Jodi Sharp
2013
Mixed Media
SUB Gallery, April 14-20, 2013
In this project the artist creates her own idea of family and what it means to be connected. This project consists of two parts, a biological exchange with people who have made a commitment to each other, and a self created family crest.
The first part of the project is a stain glass box filled with biological samples. Because family is generally biological, the artist asked people who she considers to be family to donate a biological sample of their choice as a symbol of the capacity we have to choose each other. Each one of these samples goes on a microscope slide, and is placed inside the box in the succession they are donated.
Stain glass was chosen to symbolize the sacredness of family and the act of creating community. At the same time, the use of glass gives the piece a tentativeness. Glass is easily broken and is a reminder that relationships are special, and also fragile. They have to be cared for, and also let go of when they sometimes break.
The biological sample of the artist is in the centre of the crest on the top of the box, and is seen as you look down through the box onto the samples inside. As you look down through the glass slides, all of the biology begins to merge, signifying unity, while at the same time DNA is one of the most individual things possible.
The second part of the project is a family crest that was created by the artist.
Heraldry has been used throughout the history of mankind to testify belonging with a family group, and is generally passed down from father to children. In this piece the artist takes her own right to create her own new crest, which is etched into the glass and tattooed onto the artist's own back.
The artist then invites others in her community to adopt the same crest, or to alter it in any way they so desire. These crests are then embroidered on clothing that those in her community choose to wear as a symbol of unity, but also of choice.
Ultramoderne has run successfully for two weeks, and the show comes down today. I thought I would post a couple of photos from the install.
What I'm listening to as I work today-
Something super awful happened to one of my roommates over these past few weeks. Three times in two weeks she was detained by U.S. boarder officials, held against her will, and threatened because officials found "damaging" evidence in her bags such as condoms and lingerie.
The first time this happened to her, we were all seething with anger, but I assumed that it was a randomized incident from some jerks who had something to prove. But apparently not. Apparently because Clay is a young woman, who states on her personal website that she poses for nude modelling (why do they even have access to that information?), and the fact that she was travelling with someone who was married, means that they can deny my roommate access to the states under suspicion of prostitution.
Clay, by Michael Cordiez
I am blown away. I travel to the states all the time, and I used to believe that the fact that I had a clean criminal record meant that I was allowed to go where I pleased. But now I have to worry about some sexist assholes not allowing women into the country whenever they feel like it, based on things that are supposed to be private. Like whether I'm carrying condoms or not.
Luckily Clay isn't someone who will roll over for this type of icky sexist behaviour. As well as a model, she also happens to be an author who is currently writing a book on rape culture and sexual assault. She is widely publicizing her story. She was on CBC daybreak this morning, as well as CJAD, interviewed in Metro News as well as publishing her own story in Rabble. Despite such horrible online comments such as "this isn't a feminist issue", or "she's making it all up to get attention for her book", Clay is bravely publicizing what has happened to her in hopes that this could change for women everywhere.
If you want to read Clay's testimony, go here.
If you want to fund Clay's book, check out here.
So currently I'm on a cruise ship for a family thing. Although it's amazing to be blessed enough to be of the income bracket that can afford a space like this, as an environmentalist I am having a hard time dealing with the urbanization of nature and the rampant consumerism that exists in this space. It is hard not to be shocked by the waste, the separation of humans from the honest natural space, and the lack of community relations that exist on board this giant ship.
Although I'm sure many of the people here are very well intentioned, and not at all bad people, I can't help but feel that the glorification of these spaces is exactly what perpetuates the environmental issues that are occurring today.
I am in the liminal space between trying to enjoy myself because I am so very very blessed to be here, in a societal space where I am comparatively so lucky, and the backlash I feel against the perpetuation of these spaces. These photographs definitely deal with my feelings of that backlash. In them I am using the cruise line's logo "It's the reason you're here", which is written on propaganda posters all over the boat, against some of the images that I'm having a hard time with.
Flying around the world is always the strangest experience. Yesterday morning I went from this...
...to this, in three hours.
Being in Florida is really making Mika Goodfriend's current exhibit in the FOFA really hit home. If you're around Montreal, you should really go see this exhibit before it's down. It's an erie, and interesting look at the retirement communities of Florida.
"Snowbirds is a social documentary study of Breezy Hill RV trailer park, a tightly knit community of French Québécois retirees living in the heart of Pompano Beach, Florida. Florida is home to the largest concentration of Québécois outside of Québec. 98% of the residents of Breezy Hill come from Québec, importing their unique identity and culture each winter. Though Goodfriend was born in Québec, he has have never felt part of its identity. Through his practice he endeavors to explore what being Québécois means to him by photographing those who he feels are woven into its cultural fabric." -Fofa Gallery
Screw falling in love.
My heart itself is already in tangles. A web of nonsense
and a drawerful of necklace chains that I will never
have the patience to separate. I am sounds mixed with
different mediums of light. Six thousand eight hundred
dialects of flesh that I don’t have enough time to
translate into words. This dictionary of skin is unreadable and
Latin is dead because of what we never had the balls to
tell each other.
I am swearing off of love because everything inside of me
is oil and vinegar and I no longer believe that it’s morally correct
to fall in love with the intent of both destroying and rebuilding
another human being. I am a forest fire and an ocean, and
my favorite color is the same as the color that hurts me the most.
I don’t want your sentimentality. Quit looking at me intending
to melt me. We all know it’s working. We all know what this heart
is capable of unfolding.
I am not as strong as my words pretend to be. Not
as quiet as these caesuras promise. This heart is a patchwork quilt of people
that leave different shades of blue inside of me.
The drowning. Your skies.
The outline of a blue jay on a porcelain plate.
For now, I am closing off these bones for someone who will know
how to trace me without me ever telling them what I look like naked.
I no longer want to seduce the words out of people just to see
if I can. The love that I’m looking for falls out of the realm of your lips
and my lips and our lips doing a dance that involves bodies and more skin
and your hair touching mine, gently, like two winds
colliding.
Screw falling in love.
It’s too much to handle when
I’m already having difficulties breathing and keeping track of my
heartbeats and making sure that my limbs are doing what
they need to be doing.
But,
men are so beautiful.
But this heart is so
fragile.
I am every vulnerability that the thesaurus has to
offer me and in a certain light it’s impossible for me not to pull you
towards me with the intent of kissing the very life
out of you.
What I’m trying to say is that you are not allowed in.
What I’m trying to say is that all I want is to open myself up and have you
rearrange me, untangle the gold chains of my heart, love me for
every shade of blue that I have hidden in the silent spaces
between parentheses.
I have sworn off of falling in love,
but I know that in the morning,
outside, in the pale frost of February,
all I’ll want is to hold another person’s hand, warm and
gloved, in their coat’s pocket.
—
Shinji Moon
My roommate had a awesome god and goddess themed party on Friday, and as a gift I set up a photo booth to document everyone's marvelous costumes. Some of the shots just turned out so lovely...
What I'm listening to today-
Vernissage Saturday 4pm-7pm.
What I listen to as I work today-
These images blow my mind, and have so much commentary about the aging, loss, and beauty of our elderly.
Follow their incredible process at eyesasbigasplates.wordpress.com.
What I'm listening to today-
I feel like I haven't left the studio for weeks! Which is great, but I am really excited about sleeping one day...
The family window is finally finished, 46' x 23' final size.
As I'm not quite sure how I'm going to deal with it in my final installation, I took it home to live with it for a while. I installed it in my bedroom door, separating me from the rest of my homemates. I'm interested in what can be seen from either side through the clear family crest in the middle.
The family collection box is still slowly but surely coming to fruition, and will be installed at Art Mur on Wednesday.
I just finished making a new birch light box to show the piece on, although I stil have to do touchups and change the color of glass for the top of the plinth, green looks a little alienesque.
For the original concept go here.
And, because I don't have enough to do, I started playing around with putting real rock slices into stain glass!
It is so hard to be in the studio when it is SO BEAUTIFUL outside. 3 degrees and sun, sun, sun!
But getting stuff done like the good little artist I'm supposed to be...
Jewelry making break!
Human Blood, Obsidian from Salem, Unknown gemstone from friend
Kyanite
What I'm listening to today-
Here in Montreal, we have a crazy artistic event that happens once a year. Sometime in late winter, the city decides on a day that art will be funded and businesses will keep their doors open all night long. With over a thousand city funded activities, there are more installations, DJs, films, educational events, productions, projections, and interactive artworks than you can ever hope to see in just 12 short hours.
One thing that always has been crazy for me as a new Montrealer, is how many lines people will patiently stand in to see something cool. Or even something not so cool. Every time you want to go into a dome, look into a box, go to the bathroom, get fries, you tend to stand in a lineup for at least 20 minutes, if not an hour. There's not much that the average Montrealer won't line up for.
The group of friends that I was with had decided to make a game out of standing in lines all evening. We would only go to the art installations that were closest to speakers, and we would proceed to have a wicked dance party until we got to the art. After doing this a number of times, a friend and I were joking about the fact that Montrealers would line up for anything if a line was present, even if they didn't know what they would see at the end.
To test this theory, an impromptu art piece was born.
As we had a fair amount of people, we decided to manufacture our own lineup to nothing. I stood at the front of the line illuminated by a light, and looking very serious. People approached me one by one and I leaned forward and whispered something very solemn to them.
Photo credit Owen Wiltshire
After about two minutes, I could watch strangers stop, gather, and join our line. I had a hard time keeping a straight face about it. A stranger never actually made it all the way to the front, probably due to the fact that we were all dressed in tutus and animal print, but it was a pretty funny exercise nonetheless.
Art!
What I'm listening to toady-
Today I did a wonderful workshop with Ursula Neuerburg-Denzer, a performance faculty member at Concordia University. The workshop was about the embodiment of emotion, how we portray it, how we feel it, and how it effects us.
For a full explanation of the technique we used today, please feel free to
read Ursula Neuerburg-Denzer's article here.
Essentially we were dealing with 9 different boxes labeled with Sanskrit emotions that we had to enter and perform in according to her direction.
This seems like a simple task, but I come away from the workshop exhausted, and definitely having learned something about myself. First off, performing an emotion without having anyone to bounce off of except yourself is extremely difficult, and made me question all of the stereotypical ways we portray emotion that may or may not be true.
Secondly, she made us do exercises where we shifted the amount of internal and external intensity. I noticed that when she uped the amount of external intensity, I had a hard time not letting my internal intensity go down. It raises a lof of questions about the differences between how we act and how we feel.
I haven't processed everything from this workshop yet, but it definitely made me look at my own emotions and interactions in a different way. Things to think about.
Another great supporting text-
Gil, Jose. Metamorphoses Of The Body (Theory Out Of Bounds), Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (March 1, 1998)
What I'm listening to today:
The Spring Time of Love
Every human being can desire,
and desire, and desire still more,
until that desire tears away the veil
of appearances covering his eyes,
and he can finally see his essence.
He will then be able to see
the abstract substance of life.
For all essence is the abstract substance of life.
-Khalil Gibran
(Love Letters in the Sand,
Souvenir Press, 2005)
It's coming on spring and I CAN FEEL IT IN MY BONES!!! As the energy returns to my body I want to run, twist, be awake, perform. Gah energy!!
On the Marionette Theatre
One evening in the winter of 1801 I met an old friend in a public park. He had recently been appointed principal dancer at the local theatre and was enjoying immense popularity with the audiences. I told him I had been surprised to see him more than once at the marionette theatre which had been put up in the market-place to entertain the public with dramatic burlesques interspersed with song and dance. He assured me that the mute gestures of these puppets gave him much satisfaction and told me bluntly that any dancer who wished to perfect his art could learn a lot from them.
From the way he said this I could see it wasn't something which had just come into his mind, so I sat down to question him more closely about his reasons for this remarkable assertion.
He asked me if I hadn't in fact found some of the dance movements of the puppets (and particularly of the smaller ones) very graceful. This I couldn't deny. A group of four peasants dancing the rondo in quick time couldn't have been painted more delicately by Teniers.
I inquired about the mechanism of these figures. I wanted to know how it is possible, without having a maze of strings attached to one's fingers, to move the separate limbs and extremities in the rhythm of the dance. His answer was that I must not imagine each limb as being individually positioned and moved by the operator in the various phases of the dance. Each movement, he told me, has its centre of gravity; it is enough to control this within the puppet. The limbs, which are only pendulums, then follow mechanically of their own accord, without further help. He added that this movement is very simple. When the centre of gravity is moved in a straight line, the limbs describe curves. Often shaken in a purely haphazard way, the puppet falls into a kind of rhythmic movement which resembles dance.
This observation seemed to me to throw some light at last on the enjoyment he said he got from the marionette theatre, but I was far from guessing the inferences he would draw from it later.
I asked him if he thought the operator who controls these puppets should himself be a dancer or at least have some idea of beauty in the dance. He replied that if a job is technically easy it doesn't follow that it can be done entirely without sensitivity. The line the centre of gravity has to follow is indeed very simple, and in most cases, he believed, straight. When it is curved, the law of its curvature seems to be at the least of the first and at the most of the second order. Even in the latter case the line is only elliptical, a form of movement natural to the human body because of the joints, so this hardly demands any great skill from the operator. But, seen from another point of view, this line could be something very mysterious. It is nothing other than the path taken by the soul of the dancer. He doubted if this could be found unless the operator can transpose himself into the centre of gravity of the marionette. In other words, the operator dances.
I said the operator's part in the business had been represented to me as something which can be done entirely without feeling - rather like turning the handle of a barrel-organ.
"Not at all", he said. "In fact, there's a subtle relationship between the movements of his fingers and the movements of the puppets attached to them, something like the relationship between numbers and their logarithms or between asymptote and hyperbola." Yet he did believe this last trace of human volition could be removed from the marionettes and their dance transferred entirely to the realm of mechanical forces, even produced, as I had suggested, by turning a handle.
I told him I was astonished at the attention he was paying to this vulgar species of an art form. It wasn't just that he thought it capable of loftier development; he seemed to be working to this end himself.
He smiled. He said he was confident that, if he could get a craftsman to construct a marionette to the specifications he had in mind, he could perform a dance with it which neither he nor any other skilled dancer of his time, not even Madame Vestris herself, could equal.
"Have you heard", he asked, as I looked down in silence, "of those artificial legs made by English craftsmen for people who have been unfortunate enough to lose their own limbs?"
I said I hadn't. I had never seen anything of this kind.
"I'm sorry to hear that", he said, "because when I tell you these people dance with them, I'm almost afraid you won't believe me. What am I saying... dance? The range of their movements is in fact limited, but those they can perform they execute with a certainty and ease and grace which must astound the thoughtful observer."
I said with a laugh that of course he had now found his man. The craftsman who could make such remarkable limbs could surely build a complete marionette for him, to his specifications.
"And what", I asked, as he was looking down in some perplexity, "are the requirements you think of presenting to the ingenuity of this man?"
"Nothing that isn't to be found in these puppets we see here," he replied: "proportion, flexibility, lightness .... but all to a higher degree. And especially a more natural arrangement of the centres of gravity."
"And what is the advantage your puppets would have over living dancers?"
"The advantage? First of all a negative one, my friend: it would never be guilty of affectation. For affectation is seen, as you know, when the soul, or moving force, appears at some point other than the centre of gravity of the movement. Because the operator controls with his wire or thread only this centre, the attached limbs are just what they should be.… lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only by the law of gravity. This is an excellent quality. You'll look for it in vain in most of our dancers."
"Just look at that girl who dances Daphne", he went on. "Pursued by Apollo, she turns to look at him. At this moment her soul appears to be in the small of her back. As she bends, she look as if she's going to break, like a naiad after the school of Bernini. Or take that young fellow who dances Paris when he's standing among the three goddesses and offering the apple to Venus. His soul is in fact located (and it's a frightful thing to see) in his elbow."
" Misconceptions like this are unavoidable," he said, " now that we've eaten of the tree of knowledge. But Paradise is locked and bolted, and the cherubim stands behind us. We have to go on and make the journey round the world to see if it is perhaps open somewhere at the back."
This made me laugh. Certainly, I thought, the human spirit can't be in error when it is non-existent. I could see that he had more to say, so I begged him to go on.
"In addition", he said, "these puppets have the advantage of being for all practical purposes weightless. They are not afflicted with the inertia of matter, the property most resistant to dance. The force which raises them into the air is greater than the one which draws them to the ground. What would our good Miss G. give to be sixty pounds lighter or to have a weight of this size as a counterbalance when she is performing her entrechats and pirouettes? Puppets need the ground only to glance against lightly, like elves, and through this momentary check to renew the swing of their limbs. We humans must have it to rest on, to recover from the effort of the dance. This moment of rest is clearly no part of the dance. The best we can do is make it as inconspicuous as possible..."
My reply was that, no matter how cleverly he might present his paradoxes, he would never make me believe a mechanical puppet can be more graceful than a living human body. He countered this by saying that, where grace is concerned, it is impossible for man to come anywhere near a puppet. Only a god can equal inanimate matter in this respect. This is the point where the two ends of the circular world meet.
I was absolutely astonished. I didn't know what to say to such extraordinary assertions.
It seemed, he said, as he took a pinch of snuff, that I hadn't read the third chapter of the book of Genesis with sufficient attention. If a man wasn't familiar with that initial period of all human development, it would be difficult to have a fruitful discussion with him about later developments and even more difficult to talk about the ultimate situation.
I told him I was well aware how consciousness can disturb natural grace. A young acquaintance of mine had as it were lost his innocence before my very eyes, and all because of a chance remark. He had never found his way back to that Paradise of innocence, in spite of all conceivable efforts. "But what inferences", I added, "can you draw from that?"
He asked me what incident I had in mind.
"About three years ago", I said, "I was at the baths with a young man who was then remarkably graceful. He was about fifteen, and only faintly could one see the first traces of vanity, a product of the favours shown him by women. It happened that we had recently seen in Paris the figure of the boy pulling a thorn out of his foot. The cast of the statue is well known; you see it in most German collections. My friend looked into a tall mirror just as he was lifting his foot to a stool to dry it, and he was reminded of the statue. He smiled and told me of his discovery. As a matter of fact, I'd noticed it too, at the same moment, but... I don't know if it was to test the quality of his apparent grace or to provide a salutary counter to his vanity... I laughed and said he must be imagining things. He blushed. He lifted his foot a second time, to show me, but the effort was a failure, as anybody could have foreseen. He tried it again a third time, a fourth time, he must have lifted his foot ten times, but it was in vain. He was quite unable to reproduce the same movement. What am I saying? The movements he made were so comical that I was hard put to it not to laugh.
From that day, from that very moment, an extraordinary change came over this boy. He began to spend whole days before the mirror. His attractions slipped away from him, one after the other. An invisible and incomprehensible power seemed to settle like a steel net over the free play of his gestures. A year later nothing remained of the lovely grace which had given pleasure to all who looked at him. I can tell you of a man, still alive, who was a witness to this strange and unfortunate event. He can confirm it, word for word, just as I've described it."
"In this connection", said my friend warmly, "I must tell you another story. You'll easily see how it fits in here. When I was on my way to Russia, I spent some time on the estate of a Baltic nobleman whose sons had a passion for fencing. The elder, in particular, who had just come down from the university, thought he was a bit of an expert. One morning, when I was in his room, he offered me a rapier. I accepted his challenge but, as it turned out, I had the better of him. It made him angry, and this increased his confusion. Nearly every thrust I made found its mark. At last his rapier flew into the corner of the room. As he picked it up he said, half in anger and half in jest, that he had met his master but that there is a master for everyone and everything - and now he proposed to lead me to mine. The brothers laughed loudly at this and shouted: "Come on, down to the shed!" They took me by the hand and led me outside to make the acquaintance of a bear which their father was rearing on the farm.
"I was astounded to see the bear standing upright on his hind legs, his back against the post to which he was chained, his right paw raised ready for battle. He looked me straight in the eye. This was his fighting posture. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming, seeing such an opponent. They urged me to attack. "See if you can hit him!" they shouted. As I had now recovered somewhat from my astonishment I fell on him with my rapier. The bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. I feinted, to deceive him. The bear did not move. I attacked again, this time with all the skill I could muster. I know I would certainly have thrust my way through to a human breast, but the bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. By now I was almost in the same state as the elder brother had been: the bear's utter seriousness robbed me of my composure. Thrusts and feints followed thick and fast, the sweat poured off me, but in vain. It wasn't merely that he parried my thrusts like the finest fencer in the world; when I feinted to deceive him he made no move at all. No human fencer could equal his perception in this respect. He stood upright, his paw raised ready for battle, his eye fixed on mine as if he could read my soul there, and when my thrusts were not meant seriously he did not move. Do you believe this story?"
"Absolutely", I said with joyful approval. "I'd believe it from a stranger, it's so probable. Why shouldn't I believe it from you?"
"Now, my excellent friend," said my companion, "you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god."
"Does that mean", I said in some bewilderment, "that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?"
"Of course", he said, "but that's the final chapter in the history of the world."
One evening in the winter of 1801 I met an old friend in a public park. He had recently been appointed principal dancer at the local theatre and was enjoying immense popularity with the audiences. I told him I had been surprised to see him more than once at the marionette theatre which had been put up in the market-place to entertain the public with dramatic burlesques interspersed with song and dance. He assured me that the mute gestures of these puppets gave him much satisfaction and told me bluntly that any dancer who wished to perfect his art could learn a lot from them.
From the way he said this I could see it wasn't something which had just come into his mind, so I sat down to question him more closely about his reasons for this remarkable assertion.
He asked me if I hadn't in fact found some of the dance movements of the puppets (and particularly of the smaller ones) very graceful. This I couldn't deny. A group of four peasants dancing the rondo in quick time couldn't have been painted more delicately by Teniers.
I inquired about the mechanism of these figures. I wanted to know how it is possible, without having a maze of strings attached to one's fingers, to move the separate limbs and extremities in the rhythm of the dance. His answer was that I must not imagine each limb as being individually positioned and moved by the operator in the various phases of the dance. Each movement, he told me, has its centre of gravity; it is enough to control this within the puppet. The limbs, which are only pendulums, then follow mechanically of their own accord, without further help. He added that this movement is very simple. When the centre of gravity is moved in a straight line, the limbs describe curves. Often shaken in a purely haphazard way, the puppet falls into a kind of rhythmic movement which resembles dance.
This observation seemed to me to throw some light at last on the enjoyment he said he got from the marionette theatre, but I was far from guessing the inferences he would draw from it later.
I asked him if he thought the operator who controls these puppets should himself be a dancer or at least have some idea of beauty in the dance. He replied that if a job is technically easy it doesn't follow that it can be done entirely without sensitivity. The line the centre of gravity has to follow is indeed very simple, and in most cases, he believed, straight. When it is curved, the law of its curvature seems to be at the least of the first and at the most of the second order. Even in the latter case the line is only elliptical, a form of movement natural to the human body because of the joints, so this hardly demands any great skill from the operator. But, seen from another point of view, this line could be something very mysterious. It is nothing other than the path taken by the soul of the dancer. He doubted if this could be found unless the operator can transpose himself into the centre of gravity of the marionette. In other words, the operator dances.
I said the operator's part in the business had been represented to me as something which can be done entirely without feeling - rather like turning the handle of a barrel-organ.
"Not at all", he said. "In fact, there's a subtle relationship between the movements of his fingers and the movements of the puppets attached to them, something like the relationship between numbers and their logarithms or between asymptote and hyperbola." Yet he did believe this last trace of human volition could be removed from the marionettes and their dance transferred entirely to the realm of mechanical forces, even produced, as I had suggested, by turning a handle.
I told him I was astonished at the attention he was paying to this vulgar species of an art form. It wasn't just that he thought it capable of loftier development; he seemed to be working to this end himself.
He smiled. He said he was confident that, if he could get a craftsman to construct a marionette to the specifications he had in mind, he could perform a dance with it which neither he nor any other skilled dancer of his time, not even Madame Vestris herself, could equal.
"Have you heard", he asked, as I looked down in silence, "of those artificial legs made by English craftsmen for people who have been unfortunate enough to lose their own limbs?"
I said I hadn't. I had never seen anything of this kind.
"I'm sorry to hear that", he said, "because when I tell you these people dance with them, I'm almost afraid you won't believe me. What am I saying... dance? The range of their movements is in fact limited, but those they can perform they execute with a certainty and ease and grace which must astound the thoughtful observer."
I said with a laugh that of course he had now found his man. The craftsman who could make such remarkable limbs could surely build a complete marionette for him, to his specifications.
"And what", I asked, as he was looking down in some perplexity, "are the requirements you think of presenting to the ingenuity of this man?"
"Nothing that isn't to be found in these puppets we see here," he replied: "proportion, flexibility, lightness .... but all to a higher degree. And especially a more natural arrangement of the centres of gravity."
"And what is the advantage your puppets would have over living dancers?"
"The advantage? First of all a negative one, my friend: it would never be guilty of affectation. For affectation is seen, as you know, when the soul, or moving force, appears at some point other than the centre of gravity of the movement. Because the operator controls with his wire or thread only this centre, the attached limbs are just what they should be.… lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only by the law of gravity. This is an excellent quality. You'll look for it in vain in most of our dancers."
"Just look at that girl who dances Daphne", he went on. "Pursued by Apollo, she turns to look at him. At this moment her soul appears to be in the small of her back. As she bends, she look as if she's going to break, like a naiad after the school of Bernini. Or take that young fellow who dances Paris when he's standing among the three goddesses and offering the apple to Venus. His soul is in fact located (and it's a frightful thing to see) in his elbow."
" Misconceptions like this are unavoidable," he said, " now that we've eaten of the tree of knowledge. But Paradise is locked and bolted, and the cherubim stands behind us. We have to go on and make the journey round the world to see if it is perhaps open somewhere at the back."
This made me laugh. Certainly, I thought, the human spirit can't be in error when it is non-existent. I could see that he had more to say, so I begged him to go on.
"In addition", he said, "these puppets have the advantage of being for all practical purposes weightless. They are not afflicted with the inertia of matter, the property most resistant to dance. The force which raises them into the air is greater than the one which draws them to the ground. What would our good Miss G. give to be sixty pounds lighter or to have a weight of this size as a counterbalance when she is performing her entrechats and pirouettes? Puppets need the ground only to glance against lightly, like elves, and through this momentary check to renew the swing of their limbs. We humans must have it to rest on, to recover from the effort of the dance. This moment of rest is clearly no part of the dance. The best we can do is make it as inconspicuous as possible..."
My reply was that, no matter how cleverly he might present his paradoxes, he would never make me believe a mechanical puppet can be more graceful than a living human body. He countered this by saying that, where grace is concerned, it is impossible for man to come anywhere near a puppet. Only a god can equal inanimate matter in this respect. This is the point where the two ends of the circular world meet.
I was absolutely astonished. I didn't know what to say to such extraordinary assertions.
It seemed, he said, as he took a pinch of snuff, that I hadn't read the third chapter of the book of Genesis with sufficient attention. If a man wasn't familiar with that initial period of all human development, it would be difficult to have a fruitful discussion with him about later developments and even more difficult to talk about the ultimate situation.
I told him I was well aware how consciousness can disturb natural grace. A young acquaintance of mine had as it were lost his innocence before my very eyes, and all because of a chance remark. He had never found his way back to that Paradise of innocence, in spite of all conceivable efforts. "But what inferences", I added, "can you draw from that?"
He asked me what incident I had in mind.
"About three years ago", I said, "I was at the baths with a young man who was then remarkably graceful. He was about fifteen, and only faintly could one see the first traces of vanity, a product of the favours shown him by women. It happened that we had recently seen in Paris the figure of the boy pulling a thorn out of his foot. The cast of the statue is well known; you see it in most German collections. My friend looked into a tall mirror just as he was lifting his foot to a stool to dry it, and he was reminded of the statue. He smiled and told me of his discovery. As a matter of fact, I'd noticed it too, at the same moment, but... I don't know if it was to test the quality of his apparent grace or to provide a salutary counter to his vanity... I laughed and said he must be imagining things. He blushed. He lifted his foot a second time, to show me, but the effort was a failure, as anybody could have foreseen. He tried it again a third time, a fourth time, he must have lifted his foot ten times, but it was in vain. He was quite unable to reproduce the same movement. What am I saying? The movements he made were so comical that I was hard put to it not to laugh.
From that day, from that very moment, an extraordinary change came over this boy. He began to spend whole days before the mirror. His attractions slipped away from him, one after the other. An invisible and incomprehensible power seemed to settle like a steel net over the free play of his gestures. A year later nothing remained of the lovely grace which had given pleasure to all who looked at him. I can tell you of a man, still alive, who was a witness to this strange and unfortunate event. He can confirm it, word for word, just as I've described it."
"In this connection", said my friend warmly, "I must tell you another story. You'll easily see how it fits in here. When I was on my way to Russia, I spent some time on the estate of a Baltic nobleman whose sons had a passion for fencing. The elder, in particular, who had just come down from the university, thought he was a bit of an expert. One morning, when I was in his room, he offered me a rapier. I accepted his challenge but, as it turned out, I had the better of him. It made him angry, and this increased his confusion. Nearly every thrust I made found its mark. At last his rapier flew into the corner of the room. As he picked it up he said, half in anger and half in jest, that he had met his master but that there is a master for everyone and everything - and now he proposed to lead me to mine. The brothers laughed loudly at this and shouted: "Come on, down to the shed!" They took me by the hand and led me outside to make the acquaintance of a bear which their father was rearing on the farm.
"I was astounded to see the bear standing upright on his hind legs, his back against the post to which he was chained, his right paw raised ready for battle. He looked me straight in the eye. This was his fighting posture. I wasn't sure if I was dreaming, seeing such an opponent. They urged me to attack. "See if you can hit him!" they shouted. As I had now recovered somewhat from my astonishment I fell on him with my rapier. The bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. I feinted, to deceive him. The bear did not move. I attacked again, this time with all the skill I could muster. I know I would certainly have thrust my way through to a human breast, but the bear made a slight movement with his paw and parried my thrust. By now I was almost in the same state as the elder brother had been: the bear's utter seriousness robbed me of my composure. Thrusts and feints followed thick and fast, the sweat poured off me, but in vain. It wasn't merely that he parried my thrusts like the finest fencer in the world; when I feinted to deceive him he made no move at all. No human fencer could equal his perception in this respect. He stood upright, his paw raised ready for battle, his eye fixed on mine as if he could read my soul there, and when my thrusts were not meant seriously he did not move. Do you believe this story?"
"Absolutely", I said with joyful approval. "I'd believe it from a stranger, it's so probable. Why shouldn't I believe it from you?"
"Now, my excellent friend," said my companion, "you are in possession of all you need to follow my argument. We see that in the organic world, as thought grows dimmer and weaker, grace emerges more brilliantly and decisively. But just as a section drawn through two lines suddenly reappears on the other side after passing through infinity, or as the image in a concave mirror turns up again right in front of us after dwindling into the distance, so grace itself returns when knowledge has as it were gone through an infinity. Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god."
"Does that mean", I said in some bewilderment, "that we must eat again of the tree of knowledge in order to return to the state of innocence?"
"Of course", he said, "but that's the final chapter in the history of the world."
by Heinrich von Kleist
(Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, Archipelago Books, 2009.)
Translated by Idris Parry
If you only watch one video on this blog today, it should be this one-
Something more to get you moving-
And in case you want to research more about movement, some good articles I've been reading lately-
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology Of Perception. Gallimard, 1945.
Schwartz, Hillel. Torque: The New Kinesthetic of the Twentieth Century. In Incorporations, 1992
Lepecki, André. Choreography as Apparatus of Capture. TDR: The Drama Review Volume 51, 2007
Ideas come from everywhere, but so very often they comes from my friends, those silly creative people! The lastest ridiculi came in the form of sticking birthday candles to the head of a mannequin at the dinner party I threw last night. I loved the image ideas, and will definitely have to play with that in the future...
Both of these music videos were also shown to me during friend ridiculousness...