Weeks 3 and 4

Liz Atkin, 27 August 2008

Interlude...then practice

When I arrived today, Liz had created a beautiful wall sculpture-tree limbs, branches and tiny twigs leaning against it, lined up from tallest to smallest, with 3 fat sized limbs standing stoic like soldiers against the adjacent wall. She used a cliplight to spot the main wall of propped sticks which cast incredible shadows that were so expressive. She had also left long skeins of string and globs of tape, that earlier had been used to wrap her body with. They were discarded on the floor in random heaps. Together we unraveled and rewound the string into balls, sharing this communal act. I asked her if she would leave the branches leaning against the wall. The environment she had created, the play of light and shadow, the architecture and texture of the branches was so inviting, that I wanted to film them and play with them also. Shortly after Liz left the studio, I set up the camera and began my practice for the day.

Reading from Deborah Hay's book, My Body,the Buddhist, I read aloud an excerpt from the first chapter titled, "my body benefits in solitude", and taking the lead from her words, entered into the space and lied down on the floor to "play dead" in the corpse pose. Behind me, as backdrop, the brilliant wall of leaning shadow branches in silhouette shone. I listened attentively to my body's lead and moved with as much awareness as was momentary. Sometimes I would utter spontaneous phrases and words, that connected with what my body was doing or observing. When I picked up a tiny fluff of lint from the floor, and regarded it with interest, I spoke the words, "a strand of dna". As I lay on my back and looked at the grid of the ceiling beams I waved my arms in a gesture of invisibly stroking the ceiling and with sudden recognition the words, "caressing my friend" came out of my mouth. Eventually, the branches were disturbed by my movement, and a quizical motif developed while I placed one branch on my knee to balance, another on my shoulder, and finally several on top of my head. Strutting, squatting, stealthily moving towards and away from the camera, an odd bonnet of branches balanced on my head and shoulders felt like antlers or a Medusa's crown of snakes. My movement meditation/exploration spun on and came to its natural pause, just as the film from my tape ran out. With the clarity of synchronicities that have so often occured during these weeks of Genesis, I returned to Deborah Hay's book, opening the page, and resting my eyes on these words..."Wherever I am, the dance is." Cheryl

A selection of practice from the first few weeks

Liz Atkin, 20 Aug 2008

emotion potion

I'm used to having a studio. So in some ways I didn't think that having these 3 hour blocks was going to translate very well. I thought I would feel rushed, maybe unproductive. Some days I do. And that's fine. I just have to let it go and trust the entire process. Yesterday I had this incredible moment where I realized that I've learned so much about my relationship to the studio and what place it holds in making art for me. Because of the time blocks being shorter than what I'm used to, I have to make disciplined use of the space. And more than ever, I've realized these threads that flow from this space and what I'm doing here out into the world that I inhabit when I leave. I've started ice skating a couple days a week and the direct relationship to being in here working on whatever junk I'm working on to the movement that I'm doing on ice and the awareness of my body is profound. I was a serious figure skater and quit around the age of 15. I'm 28 now and to go back into this activity that at one point of my life defined me entirely and that I struggled with so much, is profound. Obviously I ice skated at first because I loved it. But in the end I hated it, and I felt incredible amounts of guilt for quitting something that my parents had invested time and money into. So now to go back with my own time and money and my body that harbors an intense double dutch aftermath of fucked up knee, pulls me into this almost high, completely aware state of mind. And my knee doesn't hurt when I skate. I cannot figure out what that's about. is it psycho-somatic, am i using my knee in a good way on ice? anyway, in sea and space, my time is used completely differently from on the ice. I don't do a lot of movement in here, and instead workshop my time. I'm building costumes, planning sets, scripting out this project that I want to do with Cheryl and Hana. Everyday the project changes and tells me something new. It's like everyday my brain is doing flips inside my head and one day i'm looking this way and the next everything appears upside down. i feel like i've been knocked over in a way. Like my life this month is full up of love. I don't know how to write this without sounding cheeseball-heavenish but it is. and that's that. in the space, i'm having less pull-my-hair out moments and many more moments of- 'oh shit. this is exactly what I want to be doing.' and then I go ice skating, and I feel like I've been on this long journey to find what makes me feel grounded and it's in taking my feet off the ground. and there it is. I've defined my studio practice, my process if you will: and it's back to where I started.

Alison

After Thoughts, Before Noon

Having not commented for a week, it was good to catch up with the new postings from this weekend and feel the intensity of our investigations...working out the logistics, listening and receiving, touching base with the week's happenings and feeling our hearts touching as well, as we circled up to share in the soup of our sea and space. Last night I couldn't sleep thinking about what I would like to explore this week in the gallery/studio. Traces of our sharings from the week filtered back into my recollection and I was reinvigorated, thrilled, surprised and inspired by all that has already transpired...covering the space completely in white, pulling out everything in the room that's white and placing it in the space; covering the floor in white cloth, plastic, paper, tables, like giving the room a "whitewash"! Taking out "the heart of the floor", by removing the center 8 floor tile/squares and descending into the well of exposed concrete below, to pound out intricate rhythms with shoes and bare feet; casting light and shadows on the walls; in duet, shadow, light, darkness and ancient Mayan myths burn their images through the dreamtime of choreography and art play. Clothes tossed off and bare skin imprinting the floor, lapping up the textured grid that marks the floor, from slick sweat steaming off bodies; "in the moment" shifts, down river skating and fishing for the "fruit of the sea and space". Measured ropes wrapped and tied to heart strings and running limbs repeatedly circling the square room; hands, hips, bellies and breats pressing against and pushing back from the walls and floor, while harlequin-themed curtains demarcate the separation of time and space between the urban cacophony of sirens, wheels of cars and trucks churning, passers-by passing, from the silent order that throbs on the other side of that curtained window, "practicing" each day how to roam and play.

Yesterday I bought some colored sand, ribbons, feathers and stones to play with. I find myself wanting to design and craft objects, representations of my journey and explorations this month. I want to leave landmarks and chart maps...or is it just following the impulse to make and do something, while at the same time not being attached to the idea that I have to make or do something in order for it to have value? But why struggle, I ask myself? Just enjoy this interplay of disciplines and ways of knowing. My body is the medium and the actualizer, so there's no need to alienate myself. The promise of a new week approaches and some collaboration is also anticipated. Cheryl

washing the floor, again

Holy shit, shista, cow, dog, curtains! What a day, what a day. I am so beat. and feel pretty raw and on the verge of tears. Sara Wolf was supposed to be with us today leading a workshop in writing about one's work. I opted to try to lead something in lieu of Sara since she threw her back out. But it turned out to be mighty serendipitous not to have the structure of the workshop today. There was so much sharing, digesting, logistical working out to do, and space cleaning and rearranging to manage. We were there till nearly 6 with no time wasted. I am bumbling along with the role as director, facilitator, getter of stuff, logistics negotiator, and ultimately fellow artist, questioning and examining my own practices and products. I have several self-conscious regrets about how I operated in these many roles today, not wanting to impart my priorities, revelations, interests and questions onto the others' practices. Next week I intend to listen even more. Though I did thoroughly listen today as we went around and each artist shared some of what the experience of the week was like.

I am truly impressed by the "inter-disciplinary" nature of this space we are creating. Everyone seems to be moving fluidly between movement, crafting, drawing, photographing, meditating, sleeping, chanting, writing, responding to what they are needing as they face their practice and themselves, alone in the room. I was so deeply moved listening to everyone's experiences from the week, holding back tears many times as I imagined Cheryl chanting and initiating the space, Alison sleeping on the floor, Liz crunched up in the bathroom washing paint from her naked body, Brooke tied to different parts of the room assessing her "value" her strength in relation to walls, beams, and Cesar sitting for 90 minutes staring at a fire in the center of the room. I know now that creating the space for this project is deeply meaningful to me. It is something I want and need to offer others and it is invaluable in helping me understand the nature of experimentation, practice, process, failure (though all these words are feeling trite, overused, and inadequate to describe the honesty, risk, political radicalism, and unglamorous ugliness of the event.

These walls are holding brilliance for hours and hours each day and I could feel it the moment I walked in the room.

Logistically: We are dealing with issues of privacy, time slots, heat, organization of the space, the ability to black out the space and work with light, and definitely with collaboration (more seems needed/wanted, yet the nature of how to make it happen and if we have enough time for it in this short month, is unclear). We've extended some slots, added late night slots, and are generally putting the whole schedule on the table for revision. The artists will work out with one another more or less overlap time between their slots and even potential collaborations. Next week we will need another 3 hours for check in and logistical issues though we may do that somewhere else (Huntington Gardens possibly) before going on a field trip?

peaches and cream harlequin curtains

It's friday night and i'm taking my first down time of the week. I'm exhausted. Requesting the early morning slots seemed like a good idea and will be i'm sure, as soon as my body adjusts. I've been on the go, having just relocated to L.A., looking for a place to live, and also assistant-editing a documentary. That's my time outside of Genesis. Yesterday while in the gallery, I left to go to my car and get my sexist 'do-it-herself' kit and was amazed at how loud and abrasive the street was, and how quiet, comfortable, and welcoming the space was when I walked back in. My time has been mountainous ups and downs during this first week, and I've been really trying to listen to what Genesis has in store for me. Cheryl's poem-writing exercise kick started my week. She led us through such a powerful exercise of reaching back into the past to acknowledge what and where it is we come from, what we bring with us and how we're drawing from ourselves-all the self-perceived good and bad, the struggles and self-doubt and the malleability of ourselves to other whole struggling people that bring all their stuff here also. What does it mean really to enter into a structured month long residency, expel our own expectations, and also honor our limitations and desires at the same time? If we are to be in conversation with all these sometimes conflicting elements, can we be quiet enough to hear it, get comfortable, and just drop it all and dance hard? It's interesting that while dancing and ice skating and jump roping and all these really physical things are a part of my studio practice already, I really have considered myself a visual artist mostly. and yet the most consistent part of my studio has been dancing. like by that I mean breaking it down, busting a move, some heavy hard escapist gyrating. ALONE!!! and now here I am perplexed the most by the role of collaboration in where I am at this present art epoch of my life. The 15 minute overlap doesn't really allow for much collaboration, but I'm also terrified of those 15 minutes and my instincts say 'clean up and ship out'. However, collaboration, community, conversation have all been important to my thought process about art from my developmental get-go, but putting it into action is really challenging for me. I led a double dutch workshop last week for the first day workshops and tackled it like it was some dude coming at me about to knock me out. I can offer a formula to 'get' double dutch. But that is soooo not the point. I forgot that joy in jump-roping in some weird unconscious moment of feeling pressed for time to 'teach' double dutch. It is so not mine to teach. That's what I learned this week way way after the fact.

A few highlights:
1) I spooned with my dog today on the romper room minimalist grey conceptual grid floor.
2) I have been madly, deeply, fellatiously inspired by those peaches and cream harlequin curtains. So much so that I have some serious ideas about what I'd like to attempt in the space during this month...it involves the artist formerly known as Prince.
3) Likewise, I'm really into those beautiful beams up on the ceiling housing our fairy light friends.
4) I have been inspired by some of the materials in the space and am making a head-dress.
5) I really like coming in and inspecting the remains of people's work. We leave these slight shadows in there that hint at what we're up to. It's like being in a strange hearing-impaired conversation and really digging it.
ALISON

Thoughts on our first Gathering

Genesis officially began yesterday, it was a rough start, I spent most of the early morning in the emergency room due to a kidney stone, thankfully it was nothing too major. I was physically exhausted, still in a bit of pain, but all that changed when I got to the space and was greeted with warm hugs from the amazing group that I will be working with. Such a simple gesture, a hug, yet it reminded me of how much I miss engaging with other individuals. My own practice has suffered so much, I was used to engaging in daily explorations with movement, striving each day to achieve the moment when I lost consciousness about my body and its restrictions and allowed for its movement to guide me, to become a language to communicate with, a vehicle to supersede my physical and mental barriers, but lately, I've been feeling more mute and barricaded than I ever have before. Today, I was reminded that's not the way it has to be.

We began with a delicious lunch that Hana prepared for us, and jumped straight into the artist-led "workshops." Hana and I worked together and decided to go first with some exercises developed by Guillermo Gomez-Pena and La Pocha Nostra. I decided to select the "Walk in the Darkness" exercise since I thought it was a good way to explore and familiarize ourselves with the space using our bodies. It never seizes to amaze me how much we can learn from our own movement, without our other senses, simply isolating our movement and reacting to the space that molds and shapes it. Hana decided to lead us in the specimen/ethnographer exercise. I thought about doing that one, but the intensity and the sensitivity of the exercise discouraged me. I'm glad Hana selected this exercise, it was uncomfortable for me, and threw me completely off balance, but I needed that. To feel comfortable in my own skin, to intimately explore the body of another, to have shifting levels of comfort, an acute awareness of my socially created identity, to enter a trance-like state, guided by the syncopated breaths and heart beats of five bodies in dangerous proximity. It was painfully comfortable. This was when it all made sense for me during the day, when I lost myself even for those few minutes and jumped into the unknown of experimentation. Alison then gave us a crash course of double dutch, brought back a lot of childhood memories, not all good, but it brought them back regardless. Also reminded me of how rusty I am....I can only imagine what it would've been to play a game of handball. Maybe we should. Brooke taught us how to tie a knot between two pieces of rope so that they could hold up anything....I think I'd fall off the cliff before I could tie the rope...I didn't realize how much coordination it took. Liz led us through a very amazing exercise of cleansing the space. We all washed the floor of the space as a collective. A quiet, yet powerful activity. Ritual-like, like burning copal the way the elders do before a dance circle. The last activity of our gathering left me thoughtful for the rest of the day, unsure, and unsettled. Cheryl made us close our eyes and call upon our childhood memory. Our first home, our memories of people that shaped our childhood, tastes we remembered, things we heard. Sharpening our senses and forcing them to return to a different time in our lives. We then wrote a poem about those memories, I couldn't share with the group. The memories I had were all pleasant, I have been blessed with an amazing family, however, I realize how far away from those memories I have pushed myself away from. Although I have a very grounded home, I am not grounded, and that was the most difficult thing to be reminded of. To realize that it is me that's in a state of transition, with so many insecurities, unknowns, and paths that I have yet to build courage to travel. That is how the day ended for me, with a consciousness of flux. Feeling like I'm floating, like I have yet to find my center. To reconnect with my own practice, To find comfort in instability and change. To feel grounded in transition, to accept and embrace my personal unknowns and build the courage to experiment through them. That is what I hope to do.

There's an old saying that says that a human being would much rather face its greatest enemy on a battlefield than their own thoughts. I start Genesis with this in mind. I take down my armor, and I get ready to face myself.

-Cesar

August 3, 2008 Reflections on a day of combusion/spontaneous and organized

Hello Genesis-ers,

This is my second effort to post...the first somehow was lost and I probably won't be able to recall all of my thoughts from the day. So...trying to shake off the frustration of having lost what was written and having to begin fresh, I'll just say what a great day it was to spend with you all today! We were all like worker bees, unloading the cars, laying down our "romper room" puzzle floor atop the concrete, and situating other "stuff" into our new Genesis home space. The gallery, Sea and Space Explorations is a welcoming room with big storefront windows and heavy checkered curtains. We discovered that the floor has a slight rake ( sloping downward on a slant) one of the unique qualities of the room. There is also a crown of "fairy lights" (better known as holiday or Xmas lights), draping over the exposed wooden ceiling beams. Liz introduced us to this delightful UK expression. Some of the highpoints of the day for me were the wonderful meal we shared, prepared with obvious love by Hana. Thanks Hana! The way that we all bonded so immediately, diving right in...the moments of laughter, giggles and thoughtful exchanges. I loved the ritual cleansing of the space, washing the floor which was done with simplicity and purpose. It reminded me of the Buddhist saying, "carry water, chop wood"...just doing some simple task with attention and presence. Thanks Liz for offering that today.

May the week be full of exciting and soulful exploration as we launch into our independence. I look forward to touching base with you all during our transitions in the space, through our writings and our communal gatherings. Cheryl

Day 1

Today we gathered to set up our work space at Sea and Space and talk logistics, and to lead one another in short "workshops." It was bliss to see and be with these amazing people today. The last few weeks of dealing with logistics attached to the abstract notion of this residency has been lonely and sometimes quite unfulfilling. When we all met this morning everything I have been doing for the last year to bring this thing together felt purposeful and simply fun and joyful. I have missed a sense of group. And this is clearly an amazing one.

Cesar and I tag-teamed on Guillermo Gomez Pena/La Pocha Nostra exercises. Cesar led us in walking in a circle in step with one another for five minutes and then moving through the space in relative darkness while blindfolded, exploring the space first by walking and touching and then with the whole body: five bodies moving about tentatively at first and then with curiosity and determination, Alison hangs clothing by the hangers from her arms and moves around the space, Liz and Brooke tugging on opposite ends of a dress, giggles erupting here and there, rolls, crawls, sliding on backs, leaning into walls, Brooke crumpled over a box of plastic wrap, Cheryl and Alison embracing in the center of the room. I was elated watching from the outside, realizing how much I miss the explorations of the body, consciousness, touch, movement that were daily in my life for so long. I then led the ethnographer/specimen exercise from La Pocha Nostra. Different levels of comfort. Some more at ease as ethnographer, some as specimen, the self-consciousness of being seen from far, from close up. Cesar remarked on his awareness and discomfort with being the only male. Smelling one another and touching an ear or hair as a lover would. Looking closely at skin, touching sweaty armpits. Placing the three specimens in relationship to one another to finish. Alison taught us double dutch, or at least attempted. It seems like surfing. You spend a long time just waiting to get up, or in this case get in. Cheryl claimed to be rusty but was the only to get in even for a second. We talked about having some double dutch time each saturday. I want to. I am determined. Felt a present focus in trying and watching others trying that could have stayed with me for many hours. Brooke sat us in a circle and taught us to tie a sturdy knot between two lines. We made a circle of knotted rope portions. Alison said it felt like camp. Liz led us in a quiet ritual of washing the floor as a group, squatting, crawling in a line across the space. Cheryl led a writing exercise of creating a poem based on ideas of home, each sentence starting with "I am From." It brought up a lot of darkness and difficulty for many it seemed, though there was much honesty about the how and why of that in sharing afterwards. It was perhaps a bit of an unexpectedly hard way to finish the day and I wished we could have washed the floor again afterwards. Cheryl shared her impetus for leading that particular exercise: each of the artists is about the enter into the unknown of the month, the time, the space, this particular structure, and she imagined: perhaps it is good to take a moment to acknowledge where we come from in terms of background and childhood, but also what we, as grown individuals, value so deeply that it gives us a sense of home, from which we will start the month.