Notes

Measuring the greed in our goals “For once on the face of the earth,let’s not speak in any language;let’s stop for one second,and not move our arms so much..”– Pablo Neruda How nice it was to open today with one of my favorite poems. The excerpt mentioned above is what I constantly repeat to myself, a reminder to just stand still when I’m too absorbed, impatiently looking for answers. As the various interpretations came in, I gained more perspective. “Maybe we don’t walk in each other’s shoes but we can walk alongside each other” Fayaz added. We can take the time to understand each other without having to completely place ourselves in the other person’s world. There is much life we miss and not absorb when all we know is where we want to go. How many times have I deliberately chosen to listen? “victories with no survivors..” Iason mentioned in the poem. How easy it can be to forget the effects of our gains. Not to say all our wins have repercussions, but it’s being conscious of knowing what we effect as to reach our goals. The ignorance of loved ones, of our land environment. When was the last time it was measured? With technology creeping up quite quickly, it scares me with how I can keep up. Machinesarecreatingart, when we haven’t even yet fully fathomed how it all began. Art always held a strong purpose, and the artist even more alongside its process, with its extreme practice of the craft. Originalworksbecame scarce, in sound, color, structure, paintings…etc. When did we decide in our evolution of higher learning to let go of purpose; to be ok with a quick experience no matter its source? I am not against machines, AI or listening to cover songs as long as you are not forging my experience. Be honest with me, and allow me to decide what experience I would prefer. There will always be replicated, and just like Beltracchi’s work (where barely any difference can be noticed with the originals)a one on one experience with Picasso is offered, but without the honesty, therefore you cannot deny that the emotional connection will be altered no matter the perfection of the work.

Open Doors My work has been totally introspective. I have learned from me. I have heard all the noises and creaks of this house. I have integrated all its objects, its corners, its silences, its darkness, its rays of light. After having let in the sunlight through the windows, cleaning the space and recognizing that all these corners belong to me, today I feel that I want to open the doors. My guests will enter this space and discover this house as it is. I´ll put myself in an open position because I was the one who decided to invite them. When each one enters my house I would like them to feel comfortable, in a warm and friendly space but I know there will be rooms and spaces I would rather prefer no to be showing, there will be others that I will feel totally confident and grateful to be be on them, as there will be others we will need to do some adjustments depending on how many and who we are in it. However, I have some certainty of how incredible this experience is going to be. Incredible not as like we will be in a contact joy, because for sure there are going to be moments that I do not like, but knowing that my house will be enriched with what each one brings with themselves. A simple entry to lay the foundations of this invitation: “Now we will count to twelveand we will keep still.For once on the face of the earth,Let’s not speak in any language;Let’s stop for one second,And not move our arms so much.It would be a fragrant momentWithout rush, without engines;We would all be togetherIn a sudden uneasiness.Fishermen in the cold seaWould not harm whalesAnd the man gathering saltWould look at his hurt hands.Those who prepare green wars,Wars with gas, wars with fire,Victories with no survivors,Would put on clean clothesAnd walk about with their brothersIn the shade, doing nothing.What I want should not be confusedWith total inactivity.Life is that which you do;I want nothing to do with death.If we were not so single-mindedAbout keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves with death,perhaps the earth can teach uswhen everything seems deadand then everything was alive.Now I´ll count up to twelveAnd you keep quiet and I will go.”– Keeping quiet by Pablo Neruda

Der Kolk states: “We now know that trauma compromises the brain area that communicates the physical, embodied feeling of being alive.” Just as the brain is able to create physiological changes and new neurological pathways in the body from trauma, artists/dancers are able to manifest new work or choreographic material from their lived experiences. On the topic of artificial intelligence and the art being produced by machines~ I question where our value is being placed. For me, I do not believe in art. Instead, I believe in artists, as Marcel Duchamp once eloquently put it. For example, the agentive lived experience of the body in dance, the human element in art making and craftsmanship raises some deeply philosophical questions and ontological perspectives on the state of art, culture and authenticity in our world today. After a morning of discussing topics surrounding machine generated art we perhaps somewhat ironically ventured out on a nature walk through fields and groves of trees, finally ending up at the edge of a lake where we all shared a meal together in the grass. Food for thought!

We are flagging. Late nights writing up our blogs, inordinate amounts of coffee, serious sleep debts, and powerful readings leading to challenging questions to the group and to ourselves are beginning to take their toll. It is appropriate that today’s readings begin with ‘Keeping Quiet’, by Pablo Neruda: It would be a fragrant moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a sudden uneasiness….If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves… Gelareh and I discuss these lines wondering out loud how everyone wants to speak, and to be heard. But if no one is listening, then what? Shouting is not an effective strategy. Ahmad reminds us all that we have three days left. He’s mixed things up a little, deciding not to enforce our normal schedule, leaving it to us to determine, henceforth, to continue to read/attend/discuss the formal sessions or to break out into individual and informal discussions as and when we wish. I’m not convinced this is the right course of action. Ahmad disagrees, and references Mario de Andrade’s ‘My Soul has a Hat’ from Day 1 – ‘We have two lives and the second begins when you realize you only have one.’ It is now up to us how to spend the rest. And so we move on. Greg takes over the chair for the second reading, ‘Art Forgery: Why Do We Care So Much for Originals?’ by Milica Jovic. We wonder whether time is a necessary function of originality. Why is a 1920s Mercedes with 80 per cent of its parts replaced still considered a 1920s Merc, but a 2018 Merc with 80 percent of its parts replaced by older parts not constitute an older Merc (why somebody would do the latter, other than for this thought experiment is not clear, but then maybe that’s the point — it is no more than a thought experiment). I digress. At any rate, Yasmeen offers a suggestion that perhaps an original work of art is a gift, but prints and replicas are commodities. Gelareh and Estephania are aghast at Taha’s assertion that 80 percent of the Louvre’s on-display collection are not originals. What changed their experience, therefore, becomes an extended and fascinating discussion, with even the Blueman Group being drawn upon as an example. Ahmad decides that as an academic piece, the third reading, ‘Can Machines Create Art?’ by Mark Coeckelberg falls to me to lead. I’m not sure I agree with the logic. And while I’ve read and enjoyed the piece thoroughly, I haven’t prepared myself to lead a discussion on it. Like…

The universe, at 3:30 am’s desiccated depths Beamed down the evanescence of a million fading stars A muted, inscrutable forest treelineWithin which dormant night’s silenced, birds and animals dwell The opposite of a world where silence Is banished through an abundance of noise Take out your earbuds when running through the woodsIndeed, don’t run, accelerating your passage through a wise reality Accept Nature’s purest musicWithout deafening your ears with Urgent podcasts broadcasting a tree-huggers’ gospel In a reminder that, come day’s endWho will have heard of Tolstoy’s daughter? Only the works remainNeither his dinners, nor the offspring

Deep Listening is a way of listening to everything possible to hear, no matter what you are doing. This includes the sounds of nature, of daily life, or of one’s own thoughts. “Keeping Quiet” by Pablo Neruda was our first reading of day 7 and expresses this idea beautifully. “Now we will count to twelveand we will all keep still.For once on the face of the earth,let’s not speak any language;let’s stop for one second,and not move our arms so much.” The last two readings of the day begin to address ideas of authenticity in the digital age. “Art Forgery: Why Do We Care So Much For Originals?” by Milica Jovic and “Can Machines Create Art?” by Mark Coeckelbergh open up these discussions. The first of these two pieces look at a museum dedicated to artist Etienne Terrus in Elne, France, where it was recently discovered that 60% of its collection was deemed fake. So why do original works of art matter? For decades, some forgeries have not only fooled museum visitors but well-known art historians as well. My fellow Culturistani’s and I seemed to concur what researchers have found: That our appreciation of an artwork heavily depends on one’s sense of connecting to the artist as much as the painting. When we find out it’s a forgery, we feel personally cheated in some way. We still believe that the essence of who the artist is can somehow be infused into their art. The article “Can Machines Create Art?” was a bit tedious for me in that I honestly think this is a question that is impossible to answer intellectually.  Not surprisingly to the rest of the group, I answered with an emphatic no. I do think machines create things that could be considered artistic, but I stop short of calling it art. This is not because of the actual “artworks” themselves. For my own work, and I think for most authentic artists, art lies in the creative process much more than the final work. Often times this can be a polarizing view but I find most who consider a machine to be able to create “art” are solely judging it on their idea of the final work and haven’t really engaged in a life of creative practice. There, I said it!I’ll now defer to the last line of the Neruda poem we began with: “Now I’ll count to twelveand you keep quiet and I will go.”

I spent 20 hours in transit in the last 48 hours, traveling from our residency to London and back again. I did this in order to attend a mandatory academic meeting and to rehearse and perform in an MFA dancer’s final thesis project entitled ‘She/Her’- a project made up of four dancers that addressed themes surrounding women and agency. A pretty typical day in a life of freelance dance artist, nevertheless, it was a marathon of bodily labor that was mentally and emotionally charged, but I pushed through. Reflecting on what my mind and body has gone through in the last two days has me questioning if there is space to write in the places in between the semantic and somatic methodologies as a working dance practitioner? In our world, there are some bodies that are valued and others that are devalued, bodies that have the agency and right to move and bodies which have not been given the space to be visible or heard. There are so many examples of women being written out of history for being the ‘wrong body’, women whose husbands, brothers, fathers or colleagues took credit or muted women’s contributions. How might the landscape of art-making change if women were allowed equal agency and support in their artistic work? What happens when conceptual beliefs about culture, gender, and ethnicity collide with real-life modern day expressions of identity and environment? A quote by the late contemporary dance artist Chandraleka comes to mind “The drudgery of life is that everything repeats itself… to move the space with understanding, with bodies, and with imagination, is what we as dancers do”

Sometimes it’s better to not use words.Our readings from today: “The Bridge Builder” by Will Allen Dromgoole “Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tzu “On Trees” by Herman Hesse “The Portable Phonograph” by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

The residency continues to be intense. Reading 1, ‘The Bridge Builder’ by Will Allen Dromgoole is about paying it forward, and leaving things better than we find them. The bridges are, of course, literal and figurative, about today and tomorrow, past and present. We don’t often remember or care who may have built the bridges we cross. Equally, while some of us may be better at building bridges, others may excel at helping people cross them. In other words, bridges are about institutions and individuals. And sometimes, bridge builders may build or help only because they may have to retrace their paths or need help re-crossing them later themselves. Does that affect the value of building and/or helping to cross? In this regard, Ahmad asked what we were doing in our lives and spheres of influence for future generations. How did we get people on board? And what strategies do we employ when personal stories, normally effective, don’t work? Of the second reading, a selection of six poems from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, Ahmad asked us to pick which one resonated the most. Two each chose #12 and #29, one chose #43, and I chose #9: ‘Fill your bowl to the brimAnd it will spill. Keep sharpening your knifeAnd it will blunt….Care about people’s approvalAnd you will be their prisoner.Do your work, then step back.The only path to serenity. The third reading, ‘On Trees’ from Wandering: Notes and Sketches, by Herman Hesse was impossible for me to read without feeling the presence of Abbas Kiarostami writ large over it. A deeply moving and beautiful piece, it needs no further gloss: ‘So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.’ There is a lot to take in, much to mull over personally and professionally. I am surrounded by hardworking, incredibly talented individuals who bring all of themselves to the work they do, the passions they follow, and the lives they lead. It’s a real privilege to spend time with my fellow residents. The afternoon trip to the Chateau de Chenonceau, 40min away by car, is a welcome break from routine. A generous, not to mention…

Today is the first day I started feeling a little homesick. I think this is a trick I’ve used whenever I’ve reached close to the halfway mark of something. I want to re-adjust to the finale before the finale arrives and also prepare for the transition ahead. More to the point, I’ve realized that I don’t spend enough time with other artists (since San Francisco has almost entirely pushed them out) and, I also haven’t spent this much time with such a diverse group of nationalities. It’s refreshing and has allowed me to understand myself from a perspective I don’t normally have access to. Before I could go down the rabbit hole of thinking too much about the future, I pulled myself back into the present moment — at the Chateau de Grillemont. We started this day by reading a few poems, including The Bridge Builder, some by Tao Te Ching, On Trees, and later dissected The Portable Phonograph. The poetry by the Tao Te Ching really resonated with me. I started reading some of the Taoist philosophies about a year ago and in particular the ones that have been explained by the late Wayne Dyer. In this particular passage about the Tao, I particularly liked a passage that spoke of the beauty in things that are left unspoken. By labeling something, or chasing or acquiring it, it loses its value. And in order to understand something fully and allow it to reveal and express itself from a source of truth, it requires us to sit back and watch it with complete non-attachment. The next article “On Trees” reminded me how nature, and particularly trees provide lessons without expression, and they provide lessons by simply being, rather than doing. They are perfect and infinite exactly as they are.