TEXTURES IMPRINTS FRAMEWORKS – JUNE 2010

9 June

Hi Steve,

Attached some images of the Cioch (meaning "breast"...). In image "Cioch mist" - the ledge is obvious about 2 thirds of the way up.

"Cioch 360" is a still from the video I mentioned. There's a link to more of these 360 works here:

http://www.danshipsides.com/DshipsidesWeb/Pan%20360.html

This was in fantastic weather - but it's not so much fun in anything less - wind, rain etc - a little worrying - but fun...

It could be a great place to visit. I'm not sure about the naked part of your projecting ideas....but there's a lot of potential in terms of thinking about this space. My feelings about nakedness - aside from bashfullness - are it's clichedness at least in performance art and I imagine a little in dance too..?..no?

I would be interested in thinking and exploring about the space in terms of what it does to your movement - not just as it being a stage but as it being an object. The danger of it - literally is that it invites dare-devilness as a response - something I'm not so interested in as it's pretty dumb and we might get hurt - in a bad way.. but there certainly are ways of exploring this territory - both the real and as a studio based idea.

One thing you said which i'm responding to in my mind and think it should be examined - but i think you almost said this too - I really don't see the "neutral" space of the studio / dance theatre as neutral. I htink it's similar to the white gallery space for contemoporary art - it's so loaded that for me it becomes difficult to escape the aesthetic frame that brings. i reaslise there's possibilitioes of these spaces - and they are valuable - but I could never say they offer a neutral setting. When I use the gallery space i usual approach it with the intention of bringing a different set of aesthetics too it (climbing and the trappings of a life in climbing). This then offers the potential to foreground both the framing devices and conventions of the gallery and the aesthetic qualities of climbing - without reducing climbing to the point where it is no longer climbing...

I suppose I'm still suspicious of "art". I work towards an understanding where it is not separated or neutralised from everyday life.

This is where my uncomfortablenss with this project ending up wholly as a dance framed "dance" work. For me - as much of my work does - it has to lie outside or at least across "art" or "dance" or "climbing".

I like the idea then of looking at how this project might fit across a number of fields and "scenes". You mentioned site specifric - well actually it could be more useful for me to think about context specific possibilities too.

Enjoyed the climb yesterday - was important to fit it in - otherwise I'd be afraid of drifting.

bye for now,

dan

15^th July 2010

Hi Dan,

finally get around to responding...... from an internet cafe in Moscow....

The cioch pics look great... I can imagine this place being inspiring...

Nakedness.... I wasn't so much thinking about a "naked event" or

performance... actually I was more interested in the effect of the

texture of the rock on the bare skin... more a close-up imprint as a

visible reference to the way in which an engagement with a landscape

"moves" the inner self... the heart beat, the chemistry (cortisol,

adrenaline, endorphins), the butterflies in the belly..... I actually

agree with you about the clichedness and the boringness of most

approaches to being unclothed in both fine art and in dance/theatre....

I am very "unbashful" about naked people so it doesn't in itself hold

any power of transgression or exposure so detailed purpose or irony are

the only attractions.

I imagined a close up photographic or video recording of the gradually

disappearing imprint of the rock texture on my back or sole of the foot

after lying or standing on one leg.

Other idea is to record a stream of consciousness during the climb and

on the "platform" and use this as a "score" or "template" for a movement

work (set or improvised).... and maybe as a soundtrack for its

performance... and attempt to revisit and to transform the experience in

another context.

Galleries, studios, theatres.... well... obviously they aren't

neutral... but I quite enjoy the strange filtering history that they

bring... the framing of expectations and the more and less conscious

filtering of experience that they trigger. I suppose I'm currently more

on the side of getting more of the attention to detail that I sometimes

find in art practice (mine and others) into everyday life rather than

being concerned with making my artistic practice relevant to everyday

life..... but I suppose that perspective comes from a deep and long held

suspicion, despair and rejection of the aesthetics, training methods,

conceptual apparatus and language of pretty much the whole of mainstream

dance.... It is as if I have been so concerned with re-forging the

relation of poetic-movement-art to the vernacular movement experience of

people (including me) that I now find myself at a place where I'm not

fighting that battle any more... I just do my art work with that

background view and practice totally integrated in it.

I don't want to frame our project in a purely "dance" way. I want to

meet the different rhythms and purposes, language and process that you

bring from your fine art context... specifically to have light shone on

to my particular way of valuing objects, events, and processes by seeing

them alongside yours. I mean... .... in movement we tend to a sort of

kinetic diaorreah... like verbal .... we want to cram more in to "do"

more.... the idea of one word on a hillside or a series of 1min30secd

spinning videos (or even a painting in a frame) as worthy is an

alternative which counterbalances the tendency to an entertainment

aesthetic... I accept this difference in "scale" as someone who engages

with and loves a lot of fine art stuff but in my own practice it is

challenging and deeply interesting to be in the process of being

concerned more and more with detail, editing, refinement... leaving

stuff out....

... and.... I have been enjoying the experience of a very

pulled/torn/twisted shoulder and upper arm since we climbed.... I have

really had to pay good attention to get through the Chess Piece and only

now it starts to feel better again..... I liked the feeling that my

determination was greater than my reproducible strength, forcing myself

beyond my "limit" ... rather than underestimating my power or

ability..... BUT.... I am pretty sure that liking that is a symptom of

some deeply unhealthy psychological traits!.... Anyway...

Moscow is sunny and humid.... and the festival beginning is enjoyable...

lots of colleagues and friends.... it feels like part of a long term

ongoing process...

what about August? I have time and flexibility after 23rd. Could we plan

something. Outdoors. Dance Studio. And think about beginning a more

organised and conscious form of documentation of what we are up too?

..... though the emails... at two ends of a digital rope... are neither

too slack nor too tight... but just right for me ... so far...

One question..... relating to the differing contexts of fine art and

performance/dance (though they are crossing over of course)..... What is

the status of an object for you in your work? ... a final piece... a

video... a collection of small objects spelling out "sorry" on a

hillside.... In movement art there is no "real" material.... the object

is a sort of conception of framed time... a memory... so even the

"final" work is a process.... maybe this is a limit and a liberation....

I miss the idea of a "thing" but on the other hand I also feel the

lightness of not having to conceive of process and product as in

conflict.... I ask this question because it seems that it might be an

exchange which helps to focus on how to record what we are doing and

what importance we attach to the recordings as objects or archives or

sources for further processes.

enjoy summer time

Steve

UNPREDICTABLE SPACES – NOV 2009

Nov 2009

Hi Steve,

Oh my god what a lot of trouble! I'm really sorry to hear all that. I hope everyone recovers well and swiftly. All very worrying I'm sure.

You've also been on my "to email" list for a week or so - but I'm also overwhelmed and I'm afraid it slips down below other more pressing but far less interesting stuff.

I had thought of suggesting a climbing session indoor or outdoor before xmas - but that looks tricky now. Tho it might be possible. If not how about early jan?

I've been thinking a bit about it and at the moment my head keeps repeating "unpredictable spaces" as an idea around climbing which sums up the anxiety of not knowing if you can or will do it and what will happen if you don't or it goes badly wrong. But it's also a positive thing about uncovering or revealing what seem like new spaces or experiences.

I know jan and feb will get very busy - so it might b wise to try to identify possible dates to do something.

Hope you are having better luck now,

Dan

14th Dec 2009

Hi Dan,

I'd be up for a session together before christmas if we can find a few hours.

I'd love to get you into the dance studio and give you some ideas about how I am concieving of movement composition at the moment and to see if anything in my "systems" sparks interest or resonance in you.

" Unpredictable spaces" is full of interesting texture for me.... it is a sculptural or architectural description.... how can a space be unpredictable... actually it is the time element which invests a space with the quality of (un)predictability.... I like the fact that this description which is aimed apparently at one parameter actually speaks about another. I work a lot with tightly composed and rehearsed scores but which are always different according to the moment by moment choices, taste, values of the performer and the element of serendipity or accident.... there in the composition I am trying to frame events so as to conjure up the harmonic consonance or dissonance which might be a synonym for pedictability or unpredictability. In this way I suppose I have some connection with jazz composers or some writers of modern music or with stand up comedians who "riff" on some theme but don't stick to a refined script. The interesting thing for me is that the "grammar" of movement is radically different to the grammar of sound or text (or to that of a painted canvas etc)..... so the management of predictability and unpredictability and consonance and dissonance demands a very different set of "educated" subjective compositional judgements bith in "writing" a score and in performing it.

... yeah.... I could get into unpredictability as an issue and the connection with fear connects the idea of performance with the idea of physical challenge... limits... discovery... and it raises nice routes into the ideas of exploration (geographical, and personal, historical and political).... I've been reading about the Stalinist period in The Soviet Union (spending lots of time in Russia so digging abit) and it is almost a description of the failures of the revolution (maybe any revolution) that the participants, both by choice and by fate, did not find it easy to make good evaluations and judgements in an unpredictable, unstable context.... is this, in part ,why we need Aikido, Alexander Technique, Zazen?

.... end of rambling..... I like this rhythm of exchanges.... even though it is by default this time. I'm looking forward to going through more of these mind wanderings and collecting them up later to see what shape they fall into...

I'm doing fine.... a bit tired from driving up and down to The Royal but generally good... my "luck" is immaculate .... it is other people's fortune that causes the strain....

Hope to hear soon,

Steve

CIVILITY AND ALTITUDE – OCT 2009

22^nd Oct 2009

Hi Steve,

Really enjoyed today. wasn't bored - always interested in anyone's climbing and whatever the level.

Here are some fast thoughts too:

Fear

I was interested is seeing where and what you feared. - what element of the siuation was the seed of the fear - the insecurity of the foot placements. technically this is often the case - footwork a takes time to atune too - but fear looks for any nook or crany to slip into and fester - so if it wasn't the feet (but it usually is - because they are slightly less predictable in terms of slippage and friction that hands - less feeling) it would have been something else (is the knot right? is the rope strong enough? is the rope over a sharp edge? did the karabina close right?....)

It's painful to hear somebody recount witnessing a shocking scary climbing injury. These moments taste. The impact of the ground is something you never forget if you've experience it to any level where it injures. This is something you can sense in a situation where you imagine it can happen. But it's difficlu to be objective when these thoughts / tastes feeling come into you mind. I don't want to suggst that climbing is about denial (it won't happen it didn't happen) but in some ways you have to face it down and come to terms with it - or put it in it's place. is this inhumane?

So it was interesting to witness how long it would take you to become familiar with the situation - and steps which might encourage or facilitate that. You climbed the black jugs a few times - on top rope then leading it. The knowledge of the situation grew and fears went - also interested to hear about the practical distraction of clipping. Oftent he experience is the other way that the clippiung adds extra fear becasue it takes time and when you stressed never seems to go right...

Twisty - devious - deviant

The hips thing leads into thinking about how you feel the situation - rather than confronting the wall / rock you move alongside it - you align with the rock - side with the rock if you like. make friends with it - not always possible especially when fear looms....

Personality important in climbing - you can also se it in certain climbers repertoire of routes.]

Counter culture climber...

Respresentations of climbing / climbers. Pepsi max (adrenlin - pseudo adventure / club climber (boy scouts). I guess I feel these both dismiss the key concerens / values in feel climbing has (for me). Social and anti social, introspection, routine, risk, adventure, relationships, culture, history, aethetics, respectfulness.

The route as a text which can be read by climbing - but always having the potential of being unreadable if you fall of it.

Altitude related shift in civility

I liked the conversation of the cattle as they moved up from the valley into the alp they became less domesticated and more wild. - It's a brilliant poetic. and the herders too – ALTITUDE CHANGES CIVILITY – OR CHANGES THE CRAFT OF CIVILITY.

Functional aesthetics - meaning

I've written quite a bit before about the conscious, unconcious and self conscious movements. In performance art i've always had trouble accepting the effected gesture - I tend to dismiss it as pretentious twaddle. But climbing gave me a form of movement which performed fantastic aethetics without it being self conscious. Meaning is there -there's no "reason" to climb other than love of life. The movements often need to graceful but they are formed by the negotiation of a problem. In this sense they are like other movements - walking, runnning sitting - they are directly subject to the enactment of that moment of being. But I guess you could argue that dancing like down the disco, club or gig (that which doesn't claim "meaning" - ) also has this - it's more movement for life - than movement for meaning.

That's not to say that isn't meaning.....

Does climbing close down thinking? does it reorder cognitive priorities to those of just what's in front of you? is it an escape? - is it self indulgent?. is it a form of denial? does it remove life's complexities?

Wider view

Does being on top give you a better view? Actually my experience generally of climbing is that it's a narrow visual perspective - close up - peripheral sometimes but close up and granular. I guess there's that shift from close and far perspectives - as you get onto the top (in that clasic sense of climbing things with lofty tops...) but generally nose to the rock face. close up and pornographic!

Can complex, socio-political, world view, life, art, culture exist and be present in the climbing moment / movement? It certainly does in the wider span of what climbing involves - and of course climbing history is littered with fascist climbers and socialist climbers. Could they climb together and not have a problem with their activity? Does the activity ever exist as just thE activity?

I'd love to understand more of your compositional approaches - the idea of phrasing.

I'll re-investigate some moves and try to describe them (like the climb poems I've done) - maybe as drawings?? the poems kind of reduce it to just the movement described in shorthand. i wonder if there's a way of expanding (rather than reducing) it somehow?

I'm not sure why this is relevant but:

recently (since Leo was born) I've noticed that when doing something with leo or anna (changing nappies, nursing screaming infant, making baby bottles) I get flashbacks of periods, places and moments I've experienced before. It's quite interesting - a simple banal activity - probably coupled with a level of sleep deprivation and circumstantial stress - triggers a flashback. It's probably very obvious to anaylse and read (time and place when things were freer) but it’s fascinating non-the less. Climbing doesn’t do this to my experience - but I feel there's a button / door / trigger somewhere to unleash the life in the movement moment. or i feel there's a poetic possibility in exploring this. maybe that's the crunch the movement moment doesn't allow such mind wandering and so it is the whole world - but that’s pretty narcissistic isn't it?

thats not a good place to end but i will,

hope you enjoyed DV8

best wishes,

dan

SENSING. FEELING. DOING – OCT 2009

AFTER CLIMBING

22nd Oct 2009

Hi Dan,

thanks for today. For me it was fantastic... hope it wasn't too boring for you... Here below are some immediate musings.

Next meeting 17th November according to my diary. I'm going to try to find time to explore on the wee wall in derry... maybe find a dancing friend who wants to play too.

I'd like to spend some time in the dance studio with you... invite you a bit into my conceptual/practical/creative world... maybe that could turn out to be relevant... see how you deal-with / move-with some ideas...

All the best

Steve

…. Musings…. Post re-introduction to climbing up a wall 22^nd October 2009

FEAR

On the way down from derry I remembered that woman I saw fall….

I heard her voice murmuring, whining, pleading….. “het doet mir pijn”… it hurts…. That was after, probably two minutes after, the dull thud of her hitting the floor from 15/16 metres… enough of the shock had worn off… she was half-sitting, and half lying on crushed and crumpled legs and pelvis…. Then the blood started to spread across the floor….

… the car filled with a stress-sweat-fear and sorrow smell…

I thought I’d have a problem getting off the ground…

Like when I went to the wall in Moldova the first climb up was ok. Up and down … don’t think… just go…

Second time at three metres a burst… immediate, sudden, all over me… adrenaline… unfocussed mind… run away, run away, where is the “way out”… couldn’t control it at all… the feeling that if I wasn’t on the rope I would just let go and fall… because staying up there, holding on, balancing, working felt just too much… not too much in my muscles, too much for my soul, too much to stay there aware, remembering, imagining…

ATTENTION

Clipping on to the bolts was a relief. Having to pay attention to this balanced my attention to holding on to balancing to staying poised and efficient. My attention to these things was better when I had this other task… a practical attention… Like the details got clearer when my attention had to reach out to different things… like the way that peripheral vision becomes clearer when you focus the eye and the point of focus becomes clearer when you are aware of the peripheral visiion.

TURNING THE HIPS

This twist to get the pelvis in close to the wall has a sophistication potentially a sophistry, it is the beginning of Pantalones untrustworthyness, but also the potential for adaptability. It is a catholic pose not a protestant one (hah hah). Flat against the rock, walking up it this is “honest”, straightforward, vertical in its attention. A spiral is always horizontal. The flat version seems more like “pulling up” the twist is more like finding an indirect pathway which remains primarily horizontal but secretly weaves its way upwards… there is something fine about this form… This form looked very natural on Dan. The guys on the overhang were all shoulders and deltoids, trapezius, the gorilla approach, hanging and pulling, swinging… not so much walking. These states relate to levels 4 and 5 in the system of vertical space… they have such different chemistry’s, personalities, endocrine components… The breathing is different the eyes, the skin…

A ROUTE

A route with a name. Reification. A score for someone to play. A selection from all of the possibilities. The climb doesn’t exist except when it is being done… even then it is transitory, like a dance, not like a text or a sculpture, the name is text, it continues to exist, the climb disappears at the moment it appears… But the naming creates the possibility of history, of collecting a canon, of evaluating changing tastes and attitudes… Maybe on a crag with many “routes” what is offered are many ways to approach looking at the landscape of the crag… the impossibility of percieving everything leads to a desire to percieve something as a way towards the complete thing. But paradoxically as soon as something is named it also becomes a total thing which is impossible to contain in a direct fashion and so there is a desire to find a partial version of it through which to approach the whole…. And so on ad-infinitum…

… is there a poetics of route names… or many poetics… how do the names relate to the forms of the routes, the experience of climbing them… the conotations or the “facts”.

FUNCTION AND MEANING

I realise I don’t watch the other climbers in a very technical way. I watch their states and the way the states change. The state includes the mood, feeling, communication, intent, hopes, fears, intellectual engagement, tonus, functional tonus immediately relevant to the “move” but the tonus left over from before or anticipating the future or simply carried in from daily life, habits. Each “move” or “phrase” has its own character. A taste. Not just a form but a musicality. . . a meaning, a resonance. The composition of the climb is the movement through these changing resonances… skill assists this… but somehow functional language can’t describe the climb. The task is senseless as a functional task…. I don’t have a “reason” to go up… so what “sense” does it make? I am drawn back to climb because the action takes me to visit states of body/mind/mood/resonance which are unavailable without external challenge but which are not arbitrary. The rock…. Or wall has a form the “sense” of which demands to be discovered/created. The sense is also in the time composition…. That is the frustration with not finishing a climb or climbing without a sense of rhythm or time or phrasing. It is like the “sense” of the object has not been respected.

PHRASING, VERTICAL SPACE, HORIZONTAL SPACE

I have a well developed theoretical and practical approach to these. I’d like to introduce them in the studio to Dan. I’m not sure what and how they relate to the processes of climbing but there is something there.

SENSING. FEELING. DOING

Compositional/interpretative minds. How do these apply to the climbing process.

What was that phrase Dan used as he got out of the bus on the ormeau road?