***this page is in progress***
thanks for taking a peek
Photo by Marie France Forcier at the Oil Tank Culture Park in Seoul (Korea) on a site visit as we looked for locations for the experience we are creating with in-between space lab.
November 15, 2023
[on reflection]
After three weeks in Asia, two in a Taiwanese cultural exchange and one in a practice and creation residency in Seoul, I could fill this reflection with thoughts on teaching abroad (and translation) or performing in a space that left no margin for error, or create a photos collage of suspended moments, or stories of people who have left a lasting impact. Instead of reflecting on these strong reference points which are as (in)concrete as a memory can be, I want to focus in on the actual process of reflection – and how individual a process it is.
Reflection came naturally to me in my 20s and as opportunities, work, and commitments increased, it became harder to intentionally carve out time for more than recognizing what had happened and preparing for what was to happen next. The best time for any kind of thinking has ironically been in transit – driving or cycling or sitting on a train watching the world whiz by – my body going somewhere as my mind stilled to look back.
In the in-between space lab, these ideas converge in a practice that allows me to see where I am/was slowly, moving uncertainly into space I must enter with care, listening without habitual tools that allow me to pass more and more quickly through my existence. Walking backward. Experiencing what I can’t see coming. Opening up perspective. Trusting myself. Redefining a relationship with time.
I’m writing this at 5 in the morning, it’s dark outside, and the sound of silence allows me to hear each keystroke on the laptop. I feel the space around me. In this moment, obligations, the pressure of deadlines, expectations, the cost of living, and matters of health, family, and life, are also suspended. This is like the moment on stage alone when something else can take over.
This pocket of time is probably thanks to my body being in between time zones - one benefit of overseas travel, of the aftermath of passing between locations of experience. Post-drift, a catching up with yourself. That is reflection – not just looking back, but meeting up with yourself in your future. So here is a gathering of thoughts, discoveries, recurrent realizations, or confirmations, that came from these last weeks in Taichung, Taitung, Kaohsiung, Chiayi, Taipei, Seoul, and all the airports, roads, and passageways in between.
Movement is the physical process of contemplation.
Feeling can be knowing. Much of the time you can’t really know but must read the moment with the tools you have. You must trust those tools.
Synchronicities happen when you are not searching.
When someone needs to hold your hands, you let them do it as long as they need.
Sometimes you can only experience what you want to experience, but sometimes you do experience what you need to in a particular moment.
There is a natural drift that happens. Let it.
Feeling pressure may increase resolve or drive; it may also blur reason, and sensitivity, and undermine listening*
The impossibility of predicting when/if things will make sense. Being there when they do.
I keep thinking about how to create space and/in work that doesn’t take for granted our differences but makes space for each person – where they are and with what they bring. How to make without perpetuating binary thinking, instead where success and failure always co-exist dependent on perspective, a space where complexity lives, where there is the possibility to stretch and hold time enough to share experiences that will only ever make sense later.
*the use of listening isn’t related to hearing, but to how, through all senses, we give/pay attention to ourselves and the world we exist within.
Reflection came naturally to me in my 20s and as opportunities, work, and commitments increased, it became harder to intentionally carve out time for more than recognizing what had happened and preparing for what was to happen next. The best time for any kind of thinking has ironically been in transit – driving or cycling or sitting on a train watching the world whiz by – my body going somewhere as my mind stilled to look back.
In the in-between space lab, these ideas converge in a practice that allows me to see where I am/was slowly, moving uncertainly into space I must enter with care, listening without habitual tools that allow me to pass more and more quickly through my existence. Walking backward. Experiencing what I can’t see coming. Opening up perspective. Trusting myself. Redefining a relationship with time.
I’m writing this at 5 in the morning, it’s dark outside, and the sound of silence allows me to hear each keystroke on the laptop. I feel the space around me. In this moment, obligations, the pressure of deadlines, expectations, the cost of living, and matters of health, family, and life, are also suspended. This is like the moment on stage alone when something else can take over.
This pocket of time is probably thanks to my body being in between time zones - one benefit of overseas travel, of the aftermath of passing between locations of experience. Post-drift, a catching up with yourself. That is reflection – not just looking back, but meeting up with yourself in your future. So here is a gathering of thoughts, discoveries, recurrent realizations, or confirmations, that came from these last weeks in Taichung, Taitung, Kaohsiung, Chiayi, Taipei, Seoul, and all the airports, roads, and passageways in between.
Movement is the physical process of contemplation.
Feeling can be knowing. Much of the time you can’t really know but must read the moment with the tools you have. You must trust those tools.
Synchronicities happen when you are not searching.
When someone needs to hold your hands, you let them do it as long as they need.
Sometimes you can only experience what you want to experience, but sometimes you do experience what you need to in a particular moment.
There is a natural drift that happens. Let it.
Feeling pressure may increase resolve or drive; it may also blur reason, and sensitivity, and undermine listening*
The impossibility of predicting when/if things will make sense. Being there when they do.
I keep thinking about how to create space and/in work that doesn’t take for granted our differences but makes space for each person – where they are and with what they bring. How to make without perpetuating binary thinking, instead where success and failure always co-exist dependent on perspective, a space where complexity lives, where there is the possibility to stretch and hold time enough to share experiences that will only ever make sense later.
*the use of listening isn’t related to hearing, but to how, through all senses, we give/pay attention to ourselves and the world we exist within.
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October 18, 2023
This page is dedicated to all things being in progress. It is being implemented not only to connect and share more with you who is inclined to read but also to keep me accountable to research and reflection, to keeping art practice and making at the heart of adelheid.
Over the last year, adelheid did a company revisioning with a thought to what might be ahead in the sector, and I completed an MFA in practice-based research. Maybe not unsurprisingly, I ended up where I began, wanting adelheid to be a home for process, interaction, collaboration/exchange (now local and international) and building experiences that might shift individual or collective ways of thinking. Our work has some complexity and I hope that means that you can take it at face value or go deeper to find more. adelheid needs to offer the possibility of growth for all those who engage with it, including me.
I’m uncertain what this page will contain in the future but for now I'm starting off with a bit of writing toward the presentation of the solo between me and you at FIBA in 2024:
As a female choreographer, my interest in creating performance work has grown through an interest in understanding, and sharing understandings of, human behaviour – what influences it, how it shifts, and what happens through stress or celebration. It is the constant balancing of mind and body that sustains my curiosity as a creator and performer. Observing and interacting with people, deciphering how perception is influenced by environment, perspective, and context is particularly important in this moment of social reckoning, and as we move through pandemic recovery addressing neurodiversity and mental health not only within creation practice but within the subject matter of work being made. Caring for the well-being of those who interact with a performance, from collaborator/performer to audience member, sets up an experience that can open us to learning more about ourselves. I make performance that deeply considers the experience of audiences; the solo work between me and you does this through engaging in dialogue that exposes vulnerabilities while also requiring assistance from the audience. How we can be better responsible for each other, how we listen, and how we create community and relationship are all fundamental aspects of the kind of interactive, ambulatory and immersive work I make. I believe that the exercise of being gathered together temporarily to witness or participate in performance can be a social experiment, a site for learning, and a powerful opportunity to allow for healing and repair – independently and collectively.
Thanks for being here with me. Over and out.
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