Working backwards in Time: Rewriting Distance in Vienna

November 13, 2014

I am gathering together thoughts from the 2nd IDOCDE SYMPOSIUM:teach me (not)! It was a stimulating time.  Guy and I were happy participants and workshop leaders; with each workshop having an effect on how Rewriting Distance was practiced at the Symposium.  The title of the event might have been teach me (not)! learn me some: because learning is what happened for me as a participant and leader.  Learning from places that surprised.

I did not know there would be a skeleton in the big Arsenal room where Rewriting Distance would take place. There was. It brought to mind one of my first teachers in the field of experiential anatomy; Nancy Topf; and so I was thrilled.  Guy and I had two hours to allow participants to taste a bite of Rewriting Distance.  How to make a delicious meal with so little time?  Here is our recipe as I remember it now; feel free to follow exactly or add time/experience/learning from ancestors and atmosphere at your own discretion.

Preparation. (10 minutes: before workshop begins) Take in the room: it’s a big room. Rearrange things to allow for energy to flow easily (Guy is an expert in this kind of Feng Shui). When possible open all windows and curtains.

Beginning Together (10 minutes) Begin with asking everyone’s name, where they are from, and why this workshop.From this conversation/combined knowledge gather a way to continue, considering intuition and expertise and the map of Rewriting Distance thus far.

Stirring (20 minutes) Together with everyone, facilitate ways for the body to become a locus for imagination with breath and voice, moving, and resting and activating perception with sensory experience and sensation.

Ingredients (20 minutes) In trios travel around the room, finding things that are interesting and let the whole body describe them in space, to your partners: like a gallery tour, travelling and describing, each person taking their turn. Playing with multidirectionality; in thought and deed.

Combinations (20 minutes) This same trio will then each travel a long diagonal in the space, with one person speaking, one-person dancing/moving, and one-person singing/sounding.  Each person maintains their task, in close proximity to the others as they travel forward on their diagonal in the room. At one point there are many diagonals travelling together at the same time; and we are weaving through each other, a matrix of experiencing together, story/body/sound lines moving through and bumping up against each other in the big room.

Pausing (Unspecified: not too long and not too short) After each exploration, conversation is encouraged and the sound of speaking fills the room in short bursts; attempts to articulate experience with words and actions. The full sound of all of us talking together in this big room creates an orchestral polyphonic conversation that Guy and I have come to love: another kind of music; listening is a major spice factor.

(Note on pausing) In this way architecture becomes a player: how we are attentive to space, acoustic potential, relationship, and multidimensionality.

Cooking Rewriting Distance (40 minutes)Guy sets up the chairs in the space, Lin puts out the table, and Guy adds a music stand.  We put out paper, in sheets and rolls, one small blank canvas frame, and pens. We explain the Rewriting Distance Score: I will explain it here, (for you the reader).

The original form has three participants; in this instance it has 18 participants, including Guy, myself, and Michael (who takes photos), 19 with the skeleton, and 20 if you consider the room as an active player; which we always do.

A performer, a witness seated in a chair, and an audience (16 of us) seated behind the witness chair.  The practice begins as the performer in an open space with a table and paper for drawing and writing (and in this case a music stand as well), begins to dance, speak or write.  The witness can join the performer at any point they choose, and the performer can leave the space at any point they choose. The audience moves into the witness chair, the performer(s) can leave the space whenever they choose, or stay as long as they wish, and the event unravels in this manner; as each participant moves through the various roles of performer, witness and audience.  The table with paper and pen creates an island inside the open space where people are free to write/draw/read/sculpt. The witness chair is a threshold to enter the performance space. Because of the large group we decide for the first time to have two witness chairs: two doors to enter the practice.

Some remembered moments from Rewriting Distance Vienna: all coauthors please feel free to add your memories of this day.

• A brilliant dancer/dance begins … with a skeleton, with a music stand.  All of us silent, watching … the room gets large and small all at once … it takes my breath away  
• A man dances like a salamander … we go back in time …
• A woman lies down … someone is writing about a lifetime
• A powerful diagonal gets travelled again and again … and erases itself as a diagonal becoming a fold, a fault line in the geography of the room.
• In time with no time limit, we forget and remember what we are doing …
• It all ends “on time”.
• There is a magic of cohesion present …  more than one thing is happening at the same time.
• The wind entering through the large door and stirring the paper and the bodies.
• I am walking away with the witness chair on my back, being the turtle’s shield once more.

Reflections: (10 minutes) After the practice we take time to write, then gather in a circle. Usually at this point we read from our writing, as a way to remember, archive, and activate our thoughts collectively. Because we don’t have enough time we talk briefly, thank everyone for his or her participation and move on to the next workshop. 

(Written after the Rewriting Distance Practice in Vienna)

the ancestries of wind

are the bones of this

blurry vision,

skeleton-wind moves

the brittleness,

and I am now shaped,

by the direction of a diagonal,

and the placement

of the

gravestone.

In life there is so much crawling,

the salamander in his green shirt and orange pants,

the way you were

a ghost

and

I said yes.

The dance of the shoulder blade an articulation of freedom.

the door is huge here, and open,

I hear the leaves

feel the breeze

arriving all the time …

Lin Snelling