16th July, 2018
Starting the document, beginning the beginning of documentation.
It’s an expressive form of dance, accordig to Hiroko, needs the whole body. I need to call her.
19th July moms bday
Sitting in the kitchen together looking at the result of fertilised cattle embryos in WALES, Pembrokeshire same place as the course. Flesh, consumption, taste and juice.
Also DOCUMENTION, the course and making the most of it will be all about documentation. Not something I’m used to, need a systematic approach to documenting- how do I research?
20th July:
Reasearch Agnes Martin, was reading Martin Hubert’s analysis of the Islands in Tell Them I Said No
‘I used to look in my mind for the unwritten page. If my mind was empty enough I could see it’
Documentary titled ‘Agnes Martin: With My Back To The World’
Artist as reader, artist as academic, as digestor, giving you the energy but doing the chewing themselves; think people who interpret Foucault because reading the raw stuff is too much
23rd July:
What is the relationship between ephemerality and infinity? And where does defying documentation fit into this? And how do i negotiate my dissertation project in light of this
Thoughts while reading Concepts of Disatnce in Tell Them I said no
WHAT IS THE SPACE BETWEEN WHAT I'D LIKE TO DO AND WHAT I'M CAPABLE OF DOING?
I’d like my dissertation to be honest, as honest as i can be; the most honest thing i think i can say is something about myself
Thinking about my vanity, constantly and at every opportunity checking and studying m face in the mirror, loking for the changes since the last time i looke and creating myself through the seeing of an image of this body.
The dissertation could include me having alloted mirror staring time with a live feed on my eyes to track the movments, the areas that i keep looking to and some kind of wlal text that says how in the act of looking i noticed i create spots o issues in those places.
Reading on Lutz Bacher’s work that it has ‘aesthetics of betweenness, of conscious undecidedness.’ p75 Tell Them I Said No, I wonder if my dissertation will end up like this
24th July:
Reading on D’Arcangelo’s labour pieces was really inspiring, remind me also of the video montage of window cleaners cleaning windows in the queen mary window, feels more authentic
Also i suppose ideologically blameless, which is something i both pursue and feel is arrogant and not worth pursuing
More on him as wanting to make something that unmakes itself, a logic problem for anarchists, reminds me of our questions on this for the show It Will Come Out In The Wash show I did-
Look into Linda Parsons, her work with the Rottweil, moving into the gallery while working at a local psychiatric hospital and developmentally challenged children as part of a show merging art with real life and basic decency; VERY IMPORTANT TO DISSERTATION, or even Applied Theatre project
The gallery space represents a non-tangible fresh/new/vacuum/ideoligical pursuit, that then gets all of the cultural materialsm again after. It’s dainty in it’s small offerings and thoughts as to what could be, to a singular thought- performance in the gallery, how much is it similar? How is the artist differently politicsed by taking part on the gallery administration/system/mode than if contributing painting/sculture/material of any kind?
25th July:
Talking with John, the witty cockney who sits outside co-op today and thinking together about respect and what’s at play when someone does and does not help you. It’s all for you, in the same way a fetish, even a fetish for your partner to cheat and gain pleasure from others, is completely for oneself. When one wears a monk robe and goes around with a almsbowl, it is to give others the opportunity to show respect, presenting them with that opportunity for their own karma, nothing to do with that particular monk. And the dana or charity with the highest merit, or in fact what a monk has told me is the only true dana, is to give and expect absolutely nothing in return. To give food even, with no expectation that it be eaten. Respect with no ties.
29th July:
Head feeling foggy today, readin my book on solitude and hermits to ignore university essay opportunities. Have had a formal meditation practice lately which is good and extremely humbling, looking now for a meditation course to top this up and inform my Butoh practice (and just generally benefit life). On the first page of the course description it states that this course is not a relief from the trials tribulations of everyday life. Nina Simone Sinnerman plays.
Surrender, surrender, give up; not usually having such a positive spin.
Forgot about thes eguys, the way to progress: earnest effors, confidence, sincerity, health and wisdom
The timetable starting at 4am brings a smile to my face, and that curl of fear
2nd Aug:
Wow it is slow going working on my first sits essays, means i haven’t had a smuch time as i’d like to be working on thsi or my physical fitness getting ready for the Butoh course
Want to put up all the word definitions i’ve screen snipped in my show on the wall
Call the show autopsia: looking for oneself
5th Aug:
Watch these More information can be found on his homepage: http://norihitoishii.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjshaE163Uk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCNEaBAIZeM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLV7Zh3eOn8
6th Aug:
Royal albert hall programme, use the corridors for my show?
What is it about deadlines that turns me into a possum playing dead?
16th Aug:
Nothing written for 10 days, could be 10 years I wouldn’t know, life before and after deadlines. The scattering of my mind on the internet. Looking at too many things and nothing gets finished. It’s nice that now I’m older i odn’t feel i have to lie (as muh) to my mom and can say as such and she can also say as such that she struggles with eeing something to the end too. Short circuit brain, the accessory of themodern age.
I was watching something on curiosity stream on the city’s of the future and all this extra time we will have with things being closer and quicker and mor eproductive, but what is it we will do with this time? Be more scattered. More time with family means more time watchignt tv? Existing to exist in comfort.
Dissertation journal, dissertation jounral on the google drive; who is the fairest of them all? Those who write every day. Write every day have a routine every day, not something i’ve learned yet in my life time. So many people being so productive, always having projects going, always out the door and donig things, and yet i lag. Now not smoking it’s really uncomfortably boring, it always was, but now what. New habits. ROUTINES. The world is just like the internet though, so many places to look and think on, things to do that my mind is scattered. What gets fnished? And what looks like finished anyways? In that same way that carving out the victim in myself is a suicide, who am i without langour? Something else. But anyways self is made of non-self elements. Just behaviours, intnetnions. Just thatc much. There;s such a fforce though for some fo them…
Dear dissertation jounral, i promise that I will soon have something to say to you.
Oh also, looked up the thai temple in wmbldon finally, they do chanting and meditation every tuesday, thursday and sunday, and yet i can’t bring myself to go. Like i child i complain, oh but it’s an 1.15 to get there, btu really it’s much further away for someone like me who’s been running so long.
Having good influences in your life or surrounding yourself by people in which you can be the middle. One’s comfortable and one’s humbling.
13/9/2018
Things I want to knit together in dissertation:
Butoh
Meditation
Tehching Hseih
Community theatre work
Work with prisoners
Live art practice
With disabled/living with illness artists
Tell them I said no
Withdrawal and d’marcangelo
The unwritten page
16/9/2018
It’s so easy to not keep up with things when you’re working every day to midnight...
3rd Oct 2018
New thoughts today, titles and questions and finding a question
A list of all of the research questions I could ask as a ethnographies decombobulation of overstimulated lateral globalised world of today
‘Performance art makes you live longer’
Ulay and his words in the Dom Johnson book
Tehching
Bob Flanagan
Wilke
And also prison work, mediation
New rituals
It’s a convention that we perform or do this or that the way we do, esp. consider religion ritual- why not have new rituals?
Esp for meditation practice of today
And also perhaps on inclusivity for excluded groups including disability
On facilitation
Research project on the practice of facilitation
What else would I need to consider to peruse this?
On this on that, research and questions, research shaping life about research. What’s the difference? WhTs the use? What’s the authenticity of me? Can we get to truth through research? What’s the point of your research anyway when it’s all stored on inaccessible libraries like jstore. Royal Albert Hall schemes and internships and work placements and performing only to other artists and no scope. Reaching the community but in the most unchanging kind of way. Intervening in a way that means no change and who are you to want to change anyone anyway. Facilitation as the most blameless practice but this as a result of stigma of performing. Where does the stigma come from of putting your thoughts and body up in a space as mastabatory, as unnecessary as a vanity? And the people with these judgements the strongest are likely he art community themselves and people who detest it. Tell them I said no and performing for no one and why is this attractive to me but I feel is also slipping away? Working towards a dissertation, a project, a product, a material as against my sensibilities but also an important cultural right of passage. Could I be a tourist in this persuit? And have I even understood tourism properly anyway? On construction on never leaving home even when away and the lack of solidity of home or away when we look at it closer. And how come is it when anything is looked at closely it’s a fish, slippery, different somehow, and likely dead if you’re observing it’s body. Really it should be seen moving but to study something dynamic is much harder. And maybe we all want an easier life anyways. And what’s wrong with wanting an easy life, it is a competitive world but maybe that’s just what the media wants us to think. Accelerator effect of investment and delusion and human behaviour and greed. Money as access. What else gives access?
6/10/2-18
Performance art and community: Community in relation to all of the following
Including critical description of going tolive art events:
Finding people you’ve worked with
You’ve learnt from
You’ve heard and or read their work
Strangers with a mystical attraction
Warm vibes
But director of toynbee studios said about the big venue and cold vibes
Wondering on other events
Romance of the archive
Encounter through documentation
Cultural materialism
Globalisation things on culture talk
All the events one doesn’t go to or people you don’t tak to
My romancing for these effects
But the real effects of this
Of anti communit
Of social media
Of lack of precense
Out i it’s just human
10th October:
Working in the criminal justice system is a chorus of:
Call back i don’t know
I don’[t know sorry
Call back later when so and so is here
Oh, here is this completely unrelated thing
Call back later and calling back and the person who may know something is never there, called wandsworth prison education department every day for a month and never got through to the woman for instance.
The search and the quest. It continues.
18th Oct:
Useful conversations I’ve had:
Jatun and therapeutic trance
Follow up with the prison work day course
James and his prison link
Borges family friend saying keep sending out letters apply for everything and do a therapy/counselling short course
Anthropologist on BUTOH saying think about access and how to get in and when
Bubble club and working with people with LD
Kostas, email his friend who worked in prisons for ages for some advice
Watching The Work
Lynne McCarthy and do something that gives you a qualification and say I’m coming with these skills and I’m ready to learn more
Mom conversations, so so many of them
Using your story as a source of power and evidence of that you’re the person for the job
Asking to learn from people before asking for a job
A slog of keeping up with them
Norhito ishi and BUTOH mind being meditation mind
Tehching Hseih and he wouldn’t say anything to prisoners because it’s about free thinking
Learning about Vangeline and her both work with prisoners
Ali Campbell and him saying about his huge toolbox, and also structuring a session clearly and allowing the class to reflect on what’s happened and to set aims
Moj and I’m working with groups with established hierarchies of knowledge, breaking this
Dominic Johnson and championing individual practice and idiosyncrasies, instead of seeing what could be improved into what’s at stake in the way they’ve done it
Martin O’Brien and only making work for himself = anti-advocacy
Irene and her death cafes, throw open discussions and create a space for people’s experience on those questions and thoughts on how to go about the most human things you could (death/dying/caring/grieving)
Steve, Irene’s book partner and the importance of touch, even still unmoving touch
Paul Breiter, so many things but I think often of
hot and cold meditations
Kindness to self
To know that I am fine really and just am occupying myself
Many practitioners and monks, don’t take it so seriously
Wat Amphavan monk, saying when I felt I was about to die from pain is a very basic dhamma and being disappointed almost I wasn’t seeing more
Foley telling me on feedback, don’t tell me what’s good give me the real critical feedback
Learn from the most unpleasant teachers
Tuesday something or other October
I look at myself in a mirror for a duration and then ceremoniosly eat/burn my skin and then don’t look at myself again. Called ‘I look at myself In the mirror, a lot’
Thursday fifteenth november
Had a great conversation of tuesday with personal advisor and main man Jen Harvie in which she jus championed me and talked about having particular research specialism (which i do) and that being a good thing, and to just keep doing what I’m doing