Ce se întâmplă atunci când scriitori și artiști vizuali acompaniază procesul de lucru al unui laborator de practici coregrafice? Daniela Custrin, Mircea Andrei Florea și Matei Dumitriu au urmărit procesul de lucru al unui laborator în care dansatori și performeri au cercetat crearea unui limbaj de mișcare pornind de la sunetele emise de balene pentru a crea performance-ul prezentat în cadrul evenimentului Open lab – Corpuri Sonore.

Scopul general al laboratorului a fost să creeze un cadru de cercetare, experimentare, creație și prezentare publică aflat la intersecția dintre dans contemporan și creația de muzică electronică. Mai mult de atât, alături de artiștii invitați în laboratorul coregrafic, Daniela Custrin, Mircea Andrei Florea și Matei Dumitriu au acompaniat procesul dezvoltând o metodă de scriere performativă bazată pe dinamicile laboratorului și pe particularitățile acestuia. Mai mult decât într-un simplu process de documentare, cei trei au creat o serie de discursuri atât textuale cât și vizuale.

Descoperiți în continuare materialele colective realizate de către cei trei.

I.

First I learned from M how it all started with the whale’s songs. The ghostly elevator voices, the sound of ice thrown into hot water, breathing that starts in the nose and then goes to the stomach, insects – their unpredictable movements, the noise they make, whistling engines, smooth steps.

R told us after about a slow magnetism between bodies that can create micro sculptures in the unfilled space of the encounter. From air and sound and invisible matter. When a body is calling, you have to answer. When a body is answering, you have to connect to their answer. At the same time the sound tries to penetrate into the somatic. Sound is waiting on hold at the entrance of your system. The whale song is evolving very slowly. Bodies have time to walk and push water backward with the hands in order to step forward. Translating the sound with your eyes, your belly, your spine. Lateral, transversal movements. First you come into space with your ear, and the eye will follow. Find a mate, find two, let the rhythm of the waves move you for a while, reach a climax, then bounce back, refract and fall asleep. Into the sea (you) are returned, to live your loneliness.¹

Through absorbing the impulses created by sounds I started to pay more attention. The siren sound, the dot dot dots of text messages, a kid blowing air with a straw into a glass of water, lights buzzing, fridge popping, pouring detergent on a sponge has never been louder, my house is hissing, cracking, humming. My cat did that ekekekkekkek sound to some birds in the morning. I found myself in the middle of the Mărășești Boulevard imitating the sound of whales. BLOoP.

the RoAlert emergency sound right before the Whales piece announcing HEAVY TORRENTIAL RAIN. Avoid any travel and take shelter!

The Whales piece eases you in with a series of patterns that are undoing the way we are used to perceive sound. The sound in a permanent state of becoming and creation of itself. A sound that disappears and reappears. Lighter. Heavier. It’s like a contradiction within your body that can’t anticipate the following movement. And because of that you’re trying to embody the resonance, the remains, the scraps and reject the stability, the togetherness. Patterns and repetition are creating a kind of intimacy over time. It provokes thinking about water, about the feeling of descending into the immensity of it. The ocean filled with sounds and vibrations. Willing to just listen and remain in flux forever. When humpback whales decide to travel, they either do it by themselves or in transient groups of two or three. So the three dancers intertwine and plug to each other, forming a triangle that gets smaller and smaller.

Movements generated by the sound that are generated by the waves that are generated by contradictions, glitches and dysfunctions. And when the performer is not moving, the wave can happen inside, somewhere. The stomach dances the sound. The throat dances a sound. You already dwelt into the water and now all you have to do is to get familiar with every part of your body. To locate the emotional weather and release it physically. In a wave, outside.

We know that the humpback whale population it’s declining, so the process of storing and embodying their sounds seems like a remaking of human condition. This state of imitation and echoing the sound can signify a fossilization of experience² within body relations. So the Whales it’s not just a performance that results in a significant transformation of the body, but also a mode of evolving-with-the-sound, resembling 4ever the enactment of whales traces of communication.

—

¹ Luce Irigaray

² Lygia Clark

II. WAVE

a rolling or undulatory movement or one of a series of such movements passing along a surface or through the air

an undulating or jagged line constituting a graphic representation of an action

a disturbance or variation that transfers energy progressively from point to point in a medium and that may take the form of an elastic deformation or of a variation of pressure, electric or magnetic intensity, electric potential, or temperature

a moving ridge or swell on the surface of a liquid something that swells and dies away

a surging movement of a group a peak or climax of activity

a surge of sensation or emotion

an undulating line or streak or a pattern formed by such lines

a movement that starts from the center and passes in the same principled manner through the whole body

something that starts from the belly

a pattern repeating itself over and over repeating itself

something that has the same structure whether it is a gas, liquid or solid

the result of a pulse

III.

What humans share with whales is the capacity to communicate through articulated, structured language. Whales contract their chest and throat, causing air to flow. They do not exhale in order to produce their songs. One song can last up to 30 minutes and be repeated over the course of hours and days. In what other way can we, humans, relate to their voice—but vibrate? By pure thought

one cannot

distinguish

their anger from a cry

their boredom

from joy

in order to

understand

one must discover

another—one curious

alien to humans noise

one attracted

to the waves

the trembling shiver

one with patience

to receive

one that shyly

fills the space

&wonders

&wanders

&feels intention

in

the songs one

that feels lonely &desires

one that echoes, feels the echo

in the whale song

echoes from whale songs convey

not only the distance, but also size

shape, texture of the echoing body what humans and whales share

one

is axial symmetry. We—skulls and spines, nerves cast in bones, are organized as a progression of alternating curves. From the top of our skull, until the inferior extremities. The role of spinal curves is to absorb  sonic vibrations in

the whale structure of our bones

Produse culturale realizate în cadrul proiectului Corpuri Sonore, co-finanțat de Administrația Fondului Cultural Național. Proiectul nu reprezintă în mod necesar poziţia Administrației Fondului Cultural Național. AFCN nu este responsabilă de conținutul proiectului sau de modul în care rezultatele programului pot fi folosite. Acestea sunt în întregime responsabilitatea beneficiarului finanțării.