The Corporeal Allocation of B

The Corporeal Allocation of B.

3

TABle of ConTenT

InTroduCTIonA body that Can’t be Body 6

leTTersThe Body you Possess 20to Aitana CoredoThe Body and the object 26to Yael DavidsThe Body and new Materialism 33to Rick Dolphijn

A leTTer To My selfA conversation with J. 40Are my eyes closed or do I see wrong? 43 leTTers IIThe Body as a Voice 48to Lenio KakleaThe Body as Post-Junk 56to Bruno ListopadThe Body as a surface 61to Nigel RolfeThe Body and the social Choreography 68to Ibrahim Quraishi

A Body ThAT CAn’T Be Body To André lepecki 80

Introduction

The corporeal allocaTion of b.6

A body that Can’t be Body

dear reader,over the past months I have invested my time to re-search and create a corporeality, which both can and cannot be ‘body’ simultaneously.1 I want to confront you with the material generated through this period, which you may appropriate, change, recreate, displace, reposition or simply read, in any way you choose.

“It’s fairly well known that for the last thirty years my main work as an artist has been located in ac-tivities and contexts that don’t suggest art in any way. Brushing my teeth, for example, in the morn-ing when I’m barely awake; watching in the mirror the rhythm of my elbow moving up and down …

… The practice of such an art, which isn’t per-ceived as art, is not so much a contradiction as a paradox.

… But ordinary life performed as art/not art can charge the everyday with metaphoric power.”

Art which Can’t be Art 1986, Alan Kaprow

1 reference to: Allan Kaprow, Art that Can’t be Art

7

In recent art practices and contemporary studies there has been an emerging urge to rethink the concept of body. Paradoxically, in a society where privacy and individuality have come to increasingly resemble lux-ury goods, the idea of, and discussion around ‘body’ has seemingly gotten lost in the construction of imag-es and future idealistic prototypes.2 rather than push-ing forward a corporality where actualization and eva-sion come together in an exchanging force, a body’s identity has become the representational mnemonic of a material used in various sectors of art. The Body, instrumentalized as a pure definition but also an ac-tive element in current art practices, comes closer to a dependent existence defined only by its outside re-lations. Thus reducing it to a type of ‘joker’ that fits the situation rather than standing in for its own sub-stance and being.

2 Wolfgang Welsch Grenzgänge der Ästhetik / undoing Aethetics (1996) We are without doubt currently experiencing an aesthetics boom. It extends from individual styling, urban planning and the economy through to theory. More and more elements of reality are being aesthetically mantled, and reality as a whole is coming to count increasingly as an aesthetic construct to us.

InTroduCTIon


…“The body, every body is necessarily compos-ite, composed of smaller bodies, themselves com-posed of other bodies ad infinitum. far from ex-hibiting a stability of boundaries, bodies are sub-ject to a constant recomposition.” …“The body was devalued precisely be-cause it seemed to condemn the individual to a dependent existence both in relation to nature as a whole and in relation to other human be-ings: the body needs a great many other bodies, human and non-human, to survive.”3

A body’s own identity is a losing parameter, overshad-owed by the presence of a projective discourse on what and how a body should behave, rather than on what its potential brings.

My research began from the purely practical need of how to work in the field of performance independently of space, time and a visual frame. By breaking free of these paradigms I aspired to create a work that con-tributed and redirected questions to an ongoing dis-course on performativity and its body. Through this I could then take a position where reflection is per-formed and performance is reflection.

3 Warren Montag, (1999), Body, Masses, Power: spinoza and his Contemporaries (p. 21)

9InTroduCTIon

It was important for me to employ an existing vocab-ulary, using language purely as a vehicle to move the piece forward. The language in this work becomes the material that models the piece, and that takes on the task of physically enacting what needs to be present-ed. hermeneutics is secondary to the material quality here. The words instead form the carrier of the per-formance and physicality that takes place, allowing it to take its own meaning and definition for granted.

A statement from When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders provided my initial central reference:

…Presence is therefore an element within perfor-mance that contributes toward the way a dance signifies difference: it can mark or unmark a dancing body. lepecki proposes that “critical theories of dancing practices must consider how it is that ‘presence’ challenges the very stabili-ty of ‘the body.’”4

essentially: ‘Presence’ can mark and/or unmark a dancing body. This statement, which is a repositioning

4 When Men dance: Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders (2009 p. 154), edit. by Jennifer fisher, Anthony shay, oxford university Press.


of the thoughts of André lepecki, framed my research as a project investigating the marked and unmarked body. I wanted to extract these two terms from a de-fined field of dance and direct it towards an open ques-tion around ‘body’, in order to understand its concept in a theoretical and practical manner. When I first con-sidered what the concept of the unmarked could in-clude, I tried to look outside of its position as the bi-nary opposite of the marked, or the unknown space outside of a body’s demarcations.5

rather, I wanted to investigate it as a lost notion; a certain way of thinking and believing in a body’s po-tentiality. I see the unmarked as a multidimensional existence, almost a belief system, which should be given back a corporeal space in which to thrive, and to activate its reality. This is in sharp contrast to con-sidering the unmarked as the resolution and contra-movement of a cultivated (marked) body.

What kind of body do we work with today? What is its position or responsibility? What is the body we pre-sent, live, move, objectify, adore, love, penetrate, in-herit, and produce?

5 Jaques derrida, signature, context, event (…) an opposition of metaphysical concepts (for example, speech/writing, presence/absence, etc.) is never the face to face of two terms, but a hierarchy and an order of subordination.

11InTroduCTIon

I questioned whether the (unmarked) body would manly be enabled through discourse, by a choreogra-phy of language. Giving a space for sense, nonsense, contradictions and disfunctionalities, that can unfold and embody each other only in this created habitat.

I considered involving different voices around a cur-rent development in the performing arts and the re-lation to body, in order to create a thought process that would position itself outside of a conclusion or fixed statement. I began a series of intimate letters, trying to envelope my recent ideas and musings with-in the context of the statements and positions of the addressee. This to create an ‘encoulage’6 of what has been said and what still has to be addressed, between an existing presence and a potentiality of its being. The practitioners involved are all colleagues, teach-ers, or choreographers I have worked with, or with whom I have had personal encounters. I chose to use the framework of a letter as a structure that would enable me to formulate my own ideas, and possibly involve a diversity of opinions, beliefs and positions

6 Gilles deleuze, negotiations (Pourparlers) 1990, p. 6 I saw my self as taking an author from behind and giving him a child that would be his own offspring, yet monstrous. It was really important for it to be his own child, because the author had to actually say all I had him saying. But the child was bound to be monstrous too, because it resulted from all sorts of shifting, slipping, dislocations, and hidden emissions that I really enjoyed.


outside of my own. This presents a multidimensional thought-experiment around the concept of body, in-corporating the ideas of each addressee as ingredi-ents to give substance to my own research. The let-ters were set up in such a way that an answer is pos-sible but never expected.

This book is a documentation or handbook of the pro-cess that took place and the material produced for the work itself. It incorporates, brakes, pushes and elab-orates upon my questions around body in today’s ar-tistic practices, but does not put a new theory upfront.The publication here is self reflexive. I came to the re-alization that, after writing all the letters, emails and text-scores, the project has developed into diverse self-portraits that traces my own ideas on ‘body’. It is a transversal mapping of performance practice that potentially produces an open space whereby my re-flections and questions are penetrated, disrupted, en-veloped, engaged and operated in a intimate yet pub-lic manner.

The structure of language and it’s meaning, con-tradictorily enable and deconstruct a depiction of the unsaid or the forgotten, and give it a corporeal ac-tuality. Meanwhile this corporeality is disrupted by my attempt to construct new systems or amorphous structures that arbitrarily move into an undefined space, demarcating nothing but its own actions. In order to appropriate such a movement pattern, and

13InTroduCTIon

use its inner potential to elaborate upon my research and grasp the implications of its own vocabulary, I had to adapt to a current discourse around the body. I therefore worked towards quasi-choreographic ac-tions that build the possibility for a solution and dis-solution to take its place at the same time.

… In communications theory the act of ‘opera-tion’ is defined by the fact that it takes place in two simultaneous time frames that can never be synchronized. on the one hand there is the time taken up by the operation itself. on the other hand there is the time of the observation of its object, its occasion. To be able to realize an operation on something (like an analysis of an artwork) it already has to be categorized in-to the before-known grid of knowledge to even become observable to the analyst. Therefore what triggers the operation can be a non-event or a void while at the same time it can only be considered as an event after its occurrences.7 …

Alongside this publication I propose a public read-ing, which is a reworking of the texts presented here. This performance is but one solution to how I saw the

7 Constanze schellow, (2009) 56 Ways (not) To, a.pass / a.pt advanced performance training.


possibility of presenting the contradictions that the project and its material carry within itself. on the one hand the content is addressing and trying to grasp the fragile and poetic nature of the concept body, and to give it the possibility to move in a landscape without borders. on the other hand this fragility and unde-fined potentiality and nature of the matter is extreme-ly structured and systematized through the applica-tion of language and the form of the personal letter. In order to unfold and touch upon the unmarked we have to appropriate the marked, redirecting its func-tion so it can become the framed substance that gives voice to the forgotten, the unknown, and the unsaid.

… the only way one can speak of nothing is to speak of it as through it were something ….8

I am looking forward to your answer.

Kind regards,Julia reist

8 samuel Becket, Watt


Allan Kaprow explaining Household (detail).

17InTroduCTIon

letters


The Body you Possess

dear Aitana,I hope this email finds you well.

I thought about some questions and I was wondering if you would like to think about them with me.What about body? (Asking back a question put on your website)

A question put together as simple as that, created a new space of troubles in my head. A lot of times I thought about the little fucker with the rope, who was letting us jump through the dance room for hours. It occurred to me as a strange but also plau-sible thing that an external fiction, a specific rela-tion had to be created to let the body move in a spe-cific motion. The body as a pure masse of recrea-tion, separated from the own controlling mind. A manipulation of, and towards its own materiality – an ongoing updating.

In a rereading of spinoza there is a passage where he says

…“the body, every body is necessarily composite, composed of smaller bodies, themselves com-posed of other bodies ad infinitum. far from

21leTTers

exhibiting a stability of boundaries, bodies are subject to a constant recomposition.”

I had to think about you in two ways: one that bod-ies are far from exhibiting stable boundaries, and two that they are in constant recomposition.

What I understand fem your writings, is that the skin is the surface, the plane where everything starts and ends, where everything comes together – the stage of the choreography, that happens beneath it. The outside layer that reveals what you need to know from a body within.

do you think the skin / this surface is the infinite mark of the body it self?

The visual Anthropologist hans Belting says, that a body is an image, before its pictured and that ones in-dividuality drives from it. In this case a bodies Iden-tity, is the constructed image of its relations to the environment – less connected to its insides, but ex-hibiting the urge of self display. After spinoza, this is what devalues the bodies as they become dependent existences in relation to nature and human – in need of other bodies to survive.

Putting next to each other a body as a constructed image, a display, a hollow mark of its own, and your idea of the surface – being the touching point and


expression of ones insides, I wondered what happens with a body in surgery.

Manipulating a body so its boundary of surface is broken and the multidimensionality is literally made visible. A penetration, that enables to touch and acti-vate these different layers.

Is a body in this position still performing?

Could you think about this potentiality of body, to be the enculage of its moving insides and the image of its surface?

In the work I encountered from you, I experienced the display of relations – not only the relations be-tween the inside and the outside of body, but also the relations between body and object, your body and others, the body as subject and the body as materi-al. These different relations, that are exposed in a various of ways, inhabit a sort of contradiction be-tween clear exploration of concrete actions and un-defined temporalities.

Would you say that in your work, you explore this re-lations and as such create/research bodies that are defined by this relations? A hybrid body, shifting be-tween object and subjecthood?

The philosopher Michel serres, uses the term the quasi-object – which points to an equality of objects,

23leTTers

everything is object, and what differentiates them, is the relations they create.

“The quasi-object is not an object, but it is onenevertheless, since it is not a subject, since itis in the world; it is also a quasi-subject, sinceit marks or designates a subject who, withoutit, would not be a subject.”

Serres, Michel 1982. The parasite.

slightly modifying the concept of serres and bringing it to the idea of the Quasi-Body, I was interested in the possible connection between this modified con-cept and the work Where We Are not, in collaboration with lina Issa. The project plays with distance and space, the concepts of time and overcoming a barrier of the individual body. The attempt to share and con-nect paradoxically becomes the construction of new situations of dislocations and difference.

Through pure bureaucratic immigration reasons, lina Issa was denied to return to lebanon and re en-ter the netherlands, where she casted you to take her place for 10 days. you visited her friends and family, tracing back her memories, places and relations that shaped her and her idea of home.

now in retrospective to the tasks you executed and the performing of someone else story, what position and responsibility did body take in this work? Could


A Piece of love for Aitana by JuliaPerformance, Julia reist 2014,

(undefined duration)

A piece of love for Aitana by Julia

look into a mirror until you flatten out.look into a mirror until you loose your self in your own surface.look into a mirror until you become the shallow image of your self.

Go out and fall in love.Go out and cross boundaries.Go out and find yourself.

25leTTers

you say something of the corporality you inhabited and the traces it left in your own body?

What about body? – coming back to the first ques-tion I asked in the beginning of this mail. What is the body we work with today, what is its position, mate-riality and responsibility. Going through these ques-tions I realized, I was not so much interested in de-fining a new body definition but rediscovering a no-tion of something forgotten something left behind and unsaid. The idea of the unmarked. In a approach of creating a discursive space to give new corporeal-ity to the unmarked, I wonder where it can be locat-ed, touched and activated.

If body becomes/is the infinite mark of its own space, could its presence be the unmarked, the unvoiced re-ality of being?

I hope to hear from you soon,

Julia


The Body and the object

dear yael,I hope this email finds you well.

since a longer period now, I am thinking about some very specific questions about the notion of body, and I was wondering if you would be interested to think with me about them.

What do we understand if we think about body today? What body do we work with, what is the body we pre-sent, live, move, objectify, adore, love, penetrate, in-herit, produce? What is its history, position and/or re-sponsibility in todays environment?

A passage in the essay Inscribing dance (2008) of An-dré lepecki states that presence can mark or unmark a dancing body. Two terms, a division, that pushed me to think more specifically about an interpretation and image of body that established it self till today. The re-lation and opposition of the marked and the unmarked, became the conceptual guide and simultaneously the framework of the to be asked questions and research.

27

In The Archaeology of Knowledge & The discourse on language, Michele foucault talks about an established discourse, that is the repressive presence of what it does not say. In many ways, this passage, made me think of the interaction and usage of body in todays art (especially performance) practice.

looking into current discourses in movement practices I feel there is a gap created between a po-tentiality of body and its constructed image and un-derstanding. Instrumentalizing the notion of body in a practical and discursive way to demonstrate and define conclusions rather than to give it the space to reinvent it self in an ongoing matter.

If body today is more a hollow mark – a didactic in-teraction of its own being, what does that mean in re-lation to its potential existence and interaction with the world?

…“the body, every body is necessarily composite, composed of smaller bodies, themselves com-posed of other bodies ad infinitum. far from exhibiting a stability of boundaries, bodies are subject to a constant recomposition.”

Body, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries

I came across an article of lepecki, about objects in choreography Moving as Thing: Choreographic

leTTers


Critiques of the Object – André Lepecki, october 2013, which I thought was quiet interesting to put in con-nection to your work:

“If the concept of object (as opposed to the con-cept of thing) is ontologically tied to instrumen-tality, to utility, to usage, to means, then it follows that objects exist in a symmetric relationship re-garding subjectivity. In this relation, objects are always “an endless reproduction and confirma-tion of the manipulative abilities of the subject,” as silvia Benso has remarked.

he explains the difference between an object and a thing as such, that the object has an utility, is an in-strument and has an usage – the thing in contrary, has lost all this qualities and is so neither a tool nor an instrument nor an utensil. (after Mario Perniola)I was wondering if in this sense, it (the thing) becomes a manipulative being, which we could connect to the status of a performer today.

A performer who gives away his own subjectiv-ity, to an obedient expression and an ongoing readi-ness to be manipulated.

Meanwhile we could say, that these attributes and behaviors come close to the way objects are treat-ed and positioned towards the relation of subjection and the interaction in society. In your work, you often site objects alongside the

29

performer, to give them voice, space and position. A relation comes into place and the borders between become vague, as each of these participants relate to each other and emphasizes to tell a story which becomes its own, and wouldn’t be possible without their interaction.

how do you see the position of body in the corporal space of performance? And how do you feel about its position and relation towards the other – the object?

hito steyerl mentioned the idea, of instead to always claim the subject hood, to side with the object.

…“The feminist movement, until quite recently (and for a number of reasons), worked toward claiming autonomy and full subjecthood. But as the struggle to become a subject became mired, in its own contradictions, a different possibili-ty emerged.

how about siding with the object for a change? Why not affirm it? A thing among other things? “A thing that feels,” as Mario Perniola seductive-ly phrased it.”…

Hito Steyerl (p.50, e-flux)

Also Michel serres and Bruno latour bring up a new sort of notion of the object which is focused merely

leTTers


on the relations and behaviors it creates – the qua-si object:

“The quasi-object is not an object, but it is one nevertheless, since it is not a subject, since it is in the world; it is also a quasi-subject, since it marks or designates a subject who, without it, would not be a subject.”


If we take the idea of the quasi object into the event of performance art, performer and objects would meet on equal terms and move onto each other in the cho-reographic plane. These objects that contain physi-cal intelligence and the performer who is activated by them, are each mutually quasi-objects to each other. each containing the other and made true by each oth-er via each other enterally, but only in part.

To come back to the discourse around body – could we think about the potentiality of a quasi-body, in or-der to redirect a thought process and a materiality of our productions?

In one of the descriptions of your work it is mentioned that, you give voice and shape to the personal to cre-ate a public discussion. In your piece learning To Imitate In Absentia, you perform between a person-al and a historical body, tracing back and repeating

31

what has not been said before, or was lost in silence.It is a simultaneous position and dislocation of time and space an accumulation of language and memory, and the representational burden of legacy.

Where do you locate your self in this perfor-mance? When you perform these traces, steps and repetitions does body (your body) become a trans-versal corporal space, or rather a subject surrogat-ing for an untold history?

I am looking forward to what your thoughts are on these questions.

If you would prefer to discuss it in person instead of writing, just let me know.

hope to hear from you soon.

All the best,Julia

leTTers


A Piece for yael (duration determend)Performance, Julia reist 2014,

(duration determined)

A loud piece for yael

speak until you’re silentBe silent until you screamspinn around until you loose your groundfall until you arrive

33

The Body and new Materialism

dear rick dolphijn,I hope this email finds you well.

I am writing you in the hope to open up a discussion around some questions I had, regarding the body and the field of performance. After the classes I had of you in 2011/2012 in the Master Artistic research, I would like to come back on some points that were introduced then and some new ideas, relating to your present re-search in the field of new materialism.

Being mainly busy with performance and the chore-ographic practice, I have come to question the notion of body. What body do we work with today, what is its position in relation to it self, its performativity and its surrounding, and how would we define the materiali-ty of body today (marking its borders)?

leTTers


The expanded Choreography – diagrammJulia reist 2013

35

In Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contem-poraries there is a passage where it says:

…"the body, every body is necessarily composite, composed of smaller bodies, themselves com-posed of other bodies ad infinitum. far from exhibiting a stability of boundaries, bodies are subject to a constant recomposition."

…“the body was devalued precisely because it seemed to condemn the individual to a depend-ent existence both in relation to nature as a whole and in relation to other human beings: the body needs a great many other bodies, hu-man and non-human, to survive.”

This death of body is in my eyes strongly related to the notion of the marked body (to borrow a term used in dance practice). A cultivated body, marked by its own surroundings and its constructed relations be-tween other cultivated bodies. A body close to an im-age – an identity regardless of its own material exist-ence. surrounded by its own hollow being and so dis-abled to ever surpass its own mark. In contrary to the body in spinoza's reading, this dead body is less a re-composition in infinitum but an involution of its ap-pearance, the dialectical image created from its out-side borders. A body, tied to its position, on a social constructed grid (Massumi) which is limited/disabled

leTTers


to open up towards an in-betweenness that is hiddenIn The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language foucault says :

… The manifested discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this "not-said" is a hollow that undermines from within all that is said.

Thus the marked body, the cultivated body, that takes its present position today, is the repressive presence of its own, overshadowing its potentiality and as such creating an image as the barrier of its own.

so in todays happening of a choreographic- and per-formance-turn, is there a possibility to relocate to-wards a new idea, a notion of body – an unmarked body, which moves on the extremes of its mown spec-trum and create new relations to establish a discur-sive image of the unsaid? Is there a potential relation between the redirected question of body and its mate-riality, and the current thoughts in object oriented phi-losophy? Could a reevaluation of body push towards reestablishing the relations between object and sub-ject and introduce the idea of a quasi-body (after the concept of the quasi-object by latour and serres)?

In Choreographic practice (in an expanded field) body and its corporal space becomes the manipulative

37leTTers

object – an obedient expression, an instrument al-ways ready to be manipulated. I came across an ar-ticle of André lepecki, about objects in choreogra-phy Moving as Thing: Choreographic Critiques of the Object – André Lepecki, october 2013 and there was an interesting passage I would like to quote here:

If the concept of object (as opposed to the con-cept of thing) is ontologically tied to instrumen-tality, to utility, to usage, to means, then it follows that objects exist in a symmetric relationship re-garding subjectivity. In this relation, objects are always “an endless reproduction and confirma-tion of the manipulative abilities of the subject,” as silvia Benso has remarked.

Could the performer in this sense become the manip-ulation and as such in its affect be closer to the object and its objecthood than to subjectivity? And would this possibly mean that at the end the choreographic entities we work with could be the threshold between natural and unnatural – a hybrid body endlessly ex-panding and reconfiguring at the same time – an in-stantaneous incorporeal transformation (after Guattari&deleuze).

In relation to your writings/researches and the class-es I followed, was wondering if there are any thought experiments you could think of that would test these


limits of an choreographic body.

I am looking forward to your answer. Please do not hesitate to approach me with further questions.

With kind regards,Julia reist

A letter to My self


A conversation with J.

I had a conversation with myself.Where this conversation would go and what it would content was unimportant.

I had a conversation with my self about what I would like to think about.If this thinking was relevant or interesting was unimportant.

I had a conversation with my self, about how I would perform a conversation with my self.

how this would look and how it would sound was unimportant.I had a conversation with my self, asking me where I position my body in relation to the world.

I sToPPed…

What about body? What about body performance? What about history? And what about me?

Writing about history is an effortWriting about you and society a story

41A leTTer To My self

WrITInG ABouT Me Is An AneCdoTe

Performing ourselves becomes the everyday,

does IT MATTer?

There is a reinvention of bodies, everyday. We live, we change, we die and we get born again. There is no stopping or slowing down, there is simply becoming.do we take it for granted?

This is ordinary, normal, happening without excitement.

I sit in the train, I walk in a square, I draw a heart, I fall in love, I crave the sun, I brush my teeth, I fall asleep

how does the ordinary, stay ordinary, in the world where extraordinary catches all the attention. Can a body in ordinary position, move in ordinary movement, become a ordinary body over and over again, and pro-voke, excitement and extraordinary interaction?

Is something relevant because of it self, or because of its history? Is a question a question because of its answer or be-cause of its existence?

do we care?


I had a conversation with my self.I didn’t speak.I had a conversation with my self.I didn’t interact.I had a conversation with my self.

I WAsn’T honesT.

I perform my life in its minor relevances, I question my relations to the ghosts of iconic (art)history, I think about the world in images, I struggle to articulate eve-ryday, I figure the world will figure it self.

And all I do is

MoVe.


Are my eyes closed or do I see wrong?

My eyes are closedJust a little bit longer.A pulling pain in my shoulders, which is the only wit-ness of the hard work.

My eyes won’t open anymore.Just a little bit longer.

A stage,a carpet,an old wooden floor.one person, a bourgeois audience, a clap, applause, gratitude, silence.

To shoWer, To Brush, To fuCK, To dAnCe, To sleeP.

What is special about dance, is special everywhere all the time, in an ongoing stage.

no one wants to see it.

Bloody toes from the point shoes, is a sign of dedica-tion to an extraordinary art.


A sore neck from jumping all day in order to turn your insides around and perform a transition of body equals on

sTuPIdITy.

one thing which remains in silent, which hides be-hinds the sculptures of established discourse, which is suppressed by the overwhelming presence of the hollow body of virtuosity is that, what makes it spe-cial and extraordinary, is it’s plane ordinarity.

There is no skill or virtuosity, there is just body in re-lations and it’s affects. A pain, a tear, a shiver.

or to quote Paul Valery:

only A dAnCer KnoWs hoW To WAlK.

The freedom of motion, and the restriction of its own framings.

What ever remains unheard and unseen is the mun-dane which makes us all dancers.

The question is, where are you and where is your body when you perform?

The relation build to the inexistent reality of one self is the one that creates the fiction to persist.


The VehICle ThAT MoVes Body.

The idea of dancing and what it means comes close to the deleuzian concept of affects, where a draft-horse and an ox are closer related than a draft-horse and a sports horse. so the question, are dancing or not, lies in the

AffeCT

of actions of bodies – and so, showering comes prob-ably even closer to the essence of dance than dancing swan lake.


Performance, Julia reist 2014undefined dureation

A sIMPle sIP

sit down in a public space(a bar/cafe/restaurant)order a beveragefrom the first sip to the last,play your favorite song with your butt-cheeks.

letters II


The Body as a Voice

dear lenio,I hope this email finds you well.

I hope you don’t mind me writing you. We met last year at the Art Brussels, I was filming/assisting the round-table discussion The Value of our love.

I was very intrigued by your performance presented at the Art Brussels, and it started a thinking process I hoped to get in discussion with you.

I would like to open the discussion with a question I thought of, while seeing your performance:

In what position do you see your voice and your body when you perform, and how would you define the relationship towards each other?

over the past year I have been researching in the field of performance and choreography, mainly invested in the question of materiality in this practic-es. recently I have come across some texts and piec-es, which left me wondering about the notion of body and the current discourse around it. What body do we work with today? Where is body located in a cur-rent performative practice and what is the responsi-bility and materiality of such a body?

49

Through the reading of Andre lepecki, I stumbled over two terms the marked and the unmarked body, which became the specification within my research and simultaneously the framework of my questions around body. If the marked body possibly presents it self as the cultivated, a body constructed by its out-side relations, where would we see the unmarked, and in what corporeal space could it be activated?

A quote by foucault from The Archaeology of Knowl-edge & The Discourse on Language formulates quiet well, the problematic I see within the question of the marked and the unmarked.

… all manifest discourse is secretly based on an “already-said”; and … this “already-said” is not merely a phrase that has already been spo-ken, or a text that has already been written, but a “never-said”, an incorporeal discourse, a voice as silent as a breath, a writing that is merely the hollow of its own mark. It is supposed therefore that everything that is formulated in discourse was already articulated in that semi-silence that precedes it, which continues to run obstinately beneath it, but which it covers and silences. The manifest discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this “not-said” is a hollow that under-mines from within all that is said.

leTTers II


In today’s art – especially in the field of performance-based work, I struggle with such an establishing dis-course – an acceptance of a cultivated image around the notion of body. A marked body that has become an overshadowing manifestation, near to a repressive presence of what it does not show.

A constructed identity regardless of its own ma-teriality. A costume, an involution of its appearance, a hollow of its own mark.

Is there a possibility to rethink the notion of body in its relation today – and if so, where and how would this position it self. Giving voice to the unsaid in order to pick up this established discourse and re-lease it in a different direction towards the unmarked.

In moving away from the manifested towards the un-marked, I’m not pointing towards the opposition of a marked, or the outside space of bodies defined de-marcations. I rather aim to look at a lost notion – a certain thinking and believing of a body’s potentiality. A multidimensional existence, almost a believe sys-tem, which should be given back a corporeal space to thrive from and to activate its reality.

The Austrian choreographer Philipp Gehmacher, talks about, that bodies on stage have the choice to tell and show in a strictly physical way, to perform at the extreme of their known spectrum. he calls this, the body’s own expressiveness. This expressiveness

51

(after Gehmacher) is most active and comes in con-tact with the viewer, within a body that is in struggle with gravity. A language composed around movement that contradicts the systematized & controlled we en-counter every day. A stumbling, falling body, a body in spasm or sickness exposes the actual materiality of body as such and manages to leave behind the cul-tivated body and its constructed image.

The visual Anthropologist hans Belting says that a body is an image, before its pictured and that ones individuality drives from it. In this case a bod-ies identity, is the constructed image of its relations to the environment – less connected to its insides, but exhibiting the urge of self display.

In your performances you work with your body as a choreographed element and your voice as a choreo-graphing and narrative part of it. In relation to your work and especially the use of voice in performance, how would you think about and position the idea of expressiveness in order to be the liberation of a cul-tivated body identity?

In Gehmacher ideas he is still referring to the body on stage, and the expressiveness he mentions is a choice an action rather than a way of being.

A choreographic manipulation in order to con-struct – conclude in new definitions?

leTTers II


looking at Choreography today, it is emancipating it-self from a closed discipline of dance and engaging in a vibrant changed process of articulation. Alterna-tive formats have broadened out the understanding and mobilised innovative frontiers in respect of self-organization, empowerment and autonomy. simulta-neously choreography is often placed in a tension be-tween movement, situation and objects. A turn in re-defining itself, in order to include artists and others who use choreographic strategies without necessari-ly relating them to dance. Aesthetically turning away from established notions of dance and its strong asso-ciation with skill and craft, to instead establish auton-omous methods that override causalities among con-ceptualisation, production, expression and represen-tation. Gaining a momentum within its organization around movement, form and immaterial exchange. Choreography is not a priori performative, nor is it bound to expression and reiteration of subjectivity; it is becoming an expanded practice, a practice that is political in and of it self.

Within such a practice, body and its corporal space, often become the manipulative object – an obedi-ent expression, an instrument always ready to be manipulated. In an article of André lepecki, about objects in choreography Moving as Thing: Choreographic Cri-tiques of the Object – André Lepecki, october 2013

53leTTers II

there was an interesting passage I would like to quote here:

…“If the concept of object (as opposed to the concept of thing) is ontologically tied to instru-mentality, to utility, to usage, to means, then it follows that objects exist in a symmetric rela-tionship regarding subjectivity. In this relation, objects are always “an endless reproduction and confirmation of the manipulative abilities of the subject,” as silvia Benso has remarked.”

regarding the new defined borders of a choreograph-ic practice, its politics and methods, as a thought ex-periment, it would be interesting to look at the per-former in a more materialistic way. To take a different position towards subjectivity and approach the idea of the performer as becoming the manipulation and as such in its affect be closer to the object and its ob-jecthood. In this sense we could assume that there is a potentiality that the choreographic entities we work with could be the threshold between natural and un-natural – a hybrid body endlessly expanding and re-configuring at the same time, an Instantaneous in-corporeal transformation (after Guattari&deleuze).

The philosopher Michel serres and Bruno latour, work with a concept that uses the term the quasi-object – which points to an equality of objects, everything is


object, and what differentiates them, is the relations they create.



slightly modifying the concept in order to utilize it within the aim of reevaluating body in a performa-tive practice, I would like to think about the idea of a Quasi-Body. Could this redirection of thoughts to-wards a body’s position, possibly open up towards an equality, a thingness that gives ground to the potenti-ality of the unmarked?

I’m looking forward to your answer.

best,Julia

55

Bruno listopadPost-Choreographic Junk, 2014

leTTers II


The Body as Post-Junk

dear Bruno,I hope this email finds you well.

since a while now I am more and more interested in the question of body. What kind of body do we work with today, manipulate, form, move… Andre lepecki wrote in one of his essays that presence can mark or unmark a dancing body. Without being sure what he really meant with this paragraph, I started thinking about if there still was such thing as an unmarked body and if so in what sort of corporal space would it be located? What image would a body have if body to-day would be the result of discourse much more than a manipulated object of society? I stumbled over this quote of foucault, and I find it to be close to what I experience if I think about the todays discourse with-in dance and the body.

In The Archaeology of Knowledge & The discourse on language foucault said:

… “all manifest discourse is secretly based on an "already-said"; and … this "already-said" is not merely a phrase that has already been spo-ken, or a text that has already been written, but a "never-said", an incorporeal discourse, a voice

57

as silent as a breath, a writing that is merely the hollow of its own mark. It is supposed therefore that everything that is formulated in discourse was already articulated in that semi-silence that precedes it, which continues to run obstinately beneath it, but which it covers and silences. The manifest discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this "not-said" is a hollow that under-mines from within all that is said.”

I struggle with the relation to a body that became much more a costume, a hollow of its own mark as foucault says – a marked social dependence, a didactic inter-action of its own being. Is this the (marked)body we work with today, or could we look at the unsaid, the in-between space of the manifested discourse? Could the (unmarked)body be the unsaid, and if so how could it be approached?

I think I am interested to find an ever existing but forgotten body, unfold its landscape of various ele-ments which evoke a different movement within the idea of choreographic practice and performance, which spreads the possibility of thinking space and which cre-ates corporal environment that gives voice to the unsaid.

In relation to your work, you mention the body as a creative machine. A place of chaos and a substance

leTTers II


created out of differentiations. What especially caught my attention was the idea of body being a creator of a sense and non-sense choreography at once. The body not only as the signifier or the corporal translation of a concept, but as a passage presenting simultaneous-ly a space of thought, feelings and life/movement, as also a space of contradiction, dysfunction and unco-ordinated actions.

The choreographer Philipp Gehmacher claims for a body’s own expressiveness in opposite to the reduc-tion of bodies to images.

“The Body I use is a fragile, material body, a bro-ken and uncoordinated body: Just about every-thing that makes up the shadow side of the civil body, the body we wish ourselves and symbolise.”

This physical materiality of bodies in his work, is pre-sent in stumbling, contracting, torsions and spasms. A language composed around movement that contra-dicts the systematized & controlled we encounter eve-ry day. Gehmacher describes that the body on stage can choose to show in a strictly physical way, and represent through its defaults, its own expressive-ness. Taking Gehmachers idea in account, we could say that a body’s corporal quality is its own disfunc-tion and as such its bodily identity.

59

on your website you mention the body as junk and you call the images you produce the post-choreograph-ic junk. I was interested if you could elaborate more on your concept of junk and how your created imag-es relate to your choreographic practice and physi-cal body. (as junk) Are you thinking about a produc-tion of body, through the cultivated waist of our time

– or are you referring more to a dysfunctional physi-cal body as Philipp Gehmacher mentions it?

Bringing together these thoughts to the initial ques-tion of the (marked) and the (unmarked)body, I won-der if it is less about bodies physicality but rather more about presence in it self. The visual anthropol-ogist hans Belt points out, that the body is always an image, even before its pictured, so ones individuality drives from that image. Potentially, body was/is and will be constantly marked through its constructed im-ages, based on the relations build everyday of its envi-ronment. so in order to redirect the position, question of body in todays discourse, could we open up to the idea of a marked body and the unmarked presence?

I hope to hear from you soon.

KissJulia

leTTers II


Bruno listopadPost-Choreographic Junk, 2014

61

The Body as a surface

dear nigel,I hope this email fiends you well.

lately I was wondering a lot about the notion of body. What kind of body do we work with, produces, pre-sent, move, live and especially today, what sort of body remains and takes position in a current perfor-mance practice?

In different exchanges, I would like to open up a discursive space, where these questions can take place and a thought experiment around body today, can unfold. Based on my experience of your work, your self and the collaborations together, I hope you will enter with me in this discussion in order to redi-rect together a possible rethinking of body.

A passage in the book; When Men Dance: Choreo-graphing Masculinities Across Borders states, that presence can mark or unmark a dancing body. Two terms, a division, that pushed me to think more spe-cifically about an interpretation and image of body that established it self till today. The relation and op-position of the marked and the unmarked, became the conceptual guide and simultaneously the frame-work of the to be asked questions and research. Inter-estingly, these two demarcations come into existence

leTTers II


within a body in motion (after lepecki). More than just a classical dancing body, I think this short state-ment, relates to a materiality in motion, that physical-ly and metaphysically takes choices and as such posi-tion, presents it self in time and space.

…“the body, every body is necessarily composite, composed of smaller bodies, themselves com-posed of other bodies ad infinitum. far from exhibiting a stability of boundaries, bodies are subject to a constant recomposition.”

Spinoza, Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries

When you began your work as an artist, you defined it as sculptures in motion rather than performances. using different materials such as color pigments and objects, constructing encounters that are activated through your physique. The Body as a surface, a can-vas in order to produce new images, where certain demarcations (between performer and material) are moved into vague relations and where body becomes one with “dead” material.

looking on your work and its definition today, could you still talk of a sculptural approach to a move-ment based or live practice? And if so, where would you locate the notion of body, and define your own position in these actions?

63

“replacing artist with player as if adopting an alias is a way of altering a fixed identity. And a changed identity is a principle of mobility, of go-ing from one place to another […] As a four let-ter word in a society given to games, play does what all dirty words do: it strips bare the myth of culture by artists, even.”

Kaprow, Essays 125–6

The Austrian choreographer Philipp Gehmacher, claims that bodies on stage, choose to tell and show in a strict-ly physical way, perform at the extreme of their known spectrum. he calls this, a body’s own expressiveness in opposite to the reduction of bodies to an images.

nigel rolfe , last Man standing (2013), live Action 8, Gothenburg, sweden

leTTers II



This physical materiality of bodies is present in his work through stumbling, contracting, torsions and spasms. A language composed around movement that contradicts the systematized & controlled we encoun-ter every day. Taking these ideas in account, we could say that a body’s corporal quality is its own disfunc-tion and as such its bodily identity.

Brining back a physicality of body that is a dis-sociation of the meaning a body produces and from those it already embodies. (after Gehmacher)

how do you think about a certain tension between forms and what they express – a pure material pres-entation vs a representation of constructed identity?

silvia Benso says that objects are always and endless reproduction and confirmation of manipulative abili-ties of the subject. regarding your work, I think it is in-teresting to think about, who this manipulated object would be and where is the manipulative subject posi-tioned? As in deleuze’s and Guattari’s theory of affect, where the carpenter does not only work the wood, but the wood also works the carpenter. so the relationship and the positions of object and subject become evasive.

65

Aitana Coredo, a spanish choreographer, claims for a body’s surface/skin as being the stage, the canvas, where a choreography from beneath becomes visible. The skin so to speak becomes the level where every-thing comes together and forms its positions. The out-side layer that reveals what you need to know from a body within.

how do you think about boundaries, especially in re-lation to your work? Is there a difference between sur-face and mass, and could surface then be the ultimate mark of a body – the everlasting scars of being (culti-vated/demarcated by history, environment, society) – overshadowing what is not said or shown?

“There are two directions in which the legacy could go. one is to continue into and develop an action kind of painting, which was what he was doing, and the other was to take advantage of the action itself, implicit as a kind of dance ritual.”

Kaprow writing on Pollock

I hope to hear form you soon.

All the best to you,Julia

leTTers II


nigel rolfe, Blue Mountain: Veil of Tears (2013), deframed, In’fraction, Venice Biennale

67leTTers II


The Body and the social Choreography

dear Ibrahim,I hope this email finds you well.

We haven’t spoken for a while, but I was interested to involve you into a current thought process of mine and exchange ideas.

In a passage of the book, When Men Dance: Choreo-graphing Masculinities Across Borders it mentions how presence can mark and unmark a dancing body. extracting the marked and the unmarked from this quote, they became the new framing elements of a re-search deeper inside our present idea of body. In place of finding a resolution to theses two terms and what exact meaning they carry, I am interested to adapt these notions to navigate through a multidimension-ality of the notion body and redirect its approach in a possible different direction.

…“all manifest discourse is secretly based on an “already-said”; and … this “already-said” is not merely a phrase that has already been spo-ken, or a text that has already been written, but a “never-said”, an incorporeal discourse, a voice

69

as silent as a breath, a writing that is merely the hollow of its own mark. It is supposed therefore that everything that is formulated in discourse was already articulated in that semi-silence that precedes it, which continues to run obstinately beneath it, but which it covers and silences. The manifest discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this “not-said” is a hollow that under-mines from within all that is said.”

The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language, Michel Foucault

Connecting this quote to the interrelation of the marked and the unmarked, where for me, I struggle with the relations build to the notion of body today, as a defined entity, a didactic interaction of its own being. This created gap in a current discourse around body (focused in performative practice) led me to the ques-tions and wonderings I would like to share with you.

In general I wonder where do we see body and what is the corporal space it occupies? Where are a body’s borders and how is its materiality defined? And what is a body’s image? Is a body only defined by its social interactions and as such the outer gaze that defines the image of body, or is there something like its own physical expressiveness (as Philipp Gehmacher de-scribes it).

leTTers II


The choreographer Philipp Gehmacher claims for a body’s own expressiveness in opposite to the reduc-tion of bodies to an images.


This physical materiality of bodies is present in his work through stumbling, contracting, torsions and spasms. A language composed around movement that contradicts the systematized & controlled we encoun-ter every day. Gehmacher describes that the body on stage can choose to show in a strictly physical way, and represent through its defaults, its own expres-siveness. Taking these ideas in account, we could say that a body’s corporal quality is its own disfunction and as such its bodily identity.

If we look at a collective – social choreographic practice, where could we locate this expressiveness,Gehmachers talks about?

In a social choreography, and I am sure you have some thoughts on this, the body takes on a different role, and in this way a different responsibility.

first of all, and in my opinion most urgently in re-lation to contemporary discourse, there is an identity

71

politic question. how we talked about the social cho-reography in your class and what its definition implies does the social choreography work with and around identity, its environment and a collective expression. In this case, would body be the single entities that takes part in the event, or is it the event it self which forms the identity of the action?

does in a choreography like this individuality exist, or does the notion of solidarity and synchronization become the pillar for the choreography to take part. And if so, how would you think about the governing effect of bodies in social choreography?

In one way do I loosely relate these structures of the social choreographic practices to foucault and his approach to Biopolitics, but it also reminded me on the incident we had in class.

one individual decided to not go within the mass (or more violently, sabotage it), and broke down the whole collective experience. It was in one way a vio-lent act, and on the other hand it became image of the problem that individualism would not have any place in the collective activity of social choreography. so where do we locate body, and where do we see or de-fine its borders?

leTTers II


Where is the body located and what is its responcability in the act of the social choreography?

73

still within the field of the social choreography, I would like to take a step aside of its identity politics, and look at its actions, actual movement. In the deleuzi-an concept of affect there is a focus on the actual bod-ies capacity and actions (possibility to affect and to be affected) and as such corresponds to a different definition of categorization. so is e.g. the draft-hors is closer related to the ox than to a racehorse even if the horses belong to the same racial grope.

now, if we think about dance and choreogra-phy, can we call dance actually dance, for other rea-sons than skill/virtuosity or the theatre space. dance takes its qualities out of the idea that it doesn’t need a stage or scholar education, it can happen anywhere, in the social, in the private, in the basement or in the national theatre, dance is always dance the only thing it needs is movement. Taking this basic idea of dance, I wondered if then an action as simple as brushing teeth stands closer to the essence what social cho-reography should be than for example a folk dance? The brushing teeth has as much a choreographic and movement quality to it than lets say the russian folks dance, even a sort of framing of time and space. It is an action purely based on bodily experience (hence the concept of affect in deleuze and Guattari) and just as the mentioned idea of dance, free from the idea of virtuosity.

leTTers II


Public Movement , Position 2011Performa 11, union square, new york

Public Movement , Position 2011Performa 11, union square, new york

75

Public Movement , Position 2010holon, Israel1

1 Position is a choreography based on a series of physical positions taken in by the public forming two rival groups, embodying preferences, demands and aspirations. The two ad-hoc blocks are constantly formed and reformed according to different calls made in pairs, such as socialism/Capitalism, Men/Women, Gay/straight etc. The performance is discourse-specific and serves to manifest conflicts and tensions relevant to the time and place in which it is activated. It is a division of public in relation to universal values.

Public Movement is a performative research body that investigates

and stages political actions in public spaces. The movement explores the political and aesthetic possibilities residing in a group of people acting together. It studies and creates public choreogra-phies, forms of social order, overt and covert rituals.

leTTers II


“There are two directions in which the legacy could go. one is to continue into and develop an action kind of painting, which was what he was doing, and the other was to take advantage of the action itself, implicit as a kind of dance ritual.”

Kaprow writing on Pollock

from this more general questions and wonderings in-to the specific field of social Choreography its iden-tity politics and physical definition I would like to move the focus on to your practice in relation to the notion of body.

In most projects, you work with a diversity of mixed media, moving between visual, sculptural and ephem-eral material. you approach your work as a world traveler (as it is indicated on your website) in con-stant movement to the unknown. Connecting this statement of your own position as an artist with your work, what sort of (performative)body is present? do you think that there is a possibility to create chore-ographies (in the expanded field) beyond a (marked)body and work with the threshold of a hybrid body between natural and artificial – to push boundaries in an ongoing matter, an instantaneous incorporeal transformation (after Guattari&deleuze)? one of your main interests is the exploration of un-derstanding visual performativity, and how I read it,

77

an investigation into the relation between visual im-materialities and ephemeral existence and their po-tential combination.

how do you relate to the idea of surface – image and borders in your work, and where would you position the borders of a body?

I am looking forward to hear from you.

All the best,Julia

leTTers II

A body that Can’t be Body


To André lepecki

dear André,I hope this email finds you well.

It is already a while back since the last time I wrote you, and I would like to pick up our conversation.

In our last exchange, we addressed the concept of the interstitial imbrication and the presence of the body, which are both ideas that you work with in your es-say Inscribing Dance.

you mentioned that in the time being, you moved on from that text and the ideas to adapted a more deleuz-ien point of view, in which dance is the creative ma-chine that zig-zags between body and presence but also body’s image and a body’s absence, in an end-less dynamic.

Introducing an idea of hacceities as another way to think through the concept of presence and that fi-nally body is more an assemblage of all this, in a less dialectical way, than when written the essay in 2008.

Combining these thoughts and bringing them into the present and my current research, I wonder if body could be created through discourse by a choreogra-phy of language, which creates a space for sense and

81

non sense, contradictions and disfonctionalities, thatcan unfold and embody each other only in this cre-ated habitat.

In some way I also have moved further from the con-cept of interstitial imbrications, and pushed the re-search more in a body(material) related question. But still am I stuck within this same old paragraph of yours.If possible I would like to talk with you about the new directions you took in your thinking and superpose it onto my current ideas and questions.

At the beginning of my new project, stands your quote about how presence can mark or unmark a dancing body. This statement started my thinking process and investigation into the concept of body, what kind of body do we work with today, what is its position or responsibility. In a more specific connection to your quote I started to think about the manifestation of the marked body and wondering in what corporeal space a unmarked body would be located and how it could be activated.

In this letter and hopefully in an ongoing matter, I would like to introduce you to my new project and think together about a potential discursive space as a redirected location for body material. Alongside this exchange, I still would like to ask, as simple as that, what you meant by the marked and the unmarked body.

A Body ThAT CAn’T Be Body


I want to use a quote of foucault to frame the discus-sion. for me, this quote is one of the main references of the work and its process, as it reflects in a interest-ing way how you could relate to the question of the marked and the unmarked.

In The Archaeology of Knowledge & The Discourse on Language foucault said:

…“all manifest discourse is secretly based on an “already-said”; and … this “already-said” is not merely a phrase that has already been spo-ken, or a text that has already been written, but a “never-said”, an incorporeal discourse, a voice as silent as a breath, a writing that is merely the hollow of its own mark. It is supposed therefore that everything that is formulated in discourse was already articulated in that semi-silence that precedes it, which continues to run obstinately beneath it, but which it covers and silences. The manifest discourse, therefore, is really no more than the repressive presence of what it does not say; and this “not-said” is a hollow that under-mines from within all that is said.”

Presently in the field of performance, I struggle with an established discourse – an acceptance of a cultivat-ed image around the notion of body. A marked body, which has become an overshadowing manifestation,

83A Body ThAT CAn’T Be Body

near to a repressive presence of what it does not show. A constructed identity, regardless of its own material-ity, a costume, an involution of its appearance, a hol-low of its own mark.

Is there a possibility to rethink the notion of body in its relation today – and if so where and how would this position it self? Giving voice to the unsaid in order to pick up this established discourse and release it in a different direction towards the unmarked.

When I think and work with the concept of the un-marked body, I’m not pointing towards the binary opposite of the marked, or the unknown outside of body’s demarcations, but rather a lost notion – a cer-tain thinking and believing of a body’s potentiality. Instead of looking for the unmarked as the resolu-tion and the contra movement of a cultivated/marked body, I see the unmarked as a multidimensional ex-istence, almost a belief system, which should be giv-en back a corporeal space to thrive from and to acti-vate its reality.

Is there a way to give a corporal existence to the un-marked and to look into the unsaid to give it its own voice?

In order to come closer to something that could func-tion as an understanding of these questions – research,


rather than a conclusion or a fixed statement, I thought about involving different voices around a current de-velopment in the performing arts and the relation to body. I started a series of intimate conversations, try-ing to envelope my recent ideas and wonderings with-in the statements and positions of the addressed par-ticipant. Creating an encoulage of what has been said and what still has to be addressed, between a exist-ing presence and a potentiality of its being.

These individual interactions on one hand unfold dif-ferent ethics and responsibilities, and on the other build a framework for the addressed matter. The aim is to present a multidimensionality, that is inherent in the material and the subject of the project. Multi-ple layers and facets, that can contradict or harmo-nize, which are impossible to present in one entity, but are activated through the existence of these dif-ferent identities.

What body do we work with today? What is the materiality of this concept?If the marked body is the cultivated image of its didac-tic existence, where would we locate the unmarked?

85

Philipp Gehmacher, an Austrian Choreographer, pre-sent a concept of bodies on stage, which I thought to be quiet interesting and important for the research and the questions mentioned earlier.

he claims for a body’s own expressiveness in op-posite to the reduction of bodies to images.

“The Body I use is a fragile, material body, a bro-ken and uncoordinated body: Just about every-thing that makes up the shadow side of the civil body, the body we wish ourselves and symbolize.”

This physical materiality of bodies is present in his work in stumbling, contracting, torsions and spasms. A language composed around movement that contra-dicts the systematized & controlled we encounter eve-ry day. Gehmacher describes that the body on stage can choose to show in a strictly physical way, and rep-resent through its defaults, its own expressiveness.

With taking these ideas in account, we could say that a body’s corporal quality is its own dysfunction and as such its bodily identity.

In a text of Jeroen Peters on the choreographers work, he questions if the shadow of our everyday cultivat-ed body, is where this expressiveness lies. This re-minded me of you mentioning Avery Gordon and her

“Ghostly Matters” as a way of approaching the concept of absence, and in this way taking an other direction



André lepecki, 18 happenings in 6 Parts (re-doing), 1959/2006hauser der Kunst, Munich, Germany

Allan Kaprow, 18 happenings in 6 Parts, 1959reuben Gallery, new york

87

in thinking about the notion of presence as an attrib-ute of body and performative practice. In this way we could assume that the unmarked is rather a potenti-ality, an unstated presence of body, than a binary op-posite of the marked.

Philipp Gehmacher’s idea of a body’s own expres-siveness; stand opposed to these bodies, that are de-fined by an image, given through the encounters of its environment.

In the book Bodies, Masses, Power: Spinoza and His Contemporaries there is a passage where it says:

…“the body, every body is necessarily composite, composed of smaller bodies, themselves com-posed of other bodies ad infinitum. far from exhibiting a stability of boundaries, bodies are subject to a constant recomposition.” …“the body was devalued precisely be-cause it seemed to condemn the individual to a dependent existence both in relation to nature as a whole and in relation to other human be-ings: the body needs a great many other bodies, human and non-human, to survive.”

In this quote, spinoza accents a change of body and becoming exactly the being, Gehmacher wants to leave behind in his work on stage.



A cultivated body, marked by its own surroundings and its constructed relations between other cultivat-ed bodies. A body, close to an image, an identity re-gardless of its own material existence, surrounded by its own hollow being and so disabled to ever sur-pass its own mark.

In the introduction of Parables for the Virutal (2002) Brian Massumi, talks about the relation of “The Body” to “The subject” as it’s positioning. signifying subjects, to a dominant structure or a system in order to code cultural, social, ethnical etc. differences.

…“Coding in turn came to be thought of in terms if positioning on a grid. The grid was conceived as an oppositional framework of culturally con-structed significations: male versus female, black versus white, gay versus straight, and so on. A body corresponded to a “site” on the grid de-fined by an overlapping of one term from each pair. The body came to be defined by its pinning to the grid. Proponents of this model often cit-ed its ability to link body-sites into a “geography” of culture that tempered the universalizing ten-dencies of ideology.”

Between the body as a constructed image and the “positionality” of its subjecthood on a cultivated grid, in what corporeal environment could we locate an

89

unmarked body? Moving on the extremes of its mown spectrum and creating new relations to establish a discursive landscape of the unsaid.

In the attempt to redirect a discourse and thinking around the notion of body, I find it important to ad-dress the possibility to break the separation between subject- and object-hood and adapt current ideas of an object oriented philosophy into my research.

Michele serres and Bruno latour claim for a con-cept, where the separation between the subject and the object becomes eliminated and in this sense ir-relevant. A notion of objects, which is focused mere-ly on the relations and behaviors it creates – the so called “Quasi-object”:



Taking the idea of the Quasi-object into the event of performance art, performer and objects would meet on equal terms and move onto each other in the cho-reographic plane. These objects that contain physical intelligence and the performer, which is activated by



them, are each mutually quasi-objects to each other. each containing the other, and made true by each oth-er via each other, entirely but only in part.

slightly modifying the concept of serres and latour, could we think of the possibility of a Quasi-Body? Where a set of choreographic entities move within the threshold between natural and unnatural – a hy-brid body endlessly expanding and reconfiguring at the same time – an instantaneous incorporeal trans-formation (after Guattari&deleuze).

In your article Moving as Thing: Choreographic Cri-tiques of the object there is an interesting part, where you explain a difference between the object and a thing. Where the object is an instrument and has a utility in contrary to the thing which has lost its qualities and is so neither a tool nor an instrument nor a utensil.Pairing these thoughts with the Quasi–object or the Quasi-Body, made me wonder if a performative body today, is a pure manipulative being. Giving away its agency, to an obedient expression and an ongoing readiness to be manipulated.

…“If the concept of object (as opposed to the concept of thing) is ontologically tied to instru-mentality, to utility, to usage, to means, then it follows that objects exist in a symmetric rela-tionship regarding subjectivity. In this relation,

91

objects are always “an endless reproduction and confirmation of the manipulative abilities of the subject,“ as silvia Benso has remarked.”

Coming back on the initial question of the marked and the unmarked body, I wonder if the only way we can relocate a notion of body today, is in the thought ex-periment of becoming a body outside of performativ-ity. A paradox, a body which can’t be body, because if it would come back inside the definitions of body, it would erase its own potentiality of being some-thing different.

“It’s fairly well known that for the last thirty years my main work as an artist has been located in activities and contexts that don’t suggest art in any way. Brushing my teeth, for example, in the morning when I’m barely awake; watching in the mirror the rhythm of my elbow moving up and down . . .

The practice of such an art, which isn’t per-ceived as art, is not so much a contradiction as a paradox.

… I decided to pay attention to brushing my teeth, to watch my elbow moving. I would be alone in my bathroom, without art spectators. There would be no gallery, no critic to judge, no



publicity. This was the crucial shift that removed the performance of everyday life from all but the memory of art. I could, of course, have said to myself, “now I’m making art!!” But in actual practice, I didn’t think much about it.”

Art which Can’t be Art 1986, Alan Kaprow

The Ideas and Questions, that wave through this letter and the research of a new directed thinking around the notion of body, was put into eight individual let-ters to eight practitioners that I all have attached to this email.

The individual emails were written to:

Aitana Coredo, yael davids, rick dolphijn,lenio Kaklea, Bruno listopad,nigel rolfe andIbrahim Quraishi

As mentioned in the beginning of my letter, was it my aim to open up a discussion, activating different voic-es around the notion of body, unfolding a multidimen-sionality of the addressed matter.

93

I apologizes for ambushing you with such a long letter, I am sure that this is a very busy period for you, but I still hope to activate a dialogue that could be ongoing.

I am looking forward to read your thoughts on this.

Best,Julia reist



George Brecht Text piece 1960

95A Body ThAT CAn’T Be Body


Colophon

The Corporeal Allocation of B.© Julia reist, 2014

first edition. 2014 Printed and published by lulu.com

special thanks to:Jeremiah runnels for the patience.dimitri reist for the graphic design.Bruno listopad, Aitana Coredo, Ibrahim Quraishi & André lepecki for the inspiration.yael davids, steven Ten Thije and Katarina Zdjelar for the good advice. And the Graduates of MAr 2014 for the support

The Corporeal Allocation of B

Documents