Undreaming (2015-)

 

Live guided sessions, and alternative audio guide - Undreaming the exhibition.
 
Through suggestions and simple body practices, Undreaming walks half asleep through aesthetic perceptions on its surroundings. What we see becomes visual art, what we hear becomes sound art, our speculative experience of reality becomes conceptual art, what we feel becomes affect art, what we do becomes performance. Undreaming takes place directly in the sensible. It is about the process of perception rather than the objects of perception. Art perspectives are embodied, together with a suspicion of the nature of reality. More than being about an aspect of reality, Undreaming is about the capacity of entering and exiting realities by activating different aesthetic sensibilities. If, as in many cultures, dreaming is what makes a world appear (the simulational capacity of consciousness in the West), Undreaming can be what makes a reality dissipate into another, through the process of waking up, maybe in a performance, maybe repeatedly.
 

Presented at CNDB Bucharest, Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart, Het Bos Antwerpen, Atelier 35 Bucharest, Alta Studio Prague. 
Made in Artworlds (2015)
 
 

Interviu

Collapse Yoga posture

Întrebări de Alexandra Bădicioiu pentru IQads:

Cum ai ajuns la tipul acesta de arta? Care au fost etapele care te-au adus in acest punct?

În timpul studiilor de psihologie am devenit intrigat de terapiile ce operează cu comportamente, experiențe. În lucrarea de licență am explorat un limbaj al acțiunilor și sensibilității corporale pornind de la studiul viselor. Dar cam în același timp am înțeles că psihologia are în general o orientare implicită spre normalizare. Mi se părea că arta ar acționa în direcția singularizării, că acceptă și potențează noi forme de viață. Nu gândeam în acești termeni, dar intuiam ceva de genul ăsta. Oricum arta a început să pară un context mai interesant pentru direcția în care se dezvoltau preocupările mele. A fost foarte important și că în Târgu Mureș am avut prieteni artiști sau preocupați de artă.

Cum au fost primele incercari in acest domeniu? Care au fost temerile cu care ai inceput? Cum le-ai gestionat si in ce s-au transformat ele pe parcurs?

La început eram împins de o puternică curiozitate și pasiune și aveam încredere. Făceam lucrurile pe care aveam nevoie să le fac, mai puțin preocupat de rezultate, de recepție. Îndoieli și uneori frustrări au apărut mai târziu. Prima lucrare a fost Process in Progress, un performance duraţional, gândit pentru cubul alb. Pornea de la behaviorism, conform căruia poți să accesezi stimulul și comportamentul răspuns, dar nu procesele mentale și afective, cutia neagră, dintre stimul și răspuns, S–[]–R. Eu eram interesat să expun cutia neagră. Propuneam situația paradoxală de a expune într-un context de arte vizuale procese non vizuale, subtile, imateriale. Era departe perioada în care se vorbea de arta imaterială, și în care acest format de expoziție performance era comun, și departe de Vest, unde exista potențialul unei deschideri spre astfel de preocupări.

Cum priveai acest tip de artă la inceput? Cum il privesti acum? Ce s-a schimbat?
După această primă lucrare, Process in Progress, m-am orientat spre performance-uri pentru cutia neagră, probabil și datorită faptului că singurele reacții au venit din dansul contemporan și pentru că în jurul CNDB se forma o comunitate interesantă cu o efervescență de idei și practici la care doream să mă alătur. Cu timpul însă formatul de spectacol, cu expectanțele și constrângerile lui implicite, a început să mi se pară tot mai problematic. Începând cu Postspectacol, pe care l-am inițiat împreună cu Ion Dumitrescu, m-a preocupat din nou ieșirea din performance, sau împingerea formatului în afara spectacolului.

În prezent în Artworlds, împreună cu Alina Popa, suntem interesați să creăm structuri ce au la bază practici de performance, dar nu sunt doar performance-uri sunt entități complexe, de lungă durată, ce operează cu practici performative, teorie, moduri de colaborare, modalități de prezentare, procese de lucru... Miza lor nu e doar pe produs, pe prezentare, ci pe modul în care intervenția la toate aceste niveluri și interacțiunea dintre acestea creează lucrarea, “artwork as artworld” cum zicem noi. Artworlds pot lua diferite forme în diferite contexte și totuși își mențin o anumită coerență interioară și specificitate. În tot acest proces mai lucrez și la performance-uri ce nu mai respectă “cerințele” spectacolului.

Care este cel mai important lucru in formarea ta ca artist?

Probabil cultivarea unei (parțiale) autonomii interioare, ce mă face să nu depind total de recunoaștere și de perspective exterioare. Asta a produs și o încăpățânare de a continua în anumite direcții, chiar dacă “realist” câteodată pare că nu ar mai trebui. Și tot de aici vine și o anumită atenție și sensibilitate pentru asumpțiile, expectanțele, consensurile implicite dintr-un anumit context. Obișnuiam să confrunt aceste consensuri, acum mă interesează mai mult să lucrez cu ele. Nu mă interesează așa mult să le critic cât să explorez ce se poate activa prin înțelegerea și folosirea lor. Și eventual cum se pot crea unele noi, aceasta e una din ideile din spatele proiectelor Artworlds, Black Hyperbox și Unsorcery.

Care au fost barierele pe care le-ai intampinat pana acum? Care sunt cele mai mari greutati?
În primul rând nu e ușor să trăiești din asta, în nici un caz în România. Din cauza asta există o presiune pentru a forța o recunoaștere, vizibilitate, succes. Asta e o mare capcană aproape imposibil de evitat. Produce gânduri de a deveni serios, profi, realist... și multă anxietate și conformism. În “lumea artei” și probabil și în alte lumi, ești vulnerabil la astfel de gânduri și forțe, chiar dacă le disprețuiești și ești conștient de cum acționează.

Care sunt temele pe care le abordezi in special?

Perspectivele, ce e implicit în percepțiile, gândurile și atitudinile dintr-un anumit context, care sunt convențiile din mediile în care activez, condițiile implicite dintr-o situație. Cum spuneam, mai degrabă decât critica mă interesează cum se pot crea noi condiții de posibilitate folosindu-te de aceste condiționări. Cum se poate afecta sau crea o realitate sau chiar o lume. Rolul cheie pe care îl are planul afectului la baza perspectivelor și la schimbarea lor. Toate acestea nu mă interesează să le tratez ca teme, ci să operez cu ele, să fie actualizate în situația concretă, să nu fie conținuturi, nu subiecte, ci parte din structura, forma situațiilor de lucru și prezentare.

Se simte un vibe militant artistic in ultima perioada. Politic, social, ideologic. Care crezi ca este cauza? Cum te situezi tu pe aceasta axa?

Am trecut printr-o perioadă în care mă interesa politicul mai evident și direct, în Postspectacol, Candidatura la președinție, într-o perioadă în care nu erai obligat prin finanțări să faci “artă politică” sau “socială”, și nici nu se prea făcea în România. Multă din arta care se auto declară “politică” pare că urmărește doar un soi de informare, de transmitere de mesaje, să “dea voce” diferitelor minorități, etc. Dacă vocile și mesajele sunt într-un context artistic, receptarea se face în lumea artei, cu referințele artei, e o receptare în primul rând estetică. Indiferent de cât de tare afirmi mesaje politic ok în portavoce, ele nu vor fi receptate la fel ca la protest, totul va fi judecat și receptat în contextul istoriei artei, din punct de vedere estetic. Politicul e în ce face lucrarea respectivă în contextul în care e, nu în ce spune.

Cum pot arta/artistii sa isi faca simtita prezenta mai bine in societate?

Nu cred că e așa importantă prezența directă și evidentă în societate. Cred într-o acțiune indirectă. Sunt de acord cu Oscar Wilde care-l contrazice pe Aristotel și vorbește de antimimesis: viața imită arta mai degrabă decât arta imită viața. Arta setează principiile estetice prin care se percepe “realitatea”. În artă se propun forme de viață, posibilități de simțire, noi idei, mutații în sensibilitatea dintr-o anumită perioadă. Acestea se pot propaga în societate într-un mod adesea subtil, ascuns, insesizabil dar foarte efectiv.

Ce nu stiu oamenii despre arta performativa? (Ce nu inteleg, cu ce prejudecati te-ai intalnit?) Ce ar trebui sa stie?

În mod surprinzător, pentru că lucrez mult cu o sensibilitate afectivă, oamenii fără o pregătire în performance, de obicei se conectează cu ce fac, în timp ce uneori din partea profesioniștilor am avut parte de neînțelegere, chiar și de reacții agresive. Nu îți trebuie o formare specială, doar o deformatare de normele ascunse ale mediului.

Anumite bariere se simțeau și din partea unor curatori și artiști vizuali, o ignorare sau desconsiderare a performance-lui, de parcă nu eram chiar artiști, nu ne încadram cu adevărat în arta contemporană.

Cum va promovati?

Nu fac mare lucru, în afară de câte un ”share la event”. Las instituția unde sunt invitat să se ocupe de asta. Probabil ar trebui să fac mai mult.

Ce fel de oameni vin la proiectele voastre? Cum s-a schimbat relatia publicului din Romania cu tipul acesta de arta? Care sunt reactiile?

Cred că există un public destul de receptiv. Ultimele prezentări au fost la Atelier 35 și la Fabrica de Pensule. Tot timpul sunt oameni care vin să mă întrebe câte ceva sau să îmi spună ce i-a intrigat, ce le-a plăcut, la ce s-au gândit, ce au simțit… dar nu aș putea generaliza aceste reacții.

Cum a evoluat peisajul in acest domeniu, in Romania? Care au fost cele mai importante schimbari? Care sunt punctele bune, in acest moment? Dar cele mai putin bune? Ce lipseste?

România a avut o reputație foarte bună, în dansul contemporan se vorbea de axa Bruxelles – Berlin – Viena – București. Lucrurile s-au schimbat după 2010. Lipsește discernământul la toate nivelurile: educație, selecție proiecte, producție, prezentare, teoretizare. S-a produs o întoarcere la mediocritate cum nu credeam că e posibilă. Ne mirăm cu toții cum perioada vechiului CNDB nu a lăsat deloc urme sau niște standarde de practici, preocupări și discurs.

Cum privesti mixul dintre arta si publicitate? (In ultima perioada, o serie de proiecte culturale au fost sustinute in acest fel). Ai participat / ai participa in astfel de proiecte? In ce conditii?

Exista un fel de consens între artiști că cei care “pleacă” în publicitate se prostituează. Își exploatează capacitățile artistice pentru profit, se vând corporațiilor... Pe lângă faptul că dacă analizăm mai în profunzime în mare parte și noi artiștii facem cam același lucru, să nu mai vorbim de întreaga societate care e caracterizată după unii prin această punere a “sufletului să muncească”. Asta nu înseamnă că nu ar trebui problematizate și criticate aceste aspecte, dar critica trebuie să ne includă și pe noi înșine.

Nu sunt la curent cu proiectele de care vorbești. Atâta timp cât este spațiu pentru ceea ce vreau să fac, prezența nu îmi e total instrumentalizată, și contextul e cât de cât interesant, aș participa.

Povesteste-ne putin despre proiectele tale: ce faci acum? Unde si cum putem vedea ceea ce faci?

Din păcate în România foarte rar prezint ceva, datorită problemelor menționate mai sus. Dar să sperăm că lucrurile se schimbă. În următoarea perioadă o să merg în Brazilia pentru o lună și jumătate împreună cu Alina Popa și Larisa Crunţeanu și eventual vom pune bazele unui nou Artworld (în sensul menționat mai sus). Aș vrea să explorez idea de a insera în lumea artei o entitate ce aparent nu ar avea ce căuta acolo. De exemplu pentru o anumită perioadă o instituție de artă devine clinică sau biserică. În clinică aș explora vindecarea (în sens larg) prin reconfigurarea anumitor afecte și abstracții ce stau la baza eului și a realității. În biserică m-ar interesa să explorez practici asociate cu iubirea spirituală. Mă interesează aceste zone tabu în arta contemporană, sunt curios ce se întâmplă dacă sunt abordate din perspectiva Artworlds.

Lucrez și la un performance, States of Space, în care mă interesează cum spațiul, și realitatea în general, pot fi afectate prin modulații afective și comportamentale.

Alte nume de artisti romani din acest domeniu care te inspira. Recomandari pentru neofiti :)

Mă inspiră cei cu care am colaborat sau colaborez în mod curent, Alina Popa, Ion Dumitrescu, Cătălina Gubandru, Adriana Gheorghe, Manuel Pelmuș, Maria Baroncea, Ștefan Tiron, Iuliana Stoianescu. Și ei prezintă la fel de rar sau deloc în România...

Dreaming the End of Dreaming /fragment

Usually dreaming is something that happens to us, not so much something that we perform. According to Jennifer Windt and Thomas Metzinger, we live our lives and the majority of dreams as "naive realists", having the "impression of being in direct contact with external reality" and being unable to recognize "the simulational character of consciousness". The dreaming operations are hidden, we experience just their results. A question for further consideration and experimentation is what happens if dreaming becomes explicit or if the implicit dreaming is speculatively doubled with a consciously performed one? What happens if an excess of dreaming is applied to a reality, if we overdream the world in which we are caught?

Maybe there is an optimum degree of dreaming for a reality to remain a reality, for a world to be natural. Probably if some limits of dreaming are surpassed, the natural solidity and coherence of the respective reality is shaken. Windt and Metzinger noticed that somehow an ability to exercise supernatural powers is linked with "the availability of the dreamlike nature of one's ongoing state of consciousness on the level of behavior." An intervention at the level of dream creation seems to be a necessary perturbation in the complete coincidence with one's own nature, the step that must be made not to be totally inscribed in nature like an animal. Or from another perspective a way for nature to accelerate itself. At least this seems to be the vision in this Buddhist prayer: "Do not sleep like an animal. Do the practice which mixes sleep and reality."

A possible way to follow the prayer is to constantly consider the eventuality of being asleep, dreaming what is happening. The "reality checks" of lucid dreamers can be amplified to a habit of radical doubt - from time to time to doubt that you are awake and that you are perceiving a reality. One of the consequences of amplifying this kind of doubts could be the sensation that everything is a dream. This is usually seen as a degradation because dreams are considered weaker forms of reality. But this degradation has its advantages - when the world is a dream, it becomes available to dreaming practices. Another consequence of the fact that you are dreaming is that you can wake up. And when you wake up you wake up in a superior reality. A hierarchical relation between realities is created through a retroactive degradation of experience - after you wake up you can acknowledge that your previous experience was "just a dream".

A complication of this dynamic is that dream from which you continuously wake up in another dream, till you end up in reality - a reality that could be seen as the most stable available dream at that moment. But nothing guarantees that you will not wake up again, even from the most solid "reality". In one of these types of dreams I was scared because I didn't know where to come back, I felt that I could choose from more realities and I didn't know where to wake up. I woke up in the wrong places and I was struggling to return, anxious about the idea that maybe there is no way back. It is a strange homelessness to feel that you are everywhere in dreams, nowhere in reality. But an alienation is a necessary consequence of a transversal navigation between realities or worlds.

In another one of my dreams I woke up in the same reality as that of the dream. In a paradoxical way, the awakening, what Windt and Metzinger call the "shift into another global state of reality-modeling", was felt as just a different way of being in the same world. The awakening, instead of being a switch between realities, was just a subtle change in quality. The minimal aspect of an awakening seems to be a sensation of an increased lucidity more than a switch of realities. For Windt and Metzinger, we are more aware in a lucid dream than in waking life because the system "is able to grasp the simulational character of its overall state". The awareness increases even more in the lucid false awakening "because it combines both concurrent and retrospective insight into the dream state". If we radicalize this perspective, we can say that the maximum awareness is a series of lucid awakenings, a falling from a dream to another dream.

On the other hand, this can only accelerate and make continuous a retro-degradation of existence. For Bergson "a dream is this: I perceive objects and there is nothing there. I see men; I seem to speak to them and I hear what they answer; there is no one there and I have not spoken. It is all as if real things and real persons were there, then on waking all has disappeared, both persons and things. How does this happen?" Retrospectively everything is just a dream, just nothing, it doesn't exist. To fall from a dream to another dream is an endless catastrophe, an infinite falling into a black hole. You kill realities one by one looking for an exit, haunted by a overwhelming feeling that you have to escape, but there is nowhere to go, just a serial exiting, an empty awakening. Seen from the other side, a repeated waking up is a continual falling asleep, because any waking up means a falling asleep somewhere else.

Sometimes a nightmare, a dream of the end, an apocalypse can give a sensation of waking up, in another dream. This is particularly relevant now when many signs indicate that we may be in a process of extinction, when our personal and collective realities are ending. It is important to imaginatively and practically speculate about what happens when the worlds are ending. Maybe, following a Vedånta twist - “the world is included within the state and not in the world the states occur” - to make the serial births and killings of worlds as easy as waking up and falling asleep, a meta-state is needed. A meta-dream in which you constantly wake up only to realize that you are actually in another dream. A meta-dream of endings, of falling from a dream into another dream, dreaming the end of dreaming.

Published in Serial Killing: A Philosophical Anthology. Eds. Edia Connole and Gary J. Shipley. London: Schism Press, 2015

An Unsorcery text. 

Romanian Dance History



The Romanian Dance History enters uninvited on stages of important performances, in important festivals, after the applause, when the audience is ready to leave, saying with a humble attitude something like: "Hello, we are the Romanian Dance History, we are very happy to be here, it is very nice. We would like to present you the Romanian Dance History, it would be short because The Romanian Dance History is weak." After that, some excerpts from Romanian Dance History are presented, but the content doesn't matter too much. The implicit activity, the conceptual operation that matters is the unsolicited and alien way of appearing in front of the audience, the forced insertion in the program, skipping and overriding the structures of validation, going around the gates of access.

Initiated together with Manuel Pelmus and Brynjar Bandlien in 2010.

Process in Progress




A durational performance in which immaterial, mental processes, are “shown” in an exhibition setup, based on the behaviorist model S – [] – R (Stimulus — Black box (mind) — Reaction).

Process in Progress functions on multiple levels. On one hand it reflects on the formal aspects of communicating an artistic experience. The space and time of transmission and receiving is structured as a hybrid between visual arts and performance arts principles. The audience is invited to choose a trajectory in the space, to situate themselves, answering to a curatorial designed structure of the space. And simultaneously to participate in the different situations that are taking place in the space, demanding a type of relation specific to a processual, presence based art. This mixed situation is the result of parallel debates in the visual arts and performance arts of the lasts decades. The constant narcissistic questioning of all the implications of an artistic act made the display, and performance in general, extend their spheres of action from their own conceptual content and their own formal aspect to the assistance of audiences on a trajectory of reception. The importance of space and the way it is emphasized has increased. On the other hand, the three situations proposed by the project are exploring different anatomies of the processes of creation and reception of artistic acts. Multiple dimensions are considered – from psychological and embodiment based aspects to the objective, physical conditions. Cosmin Costinas. 

Performers: Iuliana Stoianescu, Mihaela Dancs, Florin Flueras. 
(2004)

Now You See the Title


In a way or another this text has to be related with the work. Whatever I write here, probably there is a correspondence between these letters and what we perform – you are reading the short description of the work. These words are similar, strings of 1 to 12 characters separated by spaces. Visually you can see these signs as lines forming mini drawings (words) and the entire text as a plastic composition. From this perspective, these words are no more logical then the next, wwmnuv> llii!!-1J, ))((=Sll EEHOIK ciooo!n~ sss{.} xkyz.x vuuoQ0() ++++[].

Performers: Maria Baroncea, Iuliana Stoianescu, Florin Flueras.
(2008)

Supernatural



Film stills Supernatural 2014

An ant is dislocated from a line of ants that are carrying small items. It's slowly flown over the other ants and relocated approximately 150 cm further on her path, from where she continues on her way with her load.


A Brave Search of the Ultimate Reality



The ultimate reality, true freedom, God, pure love, enlightenment, nonrepresentation, radical change, total revolution, big metaphysical issues and pressing global problems are actualized in A Brave Search of the Ultimate Reality. The situation of being in front of an audience shifts from preaching to guru wise talk, political revolutionary mobilization, crazy saint modes of being and speaking... The states and the ways of being and perceiving can shift at any moment. A strange entertainment is produced, a performance situation in which is still possible to be pathetic, passionate, exaggerate, enthusiast, stupid, sincere, brave, naive, extrasensitive…
(2009)

1-1 (2006)

Overlapping the football stadium and the art space produces new reflexions/reflections upon both fields. Movement, affects, habits are translated from one into the other. The recontextualized spectacle gains a level of abstraction and scrambles the perceptive patterns which have been formed in relation to both arenas.


1-1 Contemporary Art Museum Bucharest (2006)





1-1 at Springdance Utrecht (2007)


1-1 at Football. Realism of the Game, Tranzit.ro Bucharest (2021)








Dead Thinking /fragment

There is an absolutely obvious, normal step, almost a command, a silent requirement to do what we should do in order to secure and improve our life. We want to succeed, to achieve something in this world. Our thinking, perceiving, behaving are shaped by a belief in (the improvement of our) life which guides us in our daily activities, in our moral and political attitudes. An alive thinking is consolidated on and on and this alive, healthy thinking constantly forms us as healthy, functional humans. And as humans we want that a healthy, alive world takes shape around our healthy habits.

William James witnessed how healthy thinking became a new religion or at least a new background for old religions in the middle of the 19th century when the advance of liberalism brought about “a victory of healthy-mindedness” over the morbidity of the old ‘hell-fire theology’. Healthy-mindedness believes in universal evolution, ‘general meliorism’, progress, and appreciates “the conquering efficacy of courage, hope, trust”. Healthy-mindedness fosters an optimistic “muscular attitude”, similar to the one implicit in ‘Don’t Worry Movement’ which has a motto that one is encouraged to repeat to oneself often: ‘youth, health, vigor!’. But healthy-mindedness brings also contempt: for doubt, fear, worry, and “all nervously precautionary states of mind”. For a healthy mind “the attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly”. It is impossible to maintain this healthy-mindedness without “zealously emphasizing the brighter and minimizing the darker aspects of the objective sphere of things at the same time . . . we divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; and the slaughter-houses and indecencies without end on which our life is founded are huddled out of sight and never mentioned.”

Healthy thinking avoids morbidity and tries to be optimistic but this doesn’t matter too much, the morbidity is in the world itself – we may abandon morbidity but morbidity is not abandoning us.

...

Light for Levinas is the condition for meaning, for thinking but also the condition for property, which “constitutes the world”: “through the light the world is given and apprehended. . .The miracle of light is the essence of thought: due to the light an object, while coming from without, is already ours in the horizon which precedes it.” Light is about registering information, about the known and knowable, it is the foundation of healthy and alive thinking. But something unsettling is camouflaged in light itself. A strange night can sometimes be felt in the most ordinary moments of plain healthy thinking, “different forms of night” can occur right in the daytime. “Illuminated objects can appear to us as if in twilight shapes. Like the unreal, inverted city we find after an exhausting trip, things and beings strike us as though they no longer are composing a world, and were swimming in the chaos of their existence.” Not only is light always encompassed by darkness but darkness lingers there, even in the most beautiful moments, in the most delightful sunny landscapes. We all know it and maybe feel it sometimes when we are ‘weak’: “something dark, something abysmal always finds its way into the bland beauty of such pictures, something that usually holds itself in abeyance, some entwining presence that we always know is there.”

If nothing else, time will dismantle our defenses and we will become weak and permeable to this darkness that is not just a rare and special ingredient of daylight but is the reality behind the superficial spectacle of light. Not only does night come again and again but it is there all the time. Or in Cioran words: “At first, we think we advance toward the light; then, wearied by an aimless march, we lose our way: the earth, less and less secure, no longer supports us; it opens under our feet. Vainly we should try to follow a path toward a sunlit goal; the shadows mount within and below us.” In this context the source of “all of life’s evils” is our “will to exist at once imperceptible and shameless” – a too optimistic conception of life which doesn’t account for the fact that “life is what decomposes at every moment; it is a monotonous loss of light, an insipid dissolution in the darkness, without scepters, without halos.” A minimum optimism can be maintained for a while, with great costs of energy, but slowly the effort needed to maintain the hope of life cannot be sustained anymore. From this point of view the obsession with life looks like a strange disease. We have to do amazing cognitive acrobatics to be able to maintain for a while our normal ‘irreality’, our petit healthy thinking. It is a great effort to keep holding it in this way, why not just let go?

Light is a deception, what appears is always below potential, below expectations. If you enter a dark place and turn the lights on, there is a moment, usually imperceptible, of deception (and relief): everything is so much less than what it could be. The promise of darkness is always betrayed when light invades. But darkness is usually a deception as well. For Cioran darkness can be “quite as mediocre as the light”. Probably because “night itself is never dark enough to keep us from being reflected in it.” Usually we implicitly add imaginary light and sight to every darkness, constantly forcing a light-continuity into it, automatically filling darkness with what we know, projecting our world into it. For Bataille the world of objects persists in ‘simple night’ because of an attention that functions by ‘way of words’. But there is a darkness that is not the absence of light but ‘absorption into the outside’ by way of a heart that has dilated and is no longer an organ but an ‘entire sensibility’.

The question is then how to escape the luminous prison, so sharply described by Clarice Lispector: “I can understand only what happens to me, but only what I understand happens?" A possible answer comes from John of the Cross: “to come to be what you are not you must go by a way in which you are not." The problem is that the only way in which you know how to go is the way in which you are. All what you are capable of comes from what you know. And the way in which you are is the result of going on known ways. Practically, this is a prison that you cannot leave and for which there is no knowledge about how to escape it because you and all the knowledge that you (can) have are the prison. You are always on known roads to known lands, there is no outside, no darkness – everywhere and everything is too much you.

In a strange YouTube tutorial a man on an empty beach teaches the viewers how to arrive to a shadow-body showing repeatedly how: “my consciousness tells my mind to tell my body to move his hand, and the hand moves the shadow”. By showing how his shadow follows the body he demonstrates that the shadow obeys his consciousness. Dead Thinking ‘teaches’ us an opposite type of approach: to start from the shadows and let them affect the body, mind, consciousness – instead of increasing control of consciousness over the shadows, allow the thinking and feeling to come from the shadows.
(2014)

Published in Bezna 5, Fractija and Unsorcery

The Hammer without a Master

Florin Flueras & Brynjar Bandlien


After a long break since the première scandal in Paris, the acclaimed choreographer Stere Popescu and his masterpiece, The Hammer without a Master, were starting to tour again with successes and scandals in Berlin, Stockholm, Bucharest, Ljubljana, Oslo, Lublin, Vienna, Brussels. As in the summer of 65 in Paris, Stere Popescu, Brynjar Bandlien and Florin Flueras are aware that “the Hammer without a Master was too modern then, and it is too contemporary now”. The Hammer without a Master is The Romanian Dance History.

"The work is concerned with the process of exaggerating the history and the need of creating great values in the past. It's about how the institutions can transform something scandalous at that time, in something tamed and “valuable”, while possibly disregarding equivalent attitudes and works in the present. Sanda Agalides, the former wife of Stere Popescu, said that this remake was done “in the spirit of Stere” by managing to scandalize a good part of Romanian dance community who expected a formal and reverential reenactment of the piece. In a way this is a modern gesture towards a modern work. A reenactment of the performativity of the Hammer, not of its content." Stere Popescu


Hammer without a Master, durational, at Bozar Brussels, 2018

Fear darkness (2012)


Darkness can be felt, especially as fear. The fear of darkness is the moment when the senses cannot extract much from the world: what is available to us, what we know, is too less for us to be in control and stable. Then a sensibility for the unknown can appear, first in the form of a cold chill of fear in the body. It is not the usual fear coming from a fantasy about the future but a dark-fear that comes from a feeling of the present. It is a fear of the potential and unknown in the darkness, a fear that directly touches and affects us physically. Fear is the substance of darkness. Fear darkness amplifies a sensibility for darkness that is felt as fear, as a quiver that permeates the body, possessing it, making it unknown. It is a royal bridge to the unknown. A bridge that we will have to cross rather soon, as society as well.

It can be activated in forests at night, in the dark or even the luminous spaces of art venues, in any place with the potential for shadows.

Documentation as text – notes from inside Darkness, Fear

Presented at Fabrica de Pensule Cluj, CNDB Bucharest, Platforma Bucharest, PAF St-Erme, Theater Rampe Stuttgart, Atelier 35 Bucharest.