This is not a this is.  This is a this is not. This is knot a not.

There. The tunnel with different smells inside it.

The weight of names was carried by a silent snow storm, a white pile of snowy paper sheet. Activation said hello, hid itself under that white paper roll and landed in a melting form. It’s important to not be important so it can become important. In another way.

(sound of snow - struck by the silent)

One to one, as collective as it is, inside a tunnel made of gauze. The inside and the outside of a landscape seen through the tunnel. The more you stretch the gauze the more the inside and the outside merge for an activation that moves sideways, not frontally, in order not to scare that idea. 50 meters of an idea trying to land on a 5 centimeter paper sheet.

This is not a Lygia Clark proposition. This is therapeutical. This is not therapeutical. This is a proposition. This is artful. This is just an object landing on a body. One to one taking part (schizhoanalytic question?). Many inside the tunnel, a vessel, one at a time since there are many.

This is a question. Can objects relieve the weight of names so the idea can cross the tunnel?

Chiharu Shiota

A LIFE MOVED BY BREAKS 

Franz Erhard Walther 

Lili - to build a machine 

to cut to invent a new

to sew a dress with the length of an olympic swimming pool, 

overlapping tissues full of memorial density, 

to feel bouncing spools in your hand palms, forehead and cheekbones, 

to pull strings and be pulled by strings, 

to sense the carving of the corners of the room into an architectural body, 

to slide a tunnel of entangled fibers over an ocean of alive bodies passively laying down in space 

for two hours 3 min and 32 sec, 

to whisper each other our dreams into the soles of our feet, 

to take those feet for a walk, 

to pass by accident a building site in public space, 

to sit on the edge of an empty swimming pool, 

to see bodies crawling trough a tunnel, 

cause we wanna build worlds more than buildings, 

you step into an apartment with only yellow objects, 

all yellow floors walls ceilings,  

a table prepared specially for you yellow food drinks, you give over and your being fed, 

be hold and wrapped in tactile choreographed textiles, you disappear between to many folds, 

washed away in a bathtub by a stranger,

to witness a bag floating above your head, 

it’s bouncing of the walls vibrating out the amplified sounds of the movements of the cracks in the earth below your feet, 

to exceed representation,  

perform to transform we resist singular identification, 

and stay within the mania of exception.

to propose processes with no end no beginning. 

cause life always comes with death, 

we want to give place to our grief, 

we inhabit forms and are grateful but we are suspicious 

we just take a little step back, 

we laugh, those habits were never really that stable anyways,

and just like that 

from here we move 

before there it is 

the sun 

and we lose our eyes. 

The bike-man said 

“- It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.”

We sanitize our hands yet we like contagion.

While a bunch of people are worried about hoarding toilet paper I can only think about okra and what a beautiful geometry okras have. Such a well distributed space. I cut okras in pieces and let them dry for a couple of hours before cooking, so they don’t get slimy. That’s how I started appreciating okra. I don’t even care anymore if they are slimy. Such a beautiful vegetable.

I love people. I really do. All of them. They fulfill me. I love them so much that it hurts, so I keep an imaginary distance. That’s how I dry relations so they don’t get slimmy. Ok if they do.

People have been talking about social distancing. I was already in some kind of isolation. Was I?

I was only drying okras and seeing their seeds as people. The ones I love. Okras, people, geometry, kinesphere.

We like contagion yet we care

We don’t like viruses

We care in order to merge

I had this Laban teacher, you know. She thought us about the kinesphere. A space around the body, the longest distance your arms and legs can reach from the body centre, it’s gravitational axis. She used to say people are anxious nowadays because there’s no more space between people to safeguard each persons own kinesphere. I agree. It’s my antisocial distancing. Social distancing. Please touch me with intention.

Institutions got so big. So big. They control and organize a body in a specific way. The body doesn’t like that. A kinesphere is a cosmos you got to inhabit, infinetly. It gets sad when organized in a particular way. We like organization. We like to mess organization and then ask for a powerful one. We become individuals. Kinesphere as a fortress, not a cosmos anymore. Bubblesphere. 

I smell the okra. My nose is a philosopher yet depression didn’t register that. Depression is when a kinesphere becomes a fortress. You swallow the institution and it controls you from the inside. A struggle happens: between your nose and the institution inside you. Anxiety comes. Instead of appreciating okras you start to count endlessly the number of seeds inside the okra. The magic is gone. Come back okra smell.

We say we when we mean I and we say I when we mean we

We say community when we commune those with no community and a community to come

I’m not anxious now. There’s a struggle to sanitize a contagious virus. I don’t care about my body. I care about people’s bodies. I wonder what is the life I want to foster for myself in the middle of this and after this. This brings me anxiety.

We confess

We trap people in order for them to make their own confessions

I love the virus. It deflagrated anxieties on people. I feel more understood. Say that you feel it so I don’t feel it alone. I love people, I really do. They go to the grocery store and they don’t find what they are looking for. How are we gonna live with what’s available on the aisles? They are forced to organized meals, from this outside organizer as a starting point. There’s no okra for my curry.. I don’t even know if I will be able to finish cooking cause I have trouble continuing and finishing things. Now so do people. I feel embraced, understood, yet the institution grows, grows, grows, and collapses. I’d like to have good news or a smart solution. Collective techniques. Depression won’t let me. At least I’m not anxious.

I contemplate the okra to forget this big “I”. I don’t like people. Let’s merge our kinesphere’s please?

We tremble when we feel affected

The body lies on the floor with the belly down. Hips moving, head and eyes gaze. The  environment vibrates and I, who was in the edge of the circle, feel like now I am at the center. The gaze and the waves, the trembling, it affects my body. I feel like I'm making a confession yet I don’t know that yet

We like contagion. We are a collective head. 

When we say head we mean the whole body. 

We like to be affected. We pretend we can organize our layers.

We get scared by the fact that a Ph.D is a life project.

We like to be a collective body.

We are afraid of losing control when we become collective.

I SAID HELLO BUT COULDN'T OPEN MY MOUTH I SAID

"The job of having to soften up the brick every day, the job of cleaving a passage through the glutinous mass that declares itself to be the world, to collide every morning with the same narrow rectangular space with the disgusting name,..."

• Julio Cortazar, The instruction manual.

"Feel the room instead of persons"

• Underspaz, The schizz manual.

This is not a manual. Disgusting names are created by an exhaustive repetition of trying to make things work. Things that are not less worthy of work, tendencies, but it's not by exhaustive work that they happen.

Imagine this: you wake up with this feeling that you won't make it through the day. A day already didn't happen. You still need to get out of bed. You take the time you need, you invent the smell of coffee, you get out of bed. You make coffee and the coffee doesn't taste as you pictured. In the urge for enthusiasm you grab any grain of stimuli for a nice meal. You prepare a beautiful meal, but you do it tiptoeing. You eat it and just like the coffee, doesn't taste like you meant. What happens? Whatever is taking too much effort, whatever becomes the center of a movement, doesn't make a shift. It takes too much effort to keep things in the center and you cannot do it differently. 

You have problems cooking so the eating, in the end, doesn't feed you. If the process is not nourishing, the object won't be either.

The disgusting name.. the "I", the "center", the "job", the "every day". A equation already doomed since the beginning. Mr. Cortazar, I give up the disgusting names. Not easy to try a shift but sometimes it is felt what does to feel a room instead of persons mean. Allow space to happen. Distancing a body from its "I".

You don't soften a brick by staring at it, even though staring and folding yourself in is all sometimes you can do. Just don't forget it won't work that way. Stretch time and try again later by the magic of giving credit to space instead of persons, including yourself. "It does not occur in space, but creates space in the moving" (Erin Manning, A dance of attention).

The Reason I jump - Naoki Higashida