Joan Slonczewski I discovered through Charles Stross, when she guest-blogged there, and her The Highest Frontier was my fiction book of the year this year. Getting hold of Brain Plague took longer than expected – much longer than reading it. I stopped in a café on the way home last night and began two hours there, devouring another third when I arrived in bed, and finishing it off in bits and pieces over the course of today.

A comparison with China Mievillé’s Embassytown comes to mind. I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to hold off before ordering en masse the remainder of her books.

Joan Slonczewski – Brain Plague

My reading has drifted eastwards from Central Asia and Afghanistan (at least until Poetry of the Taliban is published) to arrive once more in China, and a China I am embarrassed to say I have neglected. It is easy to read on a subject such as these and follow the grand narratives – politics, culture … the longue durée, and yes, these matters are intriguing, essential to an initial general understanding, and can even consume one’s entire inquiry for years. It is also easy to unintentionally fail to consider nuances in these, to partially or wholly miss entire facets due to the relative unimportance they are afforded, or to only perceive them in a particular context, an aside to the central theme.

I am careful to say also, that these absences do not, by their being brought to the fore, constitute a ‘truth’ in opposition to the other, they do not substantiate themselves as the ‘real’ story. Merely, they provide another way of regarding things. Equally though, they should not be reduced solely to this regard; they are not symbols, representations or stand-ins for a singular agenda. They exist in and for themselves, without which any understanding can only ever be said to be partial and conditional.

That my reading is lately drifting from Central Asia and those western borders of China is in part because there is scant new to be said, when what is being said is either traditional generalist or filtered through the narrow gaze of America’s incoherent imperialism, both of which fail comprehensively on the subject of women. (And framing women as variously marginalised or emancipated in a dialectic centred upon the Taliban, pre- post- or during, is not equivalent to a proper attention given to the subject.) I would certainly read anything from the region of the likes of Susan Mann or Gail Hershatter, but with the exceptions of a couple of monographs have so far been experiencing disappointment.

So then, I arrive at Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century. Perhaps to say, Susan Mann shows unequivocally that no account of the Qing Dynasty can be said to have genuine worth, or be a work of serious scholarship without giving equal weight to women and their place in this history, and by obvious extension, this applies to all fields of study. That she is a beautiful, subtle, poetic and sensitive writer with a serious and diligent intellectual approach of course means I’m having a thrill to be reading her once more.

Susan Mann — Precious Records

Arrival in Brussels then. We start on Monday, though already this feels unexpectedly close and the mundane preparations to support this – shopping for food, unpacking – seem to have gouged a hollow in the day.

Some photos …

headless bird, green glitter wings

mineralised broken glass, some glitter

cotton pads, more glitter, sequins

white flower-tractor, painting

studio with florescent lights

acrylic ferret, trench-digging tools

Michael Garza –the principal Bassoon in the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and one of the first people I met when I landed in that city close to ten years ago – and I have been talking about doing something there with a chamber music wind quartet. This led also to thoughts of taking ourselves south-west to Bangkok. So, Dasniya and I will spend two weeks working on some ideas, and making some kind of performance for the last Friday.

We also hope to wander up to Amsterdam to see some of Cinedans next weekend (no Lewis, sadly), and on the final weekend we have a Shibari Bondage workshop in Bains.

In the meantime, here is some text for an idea of what we may be doing.

The anarchy of knots or the n+2 dimensional space for n >1 or the rope was a plant

By Frances d’ Ath and Dasniya Sommer

The two week residency at Bains Connective in Brussels is the first phase to work on raw material based on the following ideas.

The cultural history of ropes goes back to the Mesolithic. It is a tool for binding, tying, restraining, lifting, fixing or lashing. It can lift cargo onto a ship, or a person off the ground. We tie our shoes every day, and bind damaged limbs or bodies with cloth bandages. At whatever level of consideration, our relations towards, and knowledge about this material, exist in thoughts in countless quotidian moments.

In topology knots are mathematicised. There is knot theory and tabulation itself, which leads to braid theory and physical knot theory, relating more practically to the real world. Back in abstract calculations there are ‘unknots’. A string with its ends joined together, creates an un-undoable loop. Or a wild knot, which is not tame, because of its so-called ‘pathological’ behaviour.

Rope is for justice. In tug-of-war games a collective has to act in concert. If they do well, an inch may decide their triumph. In Japan during times of war, prisoners were suspended and tortured with horrifying rope techniques. The status of the prisoner could be signified with the colour of the rope, and the degree of artistic ornament. Medieval rope was used for similar injustices. Ariadne’s thread, in contrast helped Theseus to find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

Neuroanthropological thoughts invite us to perceive the rope as a tool, like a hammer is, or a pair of chopsticks, or a musical instrument. There is a dexterity added to the ability of the hand by it which it is not simply an addition. That is to say, ‘I’ am not merely ‘using’ a tool, but the ‘I’ that gains familiarity with an object, ceases to delineate between ‘me’ and ‘that’. These objects become part of us and in turn we extend ourselves into them.

In this way, the rope is my fingers, or perhaps to say the rope is my tactile organ, somewhat prehensile also. I do not merely feel through the rope, acting as an intermediary, with sensation being communicated along it towards or from me; I feel through the rope as its qualities are to touch what my skin is also.

It is almost as if we do something close to forbidden by taking this object of use and turning it to (sensual) play. Shibari, Japanese rope bondage does that. Because of its origin as a strand in martial arts technique, it needs to decisively dissociate from real methods for punishment. Instead it goes with consenting intensities of BDSM play or contemporary performance.

Between two people the rope allows for a degree of deferral, both for and against communication. Depending on the actions and intentions at either end however, the deferral in itself is somewhat neutral. It causes a possibility of communication that, by its tangible intermediary status, is not what or how one would commonly interact with another. It instigates a pause in thinking, a space for interpretation.

We work into an improvised dismantling of traditional tying rules and the logic behind these. While tying the body and the room, we bring in theories of Taoism, ‘Wabi-Sabi’, ‘Ma’, which allow us to be slightly less perfect, and impermanent. A rather european analysis of bodies, gender identities and role assignments in Shibari culture accompanies our experiment.

Musically, we are collaborating with Michael Garza, principal bassoonist of the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. This is for a performance/installation with his wind chamber music group in Guangzhou and Bangkok in 2012.

tea ceremony shibari

I’m not really sure why I decided to read it, thought I’m pretty sure it was a post by Nicole Barnes at The China Beat that was responsible, and feeling a little daunted by Gail Hershatter’s monograph, as well as somehow feeling drawn to this unfinished one, have instead spent the last few days immersed in one of the most beautiful scholarly works I’ve ever read.

Coincidentally, some of the names that appear in Julia Lovell’s The Opium War recur here, though from the opposite side; through the lens of late-Qing Dynasty literati and scholar-civil servants.

What draws me to this book now, and to much on my upcoming reading list, is the centrality of women in the historical narrative. I notice this near-total absence especially in Central Asian and Afghanistan scholarship, as well as in a significant proportion of Chinese writing — the history, culture, art of these regions as commonly presented is in fact the men’s history, and for no good reason.

Perhaps to say, in praise of this work and the author, that I have already put her other works on my reading list, and it is very unlikely I will not be writing about The Talented Women of the Zhang Family again. Also that it has unexpectedly rekindled my love of Chinese history and culture, and her passion for the subject has reminded me of this which I’d forgotten.

Susan Mann — The Talented Women of the Zhang Family

Having dealt with the mendacity of ozco for years — and to be clear, I have absolutely no respect for this organisation — it doesn’t come as a surprise they would do something so utterly stupid, shortsighted, ill-informed, and useless.

If there was ever an arts organisation in Australia that is decades overdue to lose its funding, it would be ozco. They have for years single-handedly butchered the arts, promoted mediocrity, mouthed asinine middle-management slogans such as ‘innovation’, ‘excellence’, ‘international’ (apparently now the word is ‘sustainable’), taken the side of church, government, and right-wing pogroms against the very artists whom the purportedly represent, and spent much of the remaining time polishing their media image while making sure the entrance is solidly bolted against anyone unwilling or unable to play their smarmy game. Art?

It breaks my heart Adelaide could lose Leigh Warren. Though in truth, he doesn’t need to be there; he doesn’t need to struggle for years with disgraceful conditions and permanent insecurity. Neither do many of the choreographers in that city. They could all pack up, move to europe and with the same amount of effort they put in there for scant return, have proper support and be part of a huge community that respects art.

But they choose to be there. For whatever reason, they remain and devote their lives to making art in that small city. And having seen an awful lot of dance around the world, I can say — irrespective of my personal aesthetic interest — there is little as good as what comes from Adelaide.

Leigh Warren and ADT should be — should be — as acclaimed as Ultima Vez, Troubelyn, Akram Khan, Rosas, Les Ballets C de la B, names, more names … these companies that touch the firmament of dance, theatre, art. They should be there also, and should have the commensurate support, as should other companies in Australia. They should certainly not be begging for decades at the bottom of the ladder. The work they should be making remains forever half-done because of the parochial support in both dollars and culture Australia affords its artists.

There is no justification ozco can make for this funding cut. It’s a bizarre decision I can only understand if I image the panel completely intoxicated on those aforementioned buzzwords and self-importance. No one in their right mind would make such a decision, and it can certainly not be explained away by their usual dismissals of  lack of funds to support everyone, patronising the artists that they should feel sorry for them to have to make such hard decisions.

I can’t even imagine how this could be political. Leigh has done so much for Adelaide dance, for Australian dance. He should be a national treasure. Yes, Leigh Warren is to Australia what someone like Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is to Belgium. And had he been given the support he deserved for the past twenty years, this would be self-evident.

Given the record of ozco and Australian culture over the last ten years or more, I am sceptical of a happy outcome to this. My opinion is that once a company and choreographer has established itself, it should be exempt from the humiliation of annual and triennial funding applications; there should be an expectation as an artist working in performing arts that at some point you can concentrate without distraction on making work, secure in knowing that provided one doesn’t make a complete mess of things, the bare minimum necessary to keep the company going can be depended on to be there. That it isn’t is yet another failing of the responsibilities of ozco to Australian artists.

I hope some of you will take the time to sign the petition to save Leigh Warren and Dancers.

Besides the regular weekly evening classes, there will be a weekend workshop on rope technique — tying figures, suspensions — at the end of November. Then we spend two weeks at Bains Connective in Brussels working on a rope installation, and also will have a weekend workshop there in mid-December.

Earlier this year, I was teaching morning yoga in Wedding, and still get regular requests for this. I’m not yet teaching again, but for anyone who would like a weekly evening yoga class in English, it’s also possible to come along on Wednesdays just for the yoga, from 19-20:45 — a beginners/intermediate Iyengar-style class.

So:

1. Weekly Yoga and Shibari, every Wednesday from 19:00-23:00 in Wedding
2. Weekly Yoga, every Wednesday from 19:00-2045 in Wedding
3. A Shibari workshop on Sunday, 20th November from 14:00-20:00 in Wedding
4. A Shibari weekend workshop, 10/11 December from 12:00-18:00 each day in Brussels
5. A performance, The n+2 Dimensional Space for n>1, December 9th, in Brussels

For English and please scroll down.

____________________________________________________________

Liebe Leute,
1) im Oktober geht es wöchentlich weiter mit Yoga & Shibari. Wir turnen und seilen jeden Mittwoch (2./9./16./23.) von 19-23 Uhr.

Location: Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt/Teatris // Kosten 20/15 Euro // genaue Adresse siehe unten.

2) Die Yogaklasse  kann unabhängig vom Shibari/Bondage Teil besucht werden. Immer Mitwochs (2./9./16./23.), 19-20.45 Uhr. Kosten 10 € Kursbeschreibung unter http://dasniyasommer.de/#yoga, Location: Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt/Teatris // Kosten 10 Euro // genaue Adresse s.u.

NeueinsteigerInnen sind herzlich willkommen. Bitte schreibt eine kurze mail an email hidden; JavaScript is required.

3) Shibari Technik Workshop in Berlin für jene, die nur Knotentechnik lernen/weiterentwickeln möchten. Wann: 20. November, 14-20 Uhr, Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt/ Teatris. Kosten: 40 Euro. Genaue Adresse siehe unten.

4) Performance: ‘Der n+2 dimensionale Raum für n>1′. Ein installatives Shibari Projekt von Frances d’Ath und Dasniya Sommer. Entstanden während einer zweiwöchigen Performance Residenz in Brüssel/ Art Bains Connective. Öffentliches Showing: 9.Dezember 2011, Genaue Adresse s.u.

5) Yoga & Shibari Workshop Brüssel: Wochenende 10./11. Dezember 2011, 12-18 Uhr im  Art Bains Connective. Anmeldungen bis 10. November 100 €, nach dem 10. November 120 €

Studio Location für alle Berliner Klassen:
**TEATRIS HALLENPROJEKT IN DEN UFERHALLEN // UFERSTR 8-11 // 13357 BERLIN U8 PANKSTR/U9 OSLOERSTR // KOSTEN 20 €

Von der Badstraße kommend sind die Uferhallen auf der rechten Straßenseite.

Location für Veranstaltungen in Brüssel:

**BAINS CONNECTIVE // BONDGENOTENSTRAAT 54 // 1190 VORST // BRÜSSEL

Mehr Infos in den Anhängen und unter:

www.dasniyasommer.de
Kursbeschreibung: Yoga und Shibari

City of Women Festival 2011

Foto: Predrag Pajdic

____________________________________________________________

Dear People,

1) in November ‘Yoga & Shibari’ continues weekly. We will stretch and braid every Wednesday from 7-11pm. Dates: 2./9./16./23. Location: Teatris Studio- Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt. Detailed address and workshop information please see below.

2) Yoga can be practiced independently from the Shibari/ Bondage part. Every Wednesday 2./9./16./23. November, 19-8.45 pm. Location: Teatris Studio- Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt. Detailed Location see below. Costs 10 Euro. More class content at Yoga.

New people and Shibari beginners are welcome! Please write a short email to email hidden; JavaScript is required

3) Shibari Technique Workshop in Berlin for those who want to learn/develop rope technique. When Nov. 20th, 14-20 Uhr, Uferhallen Kulturwerkstatt/ Teatris. Costs: 40 Euro.

4) Performance: ‘The n+2 dimensional Space for n>1′. A Shibari installation by Frances d’Ath and Dasniya Sommer. Creation at Art Bains Connective during a two week residency in Bruxelles. Public showing: December 9th, 2011, please find the address below.

5) Yoga & Shibari Workshop Bruxelles: Weekend 10th/11th December 2011, 12-6 pm at Art Bains Connective

Registration until November 10th: 100 €, after November 10th: 120 €

Studio location for workshops in Berlin:
**TEATRIS HALLENPROJEKT IN DEN UFERHALLEN // UFERSTR 8-11 // 13357 BERLIN U8 PANKSTR/U9 OSLOERSTR // KOSTEN 20 €

Coming from Badstraße, you find the Uferhallen compound on the right side of the street. Turn right after the big gate, and follow the lines on the map attached

Venue Bruxelles:

**BAINS CONNECTIVE // BONDGENOTENSTRAAT 54 // 1190 VORST // BRÜSSEL

Yoga and Shibari Workshop Description (pdf)

TEATRIS weg zur alten Kantine

Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.

Hand-made. I started thinking about the packaging for the DVD I put together for Dasniya last year. I was never so happy with using off-the-shelf DVD cases of any kind. Partly because I’m not so fond of plastic as packaging, partly because I’m not so fond of generic packaging. Feeling rather inspired (as well as dumb for not thinking of it in the first place), I wondered about origami packaging, and so, off to the internet!

It didn’t take long to find origami envelopes, though longer to find square ones. I tried three possibilities, though it was obvious immediately that the first one was the one. It’s quite simple: the four corners are folded in to the centre, but their corner-points extend past that, and are then folded back so the line of this fold is the centre. Each flap is folded in one after the other, except for the last, whose leading edge is folded under the trailing edge of the first, making an endless layering. Conveniently also, the size of a DVD sleeve, when placed at 45° to parallel of a sheet of A4 cut square gives almost perfect measurements for this.

With the idea working in theory, and with some test templates measured and drawn up, the next stage was turquoise. My idea was that the outside of the packaging would have the same turquoise wash printed on it, and on a Friday, while talking with Katrin, who knows all these things very well, I found myself wandering modulor near Moritzplatz looking for things.

The idea I had of the packaging was that it would be layered. The DVD in a thin paper sleeve to protect it somewhat from the rougher paper of the folded case, in turn in a cellophane envelope of some kind, so the colour and texture would be visible yet also have some protection.

Finding the DVD sleeves was quite simple, but from there …

I settled on some Japanese raw paper, quite thick and with a beautiful texture from the screen used to make the paper, along with irregularities and imperfections. It turned out though, this couldn’t be put through a printer. I also found some cellophane bags, but like everything in this process, they needed to be trimmed and glued; amended.

With the option of printing not likely, and having decided on the paper, I thought of the obvious: watercolour. Before I got lost in dance, the art I’d been doing was watercolour and pencil or charcoal, so the thought of pushing this sublime medium around was dead enticing. Six small cubes of blues and greens from indigo to emerald, a medium-sized brush, everything else, and I was set for the weekend.

I’ve barely once picked up a brush since starting dance, but remembering how to work with this elusive solution didn’t seem so unfamiliar. I liked watercolor because it’s somehow a play that oil and acrylic aren’t. I loved the layering of colour, each new one affecting and being affected by those below; dredging out the pigments with a blotter, applying them thin as air or thick as coal … the myriad drying rhythms.

The six covers that came from one sheet took a lazy half day, in-between reading, eating, messing around. I made around ten layers, each layer concentrating on a different pigment, or combination of, as well as three or four more where I used the brush-water to lift off and blend the previous layers, or hang the paper vertically and rotate it slowly. Once dry, I cut it into six large squares and pressed them under a meter-stack of books for a night.

When they emerged, I found myself wandering back to the table throughout the day to marvel at the depth of colour. I haven’t been able to capture it on camera, nor amend what I did capture in Photoshop to do any justice. It’s not blue, nor just turquoise; even looking from here to the table, the hues and tones are the richest thing in the room.

For the cutting and folding, I was left with some apprehension, as it would be so simple to mess things up. I made a template on a piece of paper, spending an hour or so adding, subtracting (an occasional Pythagorean theorem even), until I was at least semi-confident that I wouldn’t create a disaster.

Besides the slowness – around 15 minutes each – and some small improvements and adjustments to the process, there wasn’t much remarkable. The whole process, from watercolour to cutting and folding is quite enjoyable, though certainly labour-intensive. The last thing to solve was how the cellophane bag would be sealed. I ended up buying larger bags and trimming the bottom off, the folding and gluing – different from in the photos as it as an on-going process.

All this also gave me over to thinking about what was on the DVD, and what has been done since the original. So along with the new sleeves, I decided to add video and images from the last year or so.

What I like most thought is when I look a them all on the table, and I think, yes the design is very nice and I’m very happy with how they turned out, and also feel now Dasniya’s DVD is, as an object, something equivalent to her work … besides all of this, I think I’m happiest about this because it allows me to return to art, to watercolour and drawing and working things out with brush and pencil, paper and ruler.

beginning in the sun

turquoise cobalt indigo emerald ultramarine

not capturing at all the depth and richness of tone

front – first trial plastic bag

back – (later found a more appropriate bag)

unfolded (with additional watercolour)

six finished at night

He did seem to be appalled by the brilliance of the sky, dear Lucifer. Curious also, the serpent who appears so often at the sites of the fallen, is there, wrapped around his legs. We thought the setting was perhaps too gentle for such tragedy, as though the blue heavens, the warmth, the casual Sunday visitors, the circumference of flower garden gaiety all conspired to render his fall one which only he could appreciate the enormity of. Better were he to be on his plinth in a desolate abode of the park, beneath heavy trees, in the dimness of a graben, where the sadness could leech into the earth.

A few more wanderings for me tomorrow, and then a flight north and east. I’ve become very fond of Madrid in such a short time; certainly made so by the people I’ve spent my days with. I would like very much to return soon.

Lucifer falling; appalled at what a contrail denotes