Email dialogue with Jaime Conde-Salazar, Art Historian, a spectator in Lima.
From: "jaime conde"
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To: "Pablo Assumpcao" <pabloassumpcao@yahoo.com>
Subject: on whirling
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 2002 23:54:32 -0500
Dear Pablo,
This is my brief contribution to Eleonora's work. I hope it works for your project.
Besos,
JAIME
Eleonora's whirling provoked a short travel:
From her body in the gallery in Lima to Jean Börlin.
From Jean Börlin dancing in Dervishes in Paris in 1920 to Ramsay Burt's
article written and read in 1999 http://iipaft.chadwyck.com/iipaft/fulltext?ACTION=byid&ID=00126950
I also thought about invisibility or the resistance of her whirling body to
become a vision.
From: "jaime conde"
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To: "Pablo Assumpcao" <pabloassumpcao@yahoo.com>
Subject: NO WAY
Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2002 18:36:54 -0500
About Eleonora (again). I wasn't
thinking on invisibility in terms of Unmarked. I am not even sure if it is exactly
about invisibility. Maybe it was just about the instability of vision. I mean,
I w as thinking on something more literal, related directly with the difficulty/impossibility
to see: on one hand I wondered about the visual experience of Eleonora while
whirling and on the other I was trying to think in my own experience staring
at an hipnotizing object that in some sense returned (resisted??) my gaze.
I also suppose that my wonders about Eleonora were expanded in Guillermo Gomez
Peña's workshop. For me was absolutly revealing the exercise of closing
the eyes and giving up of myself. In that darkness I have the feeling of having
found something that has to do with the mechanisms of my own body in the performance(my
performance or others performance). I have been making myself questions for
a long time to try to figure out what body is the body of the performer...and
in that moment through my blinded eyes appeared my body more clearly than ever...it
is Ok to wonder about other bodies but maybe I have to do that and at the same
time to think about my own body. And for this purpose it is great to be invisible
for a while.
Besos,
JAIME
From: "jaime conde"
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To: "Pablo Assumpcao" <pabloassumpcao@yahoo.com>
Subject: ROLAND Y ELEONORA
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 17:15:15 -0500
Dear Pablito,
Going back to Eleonora and invisibility or the resistance of the visual. You
know how obsessed I am with Barthes. Well, I am reading now his "Barthes
by Barthes" The beginning is something like a personal album with some
comments on the photos...can you imagine how excited I am? The thing is that
talking about two portraits of himself in different ages he says:
" But I never looked like that!"- How do you know? What is the "you"
you might or might not look like? Where do you find it- by which morphological
or expresive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one
who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless
they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens( I am interested
in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your
own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images."
Isn't this amazing? You have to see his portraits. And obviously the emphasis
is mine.
Besos,
JAIME
Email dialogue with Liz Heard, collaborator in "Giro Piece."
From Pablo Assumpcao <pabloassumpcao@yahoo.com">
To Liz Heard <eh430@nyu.edu>
Dear Liz, I know you are the "expert" on eleonora's spinning. Please write me about the rehearsal process, your participation, your view. It's for the webpage project, so i might have to edit (maybe not). I'm interested also on how you experienced the performance on the very day in Lima. Tell me about your eyes...je t'ambrasse, p.a.
From Liz Heard
To Pablo Assumpcao
August 20, 2002.
pablo, je t'ambrasse aussi.
(...)
Just as Eleonora needed time to accustom herself to spinning, I needed time
to adjust myself to seeing her spin. This was easy, not only because the spinning
time slowly increased, but because, in the beginning, her spinning wandered,
that is she moved around a small space rather than staying in one spotas she
turned. She also changed her spin, experimenting with the position of her arms,
the curve of her spine, the rhythm of her steps. As time passed, we chose to
simplify the spin. The spin became less and less theatrical or expressive, the
arms down and resting at a more or less natural angle in relation to centrifugal
force, the body line perpendicular to the ground, the steps functional,
repetitive. Simpler, simpler, simpler… Eleonora rooted herself to one stop
and turned: nothing else. The simpler the spinning became, the easier it was
for me to see it. Sometimes I watched for details which we we’re working
on, such as the position of the head. A lot of times, I watched her feet, for
the pleasure of seeing them fly and beat the ground in that constant rhythm.
Sometimes, when the spin became very austere and clean, that is, free of extraneous
movements, I lost sight of Eleonora. Or maybe it was when I lost my mind, or
she lost her mind, or we both lost our minds, simultaneously. She turned, I
watched, that’s all. At those times, she became for me a turbine, a whirring,
spinning element in a machine, or an insect, her feet, like insect’s wings,
moving in a rapid, exact oscillation that could be seen only as blur: surfaces
vanishing, boundaries fading, discrete elements eliding into each other. Two
feet become one force. One body disseminating itself into a field of energy.
During the performance, the audience was restless. The performance itself asked
this: it was spread out over several spaces: a generator and a video camera
stood outside the gallery, a tangle of cables ran through a hallway from the
generator to a bank of television monitors
From:
Pablo Assumpcao <pabloassumpcao@yahoo.com>
Date: Thursday, August 22, 2002 9:22 am
Subject: Re: giro piece
liz -
you talked about the spin becoming more and more simple. that's what attracts
me the most to it, because it is simple, almost nude of performativity, but
closer to a ritual action. anyway, i love you. i love your notes. amazing.
tu pablo,
From Liz Heard
To Pablo
Assumpcao
dear pablo-
we did work towards reducing performativity. Andre came and watched one rehearsal
and affrimed this impulse for us...very helpful. the question about ritual is
great. I know Eleonora might have a lot to say about it. As I understand her,
she is interested in subtle interventions- through a kind of energetic intervention.
there are elements of shamanism to her work but she is so careful to work away
from what I call the whoo-whoo psuedo-mystical stuff. but the question is how
did I experience the work. the performance was for me a moment of seeing how
I saw. watching audience members reminded me of how I felt in rehearsal. So
my observations may be only projections of
myself...
Guillermo Gomez-Pena stood in the doorway with 'Leo, at a distance of three
to four feet. He seemed to observe closely, as if they were hungry to take in
every detail. My own experience with watching the spin was that the simpler
it was, themore I could see, and the more there was to see. Like me, they scanned
with their eyes, and they seemed to be thinking, considering, busy processing
information. Their faces expressed concentration, their gazes moved deliberately,
always seeming to obey some impulse from their thinking, and always arriving
at a specific destination: 'Leo's feet, her shoulders, her hips, her head. A
woman watched from the hallway. She also positioned herself three to
four feet from 'Leo, but she seemed to be farther away somehow. She stood in
one place while people moved fairly constantly around her. Her stillness seemed
to create a room around her: her own space. She had that trance-look on her
face: relaxed, eyes wide open, moving slowly or not at all. Her body made a
space for itself while her mind traveled. this way of looking was familiar to
me also...it's when the simple repetitive movement you watch carries you like
a wave or a current into inner spaces: memories,
associations, or some nameless sensation of pleasure. For me, its like riding
my bike in the city, at the times I go into what i call a float. I seem to be
moving through the streets and traffic effortlessly, in tune with the ryhthms
and tempos of the urban system as it manifest in the moment. The city carries
me, moves me along, all I have to do is maintain a light, diffuse awareness.
Liz.
Email dialogue with Felipe Ribeiro, co-author of the video "Mapping" presented as part of "Giro Piece."
From Felipe Ribeiro <fkr200@nyu.edu>
Sent Sunday, August 25, 2002 12:18 pm
To Pablo A Costa <pac253@nyu.edu> , Pablo Assumpcao <pabloassumpcao@yahoo.com>
Cc
Bcc
Subject: Re: Giro
Pablo>first i need the basics. your own project,
within eleonora's project, how did you come to it, i mean the conceptual figure
of your video, and its relation to the performance of spinning. what was YOUR
project? what was your motivation?
Felipe>Mapping was conceived with a narrative
similar to one of a poem. Our idea was that we would write verses with images,
expressions, extension of time as well as its ellipsis. States is the word that
comes to my mind as I write you this note. The succession of images, their repetition
would happen following a rather sensitive choice. It’s however by no means
an unintelligible or intuitive piece. Although it carries degrees of both, it
is also the result of thought and reason. I myself need to pre establish an
structure to allow chance to happen.
The construction process would, hence, include long conversations about the
theme proposed – Globalization, Migration and Public Space – furnishing
theoretical basis for the work. Even better, the theoretical framework, instead
of serving as a basis upon which we would stand, was floating around us emanating
itself in every of our actions. It’s in the air.
While being rooted to the process of production as well as to the post-production,
we’ve set up modules that would help us in the building of the narrative.
The modules functioned as an stimulus for actions, as a form of creation, as
self-sufficient scenes. These modules would, during the editing, be revisited
and remodeled following imagistic structures. These new sequences would be taken
as the raw material for the final piece, which in fact has no resemblance whatsoever
to them in terms of editing decision. The establishment of the modules was my
way to ‘spin around’ creating a network of information among them
which generated the abstractions portrayed on mapping. Still drawing on the
metaphor of the poetry, my task was to transform sentences in verses. The narrative
springs from images and their contents.
Pablo> i myself think the video internalizes something the giro externalizes. i mean, the thing with the maps, swallowing them, or incorporating them, as part of the body, i feel it is a complementary action to the body spinning, spreading energy around, not absorbing. the map (the body) spinning, like the universal flow of life, and then on the TV the maps being eaten, "dressed in"....
Felipe>On the way you are describing the relationship
in between the video and the performance, I do agree with you. However, an approach
to them through the sensorial scope, may prove also the opposite.
The non-didactic character of the video, and that’s my very personal way
of reception, has the possibility to expand the viewer, to take him/her to other
places, to bring personal experiences at target, to amuse and to make think,
to look for meanings, to look for impressions on the body – the video as
the map, and the spectator as the body. The video as means of migration. The
idea that ruled the editing of the video is one of production, one of need of
interaction, is one of personalization, but not of individualization. Eleonora
has beautifully described the temporality of this video as the present of the
past. Although she defines through a different perspective, it also makes sense
to me inasmuch as the spectator can be taken to memories, can revisit past events.
It’s not to say Mapping is only about remembrance, it is also production.
And both movements, as I see them, can easily be tied together. If in physics
the tension between two opposing vectors is measured by their differences (V1-V2),
in ‘metaphysics’ the tension seems to be always one of addition, one
of perpendicular expansion.
Whereas the prominent dizziness of an extended spinning repetition makes me
aware of a flow that although I’m part of it, I’m centrifuged. And
again that’s my personal reception. I feel the consequences of the tornado,
but I’m not at its eye. I see a flow, my belonging to which takes me towards
myself in more of an imprisoning way. My senses again are active, my body answers
to this spinning quasi-machine, quasi-human, this objectified “phantasmagoric”
subject that repulses me against the wall, by becoming really tired, de-centered
from itself, volatile, in need of re-composition. Symbolically, I see my vector
as a downward tangential to the spin. The need to introspection, and centripetal
movements.
What I think it’s worthy on the juxtaposition of our approaches toward
the internal/external character of the piece is this elastic movement that is
inherent to both the spinning and the video.
(...) and my idea with the video is that it expands the ‘view of the viewer’,
From Pablo A Costa pac253@nyu.edu
Sent Sunday, August 25, 2002 1:37 pm
To Felipe Ribeiro fkr200@nyu.edu
Cc
Bcc
Subject Re: Giro
Pablo> The spinning reminded me of my
childhood playground – you know when you play so hard, spinning spinning
spinning, it makes you sick? Some of the games can be dangerous. It’s a
playground.
From Felipe Ribeiro <fkr200@nyu.edu>
Sent Sunday, August 25, 2002 2:51 pm
To Pablo A Costa <pac253@nyu.edu>
Cc
Bcc
Subject Re: Giro
Yes, it's a playground, and I trully wonder if a child would be there, s/he
would start spinning too... but again the spinning that happened in there is
bitter, I'd say. It's a spin at the door at the thresholds of the 'playground.'
Spin mixing amazement and fear, blocking the way while blurring borders, as
oxymoron as it sounds.