Blog 9 July - Looking up with your eyes closed………

Reflections on the June sharing event at University of Northampton.

I was sharing process not practice.

I was exploring how I could take elements from the process and the development of the practice and re-configure them in a practice as research context. How could I share and allude to: traces, documents, documentation and its accompanying technologies whilst activating spectator-performer configurations, through the everyday and the performative?

What is the (right) frame that allows for the sharing of such a reflexive space-time?

This process is different from but intrinsic to my practice.

The everyday within the performative: placing the age-old, everyday sewing (feminine presence) of the huge B&W prints “a reference to books and knowledge” (Vida Midgelow) alongside the everyday modern laptop on the nest of wooden, front room, tables. The domestic alongside and within the theatrical. Daily (yoga) practice helps me sit still alongside the documents and traces of the performative. I sit quietly as the spectators are moving in relation to each other, to me, to the monitors.

Key (self) reflections;

I am exploring stillness through multi-modal avenues.

For me, it was/is a big personal risk putting myself in the sharing.

I wanted to create an exploratory dissemination space that gave/elicited choice. I was interested in the setting up of, the creation of a space that invoked or invited calmness.

Key Questions;

Is quietness a pre-requisite for stillness?

Is sound a pre-requisite for silence?

It is all relational.

The ‘outside’ world is always forcing its way in.

The inter-relationship between silence and stillness (sound and image) amongst and alongside the action (of spectators-performers) and their quietness (sometimes stillness).

It was all so busy – all those parts of the process co-existing. Images and sounds spilling over – border-less, akin to the process. The multiplicity of images – creating their own stillness, pointing to still-ing and yet a single repeated image (the small boy) was/is the closest thing for me and others to finding stillness.