Day Three

Day three: silences/waits/(in)visibility
I collect the written forms of things to hide. We exchange them and save for later.
As we leave the studio you’ll receive a bag of transparent balloons. Find places of visual silence. What is lacking there? Mark them with blown balloons. How does the city manifest itself in the void?


1. Develop strategies to make someone wait.
2. Look for a person in silence within the public space. Collect a series of gestures and postures of diverse persons in silence. What are the qualities that a body silence impinges in the space? Is the lack of sound always a body in silence? (in terms of physical qualities)
3. Find spots where we can hide the things to hide. How do other react as they see you hiding? What are the strategies you employ? (digging, burning, carving. throwing et)

Day Two

Day two: bridges/borders/fences

As we leave the studio each one receive two threads of different colors. We walk and observe
List things that divide and Things that connect, marking each one of them with a different color.

When we arrive at the zone of action
In areas of flow, which are the things that mark a separation, a division? Are they always visible or a physical landmark?
How do actions (practices) distingue and fragment this zone?

1. Choose two things that are close to each other, but separated, disconnected.
Can you connect them using only your body/presence?
Can the objects you brought with you help with this task?

2. What are the elements that demarcate areas and division of actions?

Today again I intend to work in duos- one performs, the other observes.
When we come together we talk about the successes and difficulties on becoming bridges and fences.

Day One Part II and III

day one: scales/bodies/heights

As we leave the studio and walk towards the first region distribute a sheet with columns:
Things to fold
Things to collect
Things underneath
Things above
Things remembered

Participants should work with this lexicon and list from observing around.
Once we arrive at the region I ask the participants to hand in the list. (will lead into next day activity)

Participants are asked to walk around individually and choose sites of extreme scales: where bodies (their own and of the passers by) feel and/or look:
The biggest
The coldest
The warmest
The loneliest
The …

Potentially to be done in couples.
Than Pick 3 or 4 of the explored sites and experiment first reinforcing the adjectives, through physical or object placing.
Build up a sequence going from one to the next (up to four).
Same working with opposition. What can you do to oppose that characteristic?

For part III:
As we worked in couples, each one of the participants shares with the large group the sequence of the other.
The observers can be distributed in diverse heights and distances to watch the performing body.

Discuss:
Which are the architectural elements that provoke that framing?
How do the bodies of the observer alter the action? (closeness, angle etc)

Each one of the participants picks one sheet of the lexicon to bring home.
On their way to the hotel and throughout next day they have to choose one element from each of the columns and bring an object to our next day meeting.

On PART I

Part I:
I understand the technique as tool for bulding up a structure, a system that will establish the conditions through which one will inhabit the body, in the first place, and the city, secondarily.
My feeling is to work with a sequence of physical warm ups in a cumulative structure within the three days and to focus on some elements we will want to bring to the regions.
Sara, this may be something the two of us can put together on the 23rd eve?
For sure they should be Simple and encompass elements that may help us to observe and interfere in the experience off the city, most specifically open up a physical availability. It is like experience walking within ones own body.
Start sited, do shoulders, articulatory acknowledgment-
Aim for a focus on presence- the space the body occupies-
the simplicity of streching - going up and down pulling the feets to the ground. weight and counter weight.
Duration-I am thinking about Cunningham and how he states that the choreographic phrase is held on relations of duration, and not on musical rhythm- and how duration is essential for meaning and conceiving of a city.
Find the moments of suspension without blocking the flow of the movement (action/reaction).
I have some sequence of arms rotations with leg stretching that I really like.
After basic body warm ups we should build on this as the moment of the private- when the city expresses itself within the private- the personal, the secret, the expectations, the memories.

I suggest that when we leave we should already leave within a proposition- we don’t loose time getting to the site, but the moment of dislocation is already carefully planned as a task.
Only when we get to the zone of the day we’d than split into the couples for the official Part II exercises.

In relation to Augusto Boal’s exercise I’ve mentioned, he usually works with memory spaces, but we can play with the memories (and preconceptions) of Zagreb.

Another possibility is to exchange the maps we all arrived with- so, each one would have to go for a walk following the other's notes and maps to be guided.
exchange of instructions—but risk to get lost.

A pallette of movement/physical actions (to be added to)

head/name game (moving closer to each other)

brush and rub down (partners)

senses --passing through one to the other 

walking patterns (near/far/unison)

Proposal for structuring the activities

Structuring the activities as a testing of sort, or a laboratory wherein we all choose to work in three separate, but the same sites on each day.  At the site we will split the group into three and each work with a small group for about 20 minutes, then the groups will rotate (shift) to another "landing site" or activity for 20 min and then shift again. In this way all three of us can share working in a common site (determined by Bianca's word prompts from the original proposal and with Jasenka's suggestions, while also working independently within our interest/medium.  Also, in this way, it will be easier to do follow up, collecting and response with the whole group back in the studio, since we will have shared a common space, yet had different and varied experiences with the site. At first I thought that 20 min may not be enough time and we can debate this, but at the same time, I feel that a shorter session gets to a point without going too much into detail and is a kind of sampling of something that can then (Un)fold back into the follow up back in the studio.

Sara's second thoughts on actions

Walking around my neighborhood in LA--thinking about walking in a still unknown city of Zagreb....I wonder...

What can one know about a place through observing and interacting with rhythms of walking?

I am more and more curious about this system of flow and movement in a city. An ecology of bodies/movements.  

The three days/themes:

scales/bodies/heights

bridges/borders/fences

silences/waits/(in)visibility

can serve as prompts for finding sites to research in.

For example:

I would choose three different sites based on the words provided.  So, for the first day, I may choose to work in an area where the relationship between sidewalk width and bldg height was extreme.  The second day I might work in an area of contested borders or a more residential area where the boundary between private and public are strong. And on the third day, move to a place where there are silences (or lack there of) and consider ways to engage in that slower pace, stillness.

In each site the focus of the research would be on the body/space/time relation--with a focus on ways the bodies move through space, connecting to that, improvising with that movement and discovering something different about each space through this research.

I like that Bianca has propose a follow up activity--coming back and offering something back to the group from the research. I think we could all have actions that we work on and then a structure for how to share that back to the group.

We will have a lot of information gathered and then, I can imagine, go through a process of editing and selecting and composing.

More thoughts on the way....