Still I can’t get it out of my mind what a discrepancy there is between ideas and living. A permanent dislocation, though we try to cover the two with a bright awning. And it won’t go. Ideas have to be wedded to action; if there is no sex, no vitality in them, there is no action. Ideas cannot exist alone in the vacuum of the mind. Ideas are related to living: liver ideas, kidney ideas, interstitial ideas, etc. … The aesthetics of the idea breeds flowerpots and flowerpots you put on the window sill. But if there be no rain or sun of what use putting flowerpots outside the window? 1
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This is an attempt to map out a series of events that take place in form of an intellectual effort as a part of a performative practice in making. The working title of the practice is Behind the Sun as it continues the research of the Behind the Sun – ology.
The practitioners are Lisa Raeder and Pavle Heidler.
A core outline of what this will become is an attempt at articulating what is the process (one) of materialisation (two) of fiction (three).
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one
Recent thoughts include a notion which re-formulates how we could understand the mind body split and claims that it is not that the brain helps you perceive the world – the brain literally IS your perception of the world. Which is different from how Descartes described it when he said I think there for I am – which anchors I in thinking and denies I in materiality of being. Imagine that your brain is actually responsible for creating the paradoxical feeling in the first place. Imagine that it organises the thinking feedback in a way that makes you believe (?) and/or articulate that I and the brain are not one and the same thing.
What strikes me is that thinking “I is my brain” does not deny our ability to separate one from the other. In fact, juggling the two ways of understanding how I relates to my brain allows for more detail in thinking perception (when either is, through movement, rooted in the body). Perception becomes a multiple in ways of organising perceived sensorial information as they are simultaneously made conscious by the I and by the brain.
Thinking that I has a tendency to see things through a frame as made subjective by the individual (putting at stake what is potentially more of an emotional and spiritual quality), while the brain has the ability to objectify information perceived and categorise it according to studied principles which are shared (putting at stake a more intellectual quality of processed information).
This would make up for the basics upon which I establish the thinking body part of the practice in making.
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two
Now that the thinking has been organised – next question in line is – what is the movement that is being created in the actual body?
First impact of this question reflects back onto the thinking process and decides upon the body of interest the thinking is to be focused on.2 Once that has been decided, while moving, two processes are simultaneously taking place.
First process is internal, the thinking body. Perceived information is being collected, analysed then articulated by the practitioner according to the described standards. Second is visual perception of created movement – a process external to the practitioner, a process performed either by an outside eye (a fellow practitioner, person in charge, etc) or a recording device (a camera of some kind).
The external visual information is to be compared to the chosen internal process. What is the movement that is being created?, which comes as a simplification of the question – How is thinking movement being materialised into a physical environment? As well as – How is the physical environment making visible the thinking process that takes place? It continues: Is the articulated physical material to be the material of a performance – and if so, what would be its appropriate frame and why; or is it to be a quality that will be used in a context – and if so, what was first, context or quality?
The described internal process, in this environment, gave birth to an interesting byproduct. It allowed for recognition of two ways of thinking movement in a performative setting – one of which is projected body and another that of perceived body. Both are a matter of a particular focus towards what is the material produced by the practitioner – as it is being produced.
Perceived body organises acknowledged perceptual information that is being materialised through movement while comparing the feeling of what is sensed to its potential physical result that could be read into, projected upon by a spectator. Simply put, the practitioner is comparing a feeling, its connection and impact on the movement as it materialises AND what that physical detail might look like to the watcher.
Projected body is performing the mechanics, as described for perceived body, only with a different focus. Doing projected body practitioner has in mind what he or she wants projected and is, upon experience, trying to provoke the feeling that would be responsible for the impact on movement as it materialises – which will, as a result, look remarkably like its original intention.
In this context remarkably becomes an important point. The effort put into making of projected body provokes the practitioner to work exclusively with the current state of his or hers perceived physical reality which has an impact on the relationship between the idea of what is to be projected and the mechanics of materialisation that anchors the action in real time. Anchoring that removes one from representing the idea immediately through what it looks like into articulating the process of materialisation of imagined into physical, idea through movement into meaning, I to brain to body.
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three
The last body is the imagined body. The imagined body is a fictional environment. It is one that should be observed and studied as well as it should be a place of inspiration, a place of paradox, a place that makes everything easy complicated, and everything complicated easy, a body that provokes as much as it embodies (confirms).
The imagined body is everything opposite to the actual body, and it is its source!
meaning
Everything about the actual body, which is in its physicality already material, and is the embodiment of the brain and the embodiment of the I – is a product of what has been made possible by imagination – an immaterial environment responsible for all the processes needed to perform any of the previously described ways of relating to thinking the process of materialisation of fiction.
Imagined body can thus reflect and frame both of the previously described stages of observing the processes of exchange of information, be them sensorial, visual, intellectual or material. Framing makes possible extraction of specific information of how each of the practitioners deals with the given methods. The information can then be cross-compared. The results of which can be specs of knowledge that leave one with a trace upon he or she can continue building.
The important quality of the attained knowledge is its inability to offer an insight into any truth that is larger than the practitioners own objectified subjective articulation of an experienced – experience. Which enables “them” to, through the action of agreement, create temporary truths, which are contingent by principle (since they are based on multiple immaterial, imagined factors).
This makes almost impossible the creation of – norm – upon which a group becomes rooted not because they chose it but because they took it for granted.
The imagined body is then to provide for instability upon which an effort can create a sustainable environment that is specific to any given constellation of detail and as such exists – and then doesn’t.
Pavle Heidler, PAF, Nov 4, 2012
1 Henry Miller, quote taken from Tropic of Cancer
2 This is to be a matter of creating an exercise or can be articulated in a performance environment, etc. – depending on the context this principle is being used for.
pavleheidler 