Sunday 24 April 2022, 16.00, Norsk Teknisk Museum
Transcribed by Phil Loring
Carla: So, welcome, everybody! We are at the collection of fluid spaces, a collection within a collection, of the National Medical Gallery of the Teknisk Museum in Oslo, and I’m very happy to introduce the speakers, the host and guests, of this long project and involving performances and workshops, talks, seminars.
We have Olive, choreographer and dancer, founder with Otto of BodyCartography Project; the dancers, Hanna, Kristina, Gry; and we have musician and composer Bernt; and curator of the National Medical Gallery Phil. So, just to mention that this collection is also the the fruit of a collective which is behind, around, so: Carle, scenographer; Agnethe, lighting designer; [Olive: Katja, illustrations, and yourself] and myself, who has been a kind of fellow traveller; [Olive: and Kristine, costume design] and we have Thomas, in a multitask supporting structure.
First of all, I wanted to try out how to weave together this collection within a collection. So, how this project took form. How did you did you meet, Phil and Olive? And how did this collection came to be temporarily part of this permanent exhibition within the museum?
Olive: Do you want to start, or shall I?
Phil: You start.
Olive: OK. So, I I wrote to the museum, I wrote to the staff at the museum, the curators, and I was interested in trying to find a home in which this project could unfold, and at that time you didn’t, your medical museum was really a series of kind of panels of of text and photos, right, in this space, it was really something else. And it was a brown tiled floor, and it was not a very engaging space. Right? And when had that been designed?
Phil: It was designed in 2002, when the museum was founded, and it wasn’t changed a bit since that point, so it had overstayed its welcome, by a long shot.
Olive: OK, so my email got a response, and that was very exciting. And that response was from Henrik, who wrote back and said, yeah, come in, let’s talk, actually. And so, I did, I came in and I and I talked and I found out that the four of you were, Henrik, Phil, Ellen, and Ageliki, were actually in the process of redesigning the spaces, the gallery spaces, and so we started a conversation. And I’ll hand it now to you to maybe talk from there, does that sound okay, right?
Phil: I can try, see. So, yeah, so producing an exhibition is as collective an affair as producing a performance is. And so, we had a team that was dedicated to trying to transform this space. We had a designer from from Denmark who was responsible for the visual impression of things. And it took us a long time to develop a concept for the space and as as we were developing our concept of the space you were developing your concept of this exhibition [performance], and so they were in some degree of communication with each other, although never, I don’t think they ever we ever directly linked the two projects. They just they they each kind of developed along their own in parallel.
Olive: And we also had to deal with the pandemic, and so there were also delays, both in the opening of this space, like understanding the design, and the opening of this space, and both in our capacity to have access to the space. Because the initial idea had been, we would be in residence in here working on the piece, but we actually didn’t get to get in here until January this year, so, yeah.
Carla: OK, and I mean, what I find interesting in this encounter, because just to say it again, the project “a collection of fluid spaces” is a project about embryology, I mean, it’s, Olive, you write, “a radical embryology laboratory,” and I thought what is striking in visiting the exhibition, the permanent exhibition, is to have so much clearly evident this conjunction of the history of western biology, and the making of the modern body, with the history of embryology as modern discipline, because in a way there is this date 1850, that seems the age when the mummy was found in Norway, which is a little bit the center of, like the heart of the exhibition, and it’s very interesting because it is like replaying the the also our heritage of the western modernity with all the problems and challenges that it we we realize today, the making of the individual body, the very notion of individual, and it’s really striking how it become so concrete, it’s not an abstract machine, but it’s a very concrete machine, all these conjunction of material processes and discourses, and so in a way it’s really how Foucault, in the in the Order of Things, would evoke the the birth of biology, modern biology, as the fragmentation of the cosmos and the wrapping life within individual organisms for further study inside. But I would like to open the question what is the experience of dancing embryology for the dancers, for the body, for the process itself? I don’t know who wants to?
Kristina: So we’ve had a couple of delays, so it’s been a longer project, an ongoing project with spaces in between, and well certainly for me it’s been many-faceted in the way that it is very healing and fundamental material to go into, find it’s kind of bathing in this original, grounding, juicy, healing material, and then on the other hand this challenge of making it specific, for a performance, like, because on one hand, it is so overwhelming, all the information, and within a few days a lot of the [interrupted]
Gry: [microphone not working right]
Otto: [microphone not working right] … But as we went on I think it’s what seems to me a very delicate procedure to pay attention to and to move with things that are invisible yet also and therefore, invisible in the sense that you’re not seeing the same body structure and also invisible in the sense that things that are very patterned or repeated or are not very apparent sometimes, forgotten, like the sensation of wearing your clothes, but after a while I guess because we started we did the first kind of test performance in 2018… and before that we had another group of people that we worked with at a museum in Minnesota, for a summer with, so it’s been a long time, and in the process it’s come to actually be like a little bit like the opposite feeling for me, but instead of something that is delicate that you have to protect, it’s a very strong and durable source, that you could always have something that you can play with, dance, as well as, I mean, then comes what is fun is to be danced, you know, that is maybe not happening all the time, that’s a more special thing, but that’s also so so that it’s different levels of, yeah, on all hands. You know, like choreographic and dance concerns that are passing and forcing and it turned out to be a lot more durable than… [inaudible].
Hanna: [microphone not working right]
Carla: [Asks basically the same question to musician Bernt. Improvising and all that.] How have you been following the process? How has embryology been playing you?
Bernt: Yeah, it’s been a very long process… [inaudible]. This year. And then we didn’t meet again until the day before the premiere. So it was a bit, like, hard to get into, in the sense that you feel like you have to sort of start over again every time because so much time has passed. And I don’t think I have the same way of, like, embodying the concept or the embryology. I mean I don’t have that natural connection that the dancers had so I guess my approach was to have a more, work with sort of like, connect, try to connect the sound to, like, bodily function or how we perceive sound and what kind of effect it has. And and it’s also like always a balance between like using very kind of like obvious sounds like heartbeats or womb sounds or whatever and and it’s very kind of like all movements are very kind of slow and fluid and all of that and so it’s very easy to be dragged towards that. Just like underlie that that droney, flowy, fluid whatever thing. So the biggest challenge I guess is to sort of try to contrast that or break it up or like to add something to break it up a bit and not just go along with this the natural flow of things. But yeah, I mean, the, it’s sort of like two part also, there’s the things that are happening in here which it’s very much improvised, and it’s quite different every every day, which I enjoy, some days it works great, others it’s more like, today was more searching but I kind of enjoyed that as well, it it never manages to manifest, and I guess you can see that as a way of like how we try to build and create something together, it’s nice. And then for the parts that are out there in the space, it’s more sort of taking concepts from psychoacoustics in terms of how we perceive sound, which is not necessarily measurable but how different kind of sounds yeah create different psychoacoustic effects. So sort of to keep it connected to the the body and the humanness and trying to not be too like obvious. I mean, there have to be some heartbeats and womb sounds of course, but but just not all the time. Yeah.
Carla: So Olive, I would like to to hear from you, from your experience with embryology, and maybe also going back to what Otto mentioned: this encounter with something, with forces that are actually more durable than fragile. I think it’s key to unfold.
Olive: Thank you, Carla. It’s also a feeling of trying to not, trying to, within this feeling of of a force unfolding, that it can kind of wash everything away, or you know like it can obliterate your own capacity for detail or what others are doing or, you know like, because the feeling inside can be so bold sometimes when you’re really engaged in something. Like you’re just like blooeeeh, and I have these moments for example up here now, where I’m coming down the carpet at the end of the performance and I just we’ve been I feel like these moments where we’ve been playing so much with being migrating cells, for example, and and this constant kind of haptic interaction with the environment and with each other and and and so this constant kind of appetite of moving towards something based on these points of contact and then we get in here and it’s like we we just have to go and sometimes the things are beyond what you’re physically, you know, what is physically safe, you know, where you’re like OK, this is happening now! And we, so far we have survived. And it doesn’t even look, I don’t even think from the outside it’s so extreme or radical, but it’s like there’s something about the volume of the sensation inside that is creating this like hwwoood that just has to keep going. And that I find that interesting, because I feel like it doesn’t have sometimes it doesn’t have subtlety or it doesn’t have shape or it doesn’t have a kind of distinctiveness from the outside even, but I feel it when I’m in certain aspects of the material. And so I wonder how to make, I’m still wondering how to make a dance with it. Because it’s doing this thing this very interesting thing it’s shifting your presence, it’s shifting your relationship to space, but it’s not necessarily shaping very intricate specific movement in the body, for example – it could be, but not all the time, and so it becomes as much about this composing of your own kind of performative volume, in a way, or or your own, and. And then I think also because we’ve been working with language as well, that the the movement is one aspect but vibration in general is kind of underlying everything, and whether it gets articulated as movement or as word or as sound or as collective movement through space. That this manifesting of these different forces kind of washes through at different levels. I don’t know if I’m really getting to answer your question, but I think I think that’s my response right now.
Carla: Maybe just to draft some aspects of the embryology, within dance, maybe you have been mentioning forces and kind of urge, surge, of forces. I guess there are also what Konrad Obermeier, that was our guest lecturer, evoked as metabolic fields, so, processes of biodynamics, biokinetics, opening directions, dimensions, [Olive: “scales”] scales, pressure, tensions, densation, contusion: I wonder, what is this language, or this languaging, for dance, on one side, and on the other side, what has been the image source of inspiration, I mean, more than inspiration, I would say almost as you are used to do, map-reading, or cartography, following diagrams, images, and, so how these processes of being able to read maps, let’s say, have been playing in all the, throughout all the research. Also because there is this very interesting moment where you take images from books, textbooks of embryology, and you lecture the image, and you dance the lecture. So, can you say something more about that, because it’s also a kind of somatic tool.
Olive: I think the the even, I think this this conjuring that happens or this, this, I get the map of the image, I’m trying to read it and interpret it, and if I start to describe it to you I’m already maybe embodying part of that image inside my body, even if I don’t understand all of the details of it, and as I give language to it I can also get a little more specific, or I can create a bridge for you into my body, and I think, yeah, as an educator, right, within the somatic field, within Body-Mind Centering, this is something we do all the time, right, so to to do it with our audiences in this context feels like it‘s a kind of revealing of our methodology, and then also a kind of a yeah seduction into different places inside our bodies, inside our embryological experience, but it also is giving people tools to read the images themselves. And this slippage that then happens as I speak and I feel the vibration of the speaking and I get into the embodiment of what it is that I’m describing, is also a very generative source then for dancing. And I think that’s what Otto and Kristina were kind of speaking to, this taking over, that the dance starts to just unfold itself, and that may not have anything to do with the image after a while, right, you’re it just keeps on going. So I think this conversation between science and physical practice comes into play, it’s like, it’s like how we’re trying to make a bridge to this space we’re in, with all these medical images and all these medical objects, right, that we’re trying to find a way in, to find a kind of moving through, to kind of bring a kind of a process back into these fixed objects in a way, or a liveliness, right, that we could use not only the pictures that we’ve provided, but we could use anything in the museum and kind of embryologize it, and what is that process of feeling something’s past and future.
Otto: You go, Phil.
Phil: I wanted to ask the dancers if you remember, years ago now, we went and we went backstage at the museum and we looked at all those organs in jars and fetuses in jars and embryos in jars, all I remember thinking was that you guys were totally unimpressed [Kristina: “Un-impressed? Oh, wow, okay”], yeah, so I’m I’m very curious to hear what was going on in your minds when you when we went to that that storage room and explored what was there, just just to hear more about what you were thinking when you saw those things that were here in the museum.
Kristina: Otto, do you want to go first?
Otto: No, mine’s a, I’ll come later.
Kristina: So, a couple of words on that, and then back to the images as well. I was not, for me speaking, I was not unimpressed, I was kind of stunned. And I remember really feeling that when we brought them out and looked at them, especially the embryos and the fetuses that were whole kind of persons, that they were very present in the room. And I felt stunned by by feeling that the room became full of their present presence and full of their full of their souls. So that’s what I went home with that day.
Just quickly with the images, I feel like when when I look at the images, part of me is trying to make sense of it, and with more or less success every time, but my body remembers how it what the movement of the image is, so I think for us this unsticking the image and making it a process rather than something that happened. And then the body remembers the movement that makes the image and then it just wants to repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat. And and also in that way I feel like this whole process has the contradiction of the driving force and love and receiving. So it’s like this force that wants to become something that it already is, and then it’s receiving all the support for doing it, and those two things coexisting for me it’s been, and really fun to play with what words then then will come, and sounds, how to explain but from an embodied sensation.
Otto: Yeah, I think there is a kind of very big tension and sadness with having to rely on dead representations, you know. [Olive: “the pictures all are dead, basically”] Yeah, mostly the technology that we have to represent most anatomy and embryology is based on you know dead dead bodies, and I remember you know the the draw the actual illustrations are in a sense more lively than the actual jar preservation things, because they’ve been put through an artistic process, in a way, you know, like to be [Olive: “as a photograph”] as as a photograph, and then you know either the Lennart Neisson staged with lighting, or with Doctor Netterer just the painting, the hand, you know, the making of the painting, and the the raw you know preserved in chemical embryo is is very intense and just the stillness, you know. And I remember also we were we looked at all the ages of all the of all the the specimens and we were like, Oh there actually isn’t any embryos here, they’re all fetuses, you know, that was the the interesting part too. We were like, we were really excited, obviously, to look at actual [Olive: “fetuses”] you know, because we’d been relying on, I mean at the first museum we were at we had a series of 3D-printed embryos and fetuses that they had made before they destroyed, before they were supposed to destroy their medical collection, for various political reasons, so yeah, I remember that and then just the you know it yeah it’s sort of sad, I’m waiting for the technology to improve. I want to see a time-lapse of a live embryo development. I think that would be really, really helpful.
There was something else that I wanted to, just also oh just to link a little bit with the the kind of notion of artmaking and the sublime, you know, the beauty and awe and also I think the the other part of it is the kind of, the the in that idea of the sublime the kind of terror of the all-encompassing nature, but also in this I guess it’s the the deadness that we have to rely on, and I kind of you know in your text Phil you also beautifully alluded to that, just that you know in the the Latin: This is where the dead delight to help the living. You know, that’s it’s nice, but I mean I don’t think they really do, delight, you know, but it’s there’s just a lot of tension there, somehow. And just the the at a certain point, we did a workshop very early on, here, and in a conversation with one of the participants we came up with an idea like, dancing is another form of medical imaging. You know that could be you know a different kind offers a different kind of fidelity or a different kind of proposition.
Anyone else? No?
Carla: So maybe I I would just like to resonate with something that Kristine was offering about the memories of the body and the the the the memory of the body of dancers, by the way. I was reminded of a beautiful text written by the philosopher and psychoanalyst Suely Rolnik, about the work of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark. She talks of the body’s contagious memory, and the work of this kind of, how can I say, how the body-contagious memory can reenter the museum. And it’s very in a way there are many threads of different memories, as as soon as we conceive of the museum as already an archive of representations or exposing like layers and layers of, in this case, how bodies have been made, literally, conceived, framed, spoken, and and so I was wondering about these two, or many, competing or colliding memories, because I like what Kristina you said that by repeating over and over the image you are actually undoing it, and it is almost as if you are what Suely would say to vomit the the ghosts which are stuck in this body archives that we are, because we incorporate we embody we swallow so many conscious and unconscious framing of bodies, how we how we have been educated to to be, somehow, how we have been educated to resemble to. So, I’m I’m interested in this kind of slippage between image and possibility of actually getting out of a certain form, versus, and that’s more like maybe a probative(?) question for us, within the somatic field, do we, by playing with images of our tradition, are we really finding a way out or are we confirming a certain biomedical paradigm. So, and this is a question for everybody.
Olive: I’m curious what Phil’s response is.
Phil: I’m, I won’t answer first. [laughter]
Otto: I I don’t know if this is a direct answer, but in a, there’s a companion project that we’re working on called Resisting Extinction, and that one has to do more with environmental degradation and species loss and the kind of possibility of grieving your own extinction and how would you do that with your with your body and with with other human beings and other species and how to you know exchange, and we did one time in the process of rehearsing that we did a round of talking about situations that you feel scared or you know hard challenging situations in your life and then what do you do to resolve them. Just people different people you know sharing about what when they feel unease and what do they do, how do they choreograph their response, or what is the you know it’s it’s like you know for instance passport control for a dancer from Africa that lives in Oslo, even just going to openings at Dansens Hus and having to socialize with the other people, and you know, and what was striking is that no one mentioned bears or sharks or other you know those are scary things, but on the top of everyone’s mind is the interaction with other other humans, because I think that in in what you’re talking about the kind of recapitulation of of un-useful paradigms and a dissectionist model is that we have almost no way out of that, and the the links to just the seeing the representation of deadness you know and trying to enliven it, I think it’s yeah it’s it’s just the the unconscious nature of that recapitulation is very difficult, so maybe the putting consciousness into unconscious processes and also valuing a kind of consciousness that is not neo-cortical, that is not tracking or mapping, you know, that is not choreographing but dancing, could be, I mean that’s that’s the fun way for me, out of that bind, you know, and and in a in a certain sort of sense like
Olive: Letting the body take a lead, once it’s going, and and trusting that it’s that it’s making choices that my cortical like conscious nervous system designing can follow, or not follow, but that that’s coming later. Is that what you mean?
Otto: Yes and no. And you know like in this in this section in what we what we share with our work too, and like the interplay, like for instance this this last section or last period of time in the show when we’re in this room together, with Bernt and the sound and the scenography and everything, and there are times when I I’ve thought like I I miss sometimes watching someone learn something, you know just very focused, like the in the in the rehearsal process I mean the percentage of time that we spent looking at the material and trying to learn the actual things, what the percentage was very high to the actual time of making the dance part of it, you know, the choreography part of it, so and I and at a certain I also found that very frustrating at some points, like this is you know why do we have to go over why do we have to learn everything you know, I mean obviously we haven’t learned everything but [laughter], you know, go through everything, but at the same time it’s also very beautiful to see someone inscribing an image into their into their body, into their into their you know their whole body schema you know, you know the image-making of their self, and then the unknown gaps that are present in that very very precious and yeah just that the the tension between the this what we do with signs as just, air quotes, “just dance,” you know, like and also the the really specific you know rendering of what of learning I think there’s a kind of both of those are are so useful at different times and and how much do you need to know to do what you’re doing, you know, and how yeah it’s also a little bit about how much you yeah what you care about, and you know.
Olive: Can I, can I ask Phil a question? I’m curious Phil, is that alright? Oh, Gry wants to say something first?
Gry: Yeah, just adding a bit to this, I’m not sure if I’m answering directly, but something interesting for me about this with memory and also with time, like you know sometimes it’s like okay when we are looking at the images and we are doing the explaining and you know there’s there’s more like a direct time, you know I’m with that image, and we are together with that image and it’s happening something in inside of me. But then there’s also all these times when I’m in, it’s like you have started off some processes, and you know once they are going they are kind of going, and it’s like so it’s something just to kind of lean into it a little bit or yield into it, and then suddenly I there is images more or like spaces in the body that you know calls for the attention, and then there are these images or something that has been said and these words come back to me or these images like kind of these images appear inside of me somehow so I kind of there is this kind of meeting in my body and in the movement or in the energy or the forces that kind of feels as if there is a kind of meeting with some images, and then you know passing through or moving on and not staying, it’s not like, kind of, I don’t need to hold onto it, but it’s just, yeah, and I guess that’s kind of memory, of also things that happens just before or during or was yesterday or you know was two months ago or yeah years ago.
Hanna: Yeah, I thought this image and reading and then entering and also describing or sharing while not understanding is I think it is the reason why I entered BodyCartography’s class, in a way, because it I think it spoke a bit to this, how a loop or how like unknown is triggering other unknown, or like what I understand gives potential for something else that I want to understand, and this, and I don’t how or where and what informs what, because it turns into this interesting mess that I think is very useful. So it has been times on some images that I can’t work with, because it’s triggering other things that I don’t know that goes too too far, and then this, the being danced by or understanding more and more during this process, how how other parts of my body or in embryology is hosting the light or something warm or other processes going at the same time, and that’s why the complexity is so interesting and so important. Because then I might if I enter the material again, through an image or a text, then it has potential to opening for something else. But it all depends on how how far I or something is willing to see the parallel processes going on at the same time. And that’s what I think, it feels like a choice, and if I’m tired it’s not so easy, but it’s with this going, to repeat the same the same or or expand, it’s part of the work, yeah, yeah, that’s why it’s interesting.
Kristina: Just quickly about confirming or cleansing or vomiting, that you used. I I feel like it depends very much on which part of you are looking at the image, almost like which hemisphere is looking at the image, and whether it’s an act of separation, or whether it’s something that connects. And I often feel like the images that excite me the most, or that make me move, is when I see, Ha! We look like trees. Or, the this organ has two leaves. Or so that for me it’s very often about the the poetry, the shape that moves the body, and the the connection to other beings or connection to nature or or looking like the sky of stars or like this is this way of looking at it is what opens the dance for it. So I’m sure that that there possibility for yeah for separating or connecting or confirming and cleansing or opening yeah.
Bernt: Yeah, I’ve just been thinking when everybody’s been talking now, back to your question about how embryology plays me. It’s I think the fact is I don’t have this intimate relationship to the material that the dancers have, and I can’t really have it, because I have to relate to all of them, like, you can choose to just focus on this one picture, and for me it’s more differ of course everyone is relating to everything else, but you are more free to like focus on your go into yourself in a way. And I don’t have that liberty in the same sense, I’m in a way more like you in the audience, that you have to like see the whole thing and and also all of these images and the whole kind of field of embryology is not sort of so directly to me it’s more through the their interpretations, so there’s like some levels of of abstractions for me. So I I don’t have this, like, really don’t have this bodily connection to the to the very direct and concrete things, but but more yeah interpreted by these adult bodies, which are not embryos any more.
Olive: Can I ask you, Phil, I know the museum is closing, and we’re supposed to be leaving right now, but I still have one question for you, and maybe Carla does too. And that is just, this process of us kind of learning, like learning the museum, learning about the information, you know learning about how to be here, over time, and and building a relationship to the other objects and the and the you know the the spaces and also the staff, and the kind of range of what that is, you know, the ease and the difficulty of that process. And I’m curious for you, just from your arc, because you’ve been in here so much with us, so you’ve also been learning, we’ve been learning, but you’ve also been learning, and so I’m curious, first there was some kind of learning I perceived in your reading of like the dancing, like there was a learning about dance that happened, but I was also curious if there was also a learning about embryology, or just like what is the effect of us being in your gallery spaces? What is it that we’re doing to you or what is it that you think we’re doing to this space and to the people in this space?
Phil: Fascinating question. As Olive mentioned, the museum is closing, so what that means effectively is you’ll need to stay here with me [laughter], because I’m the one who can let you out. So, you’re trapped for the next few minutes, while I try to think of an answer to this.
Well, I I I resonate with a lot of what Bernt was just saying. That this is this is something that I don’t understand on the same level as as the dancers understand. And I’ve always felt that was an important critical distance that I have and that that that made me more of a, not a better audience member, but a more a more a more accurate audience member, as far as what what kind of people you might be encountering in the museum. Because there are a few people in the audience who are well versed in Body Mind Centering and who are dancers themselves and who are engaged at the same level of depth that you guys are, but only a few, and and I expect that many more of the people are are wondering what they’re seeing, and trying to understand what it is that they’re making sense of. And I think probably the museum is in that same position, wondering kind of what this weird project is, and wondering how to publicize it, and wondering how to even announce it to the audience on a given day. There’s very very basic things about how this fits in with the ambience of the museum that don’t necessarily make sense, that that aren’t very clear, to me or to you or to anybody involved, and I’ve I wanted to keep that space available, I wanted to make make there be a room here in the museum for something which maybe didn’t make sense within the museum’s own categories, and that was probably the hardest thing. And I think it it lead it has led to various tensions in in the project and in in in making the project happen, but I don’t see another way to make that happen. And the the the children getting accidentally swallowed up by the dance is still my my real kind of visual image of of what this is all about: that that they for a moment see something that they never would have expected to see, and never can’t quite understand, but that it is, it has been choreographed, it has been like people have taken the steps to to decide exactly what they wanted to present to people, in that sense it’s been choreographed, even though it’s it’s all improvisatory. And and the fact that somebody has gone through that process of trying to make sense of it is what is important. You’re right, I went through my own process of trying to make sense of it as well, and I haven’t got there yet. I I still don’t feel like I know what you guys are doing. But that’s okay, I think that that having that separation like I said is healthy. So, that’s all.
Carla: So maybe I think that we need to wrap it up now, here. I don’t know if we can pick up, I don’t know, a question or a comment from the friends that are here with us, can we?
Otto: That’s a question to Phil.
Phil: We’ve got a few minutes.
Carla: OK, so maybe I I just come closer with the mike.
Audience (Eric): I felt that the the intro text was a very powerful and haunting reminder that that what we were about to dip our toes into was until recently forbidden knowledge, and something that my parents’ generation probably never had a chance to spend one minute thinking about. So it was such an opportunity to to even peek into that world. I thought that that the soundscape gave me the feeling of what it would be like to be so tiny and experience all the vibrations coming into this this enormity that you’re growing into. And something the dancers didn’t get a chance to see yet is the look of delight on the faces of the audience as this biomass morphs and starts to climb, slide up over the stairs and back in. So I spent at least half the time watching people watch you. So.
Audience (Corinne?): I have a lot to say but I know that we don’t have so much time, but, okay, no, but I was just thinking what you said about not making sense. And I think also for me as a choreographer and a dancer I don’t make sense of what they’re doing. And I think we have sometimes a very much a head like a loop that we need to make sense of things, and I mean as the dancers you described that you don’t know what you’re, you know, this process of embryology’s so much about not knowing, so, I think that also opens up for the audience to not make sense, like it would also be weird if the audience would make sense of something that the dancers themselves doesn’t, so I think that’s just a beautiful kind of thing. And for me, seeing the dance was like, I also think about it as embryology and dance, because it’s a performance and dance has it’s own kind of history and everything, but, it was like looking at dance with new eyes, somehow. And also within the context of embryology of course you you look at it in that sense, and you’re like oh my god, so funny, you can yeah you can jump, actually, oh, that’s great, wow, and she can jump so high! Like you you get like this kind of like a little bit like Scott was talking about this like re-experience like wonder or like re-seeing something or something, which is like oh, wow, you know like as if when you’re seeing a tree or something you’re like Wha! Look how beautiful, or something like that, I got kind of like got those things.
So that was one thing, but then I was just wondering a little bit like how you worked together, like are you the one who are initiating, like choreographing, and then yeah, that’s a little bit how it works, so if, how do you like do you, because you were talking about like parallel processes, like do you invite that, or do you let that just come, or like how do you kind of like work with that, yeah.
Olive: It feels like a whole talk, and maybe we could have another talk where we dive into that, but just to say super-quick, Phil actually wrote that text, in the beginning of the performance, also, and he wrote it like last week, and it was it just landed and it was basically perfect, so I just also want to acknowledge, like it was what we needed and it just kind of, I gave him a kind of a score, and then he just wrote to that, basically, wrote this thing. And and just to say that you know Otto and I have been working together for a long time making work, I I guess this was my fault, the project was my fault, but I think everybody’s ongoing kind of investment and contribution is how we’ve managed to generate this series of structures, or time, that we’ve spent together and for sure I think because of the process of the learning and then the stepping away and going how do we make a dance with this, and then coming back and learning more and then stepping away, that that everybody’s personal kind of unravelings or parallel processes have been deeply a part of the work the whole time, and continue to be, and I think as we keep working, which I hope we have the opportunity to do, that they can become also more spoken or more articulated as part of the process. So, yeah, yeah.
Carla: I think that there is a question from somebody attending on Zoom. Maybe we can just pick it up? Just one.
Olive: One last question, yes great.
Carla: Anja, welcome, if you want to speak, we cannot see you, but.
Anja Bornsek: Yes, I would just like to thank you for giving me this opportunity. I’m on Zoom so my experience was a bit different, but I just wanted to share something to this talk because I would really like to encourage this kind of collaborations in the future, and even though we were talking about meaning or trying to understand something, I would just like to say that, for me, how this performance started, in which space it started, on the table, touching the body, and talking about embryology, created such a powerful impact, and sometimes I feel like we forget that people are imaginative, creative, poetic beings, and just by creating sometimes juxtapositions between things that are otherwise hard to find language with one another, like just creating this juxtaposition we create an experience for people that is so powerful, it it can happen in a few seconds but it can open up the whole world. So I would really like to just yeah say and encourage, even if we don’t have answers for meaning, let’s collaborate, let’s share spaces, let’s foster this kinds of dialogs, and let’s think about spaces in which we share information and who shares information, so thank you so much, really, it was wonderful.
Olive: Beautiful ending, thank you.
Carla: Thank you, everybody, and yeah the performance will will be online again in the next days?
Olive: Yes, the performance is online again, and there’s more workshops coming up and more talks. So, to be continued from Wednesday onwards, so check your schedule and come back. Thank you!
Carla: Thank you, goodbye!
