maciej_florek
28.05.03, 00:22
Paul Deschanel
Slow motion in Monty
By Pascale Gille
Antwerp December 2002
The Paul Deschanel meetings offer time and space for collective or individual
experimentation and research. I wanted to share some of the propositions I
explored during this week.
Questioning the time in between perception and movement?
I am used to practice the flow of the movement. Stimulated by sensing, my
body relates in a kinesthetic way to the space, to the internal body
perception, to the environment, to my partner, etc.
During the meeting, I wanted to explore, by slowing down time, the area
between perception and action.
At the start, I observed myself moving without actually realizing this
movement in space. Later, I realized I had to place my body in a real and
concrete space to receive a tactile sensation.
At first, I only executed the beginning of the movement or the action. My
state of mind was very different before I started to when I ended this
exercise. After the beginning, I could taste the resonance of the movement
in space and after the end I would experience an empty feeling.
While working on this, I would focus also on the beginning, the resonance,
the end, the emptying, the flow of perception and the beginning again...
Observing landscape and slowly meeting it
The Monty theatre has a wonderful studio upstairs with large windows where
you have a great view on a church. Every morning I would practice the
meridian stretching while observing this landscape. In each position, I
looked in a different direction and I observed the landscapes from different
points of view. I enjoyed doing this and because I set myself this task to
observe the landscape every morning, I started to notice a lot of
architectural details, and I also discovered the life in this landscape, the
birds, the direction of the airplanes passing, the changes of light and such.
Slowly, through observing and waiting for information, I built up a clear
perception of this landscape.
One day, I got the desire to touch the landscape not by seeing it but by
being inside, so I took a chair with me and I went on to the roof. I knew to
which spot exactly I wanted to go.
After three mornings of observing from inside the studio, the going into the
landscape was quite something. My sensing had totally shifted, I was IN the
space continuing to observe the landscape but physically and energetically I
was part of the landscape. If I took a chair with me this was because we
were in wintertime and I needed a support to put my body on. Slowly and
occasionally, like the other element of the landscape, I started to move and
to change my position in the chair. My eyes could see the inside landscape
through different angles. I was particularly impressed by the huge blue sky
above me, by the power of stillness, by the bird that came to me. The nice
thing about moving out was also to discover a new horizon like seeing the
studio from outside or looking behind the wall of the studio…
Time in Space
Christoph Ragg created a white rectangle on the floor (5 to 3,5 meters, more
or less). In this space, I built a complex (with angles, curves, and changing
distances) and long (3minutes) traveling with a regular pulsation which I
memorized. I practiced this pathway a few times with my eyes open and I
tried to execute the complete traveling in the same timing. In each corner,
in the middle of each side, on each diagonal and in the center of the
rectangle I set some mark on the floor that I could sense with my feet.
Then, I closed my eyes and I clocked my traveling. I was sure I would walk
more slowly with my eyes closed, but to my surprise the timing was the
same. The next day, I changed the texture of the rectangle by putting a lot
of old newspapers on the floor, so it became sliding and I couldn’t sense the
marks anymore. With my eyes closed and the watch in my hand, I started to
travel. I realized I lost the geometry of my pathway in the rectangle
quickly and a lot of confusion came inside me but I was continuing to walk
and drawing this pathway in space till the end. I looked at the time and I
was sure to be out as I was feeling sometimes so speedy inside and by moments
so slow I couldn't know if the general time would be more or less than usual,
but again the watch indicated the same duration.
