Some months already since the pan-hemisphere rehearsals of Daniel Schlusser’s Ophelia Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. I’ve been sitting on these photos for a while, and as spring lurches across Berlin – as well as some imminent Dasniya and I shibari adventures to be announced – decided if I don’t get them up here now, it will enter the region of unlikelihood. I think all photos are from Daisy Noyes (not sure about the first one, but assuming yes).
Category Archives: music
Ophelia – Suspended in Tree
Ophelia – In the Kitchen
Ophelia – Flowers in Kitchen
Ophelia – Requiem for a Blender
Ophelia – Suspense
Ophelia – Onion Soup
Ophelia – Fishbowl in KitchenReading: Susan Mann – Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century
Shortly before departing for Brussels, I finished Susan Mann’s brilliant The Talented Women of the Zhang Family, and began Gail Hershatter’s equally sublime The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past, which I’m still slowly chewing through. Both these books mark something of a specific beginning or new direction in my reading, one which has been obvious before now, but with these two authors and some recent others either read or waiting to be read, I think it is worth noting.
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 Recordsthe n+2 dimensional space for n>1 — beginning aftermath
… Where was I?
Brussels. It took longer to get from Schönefeld airport to home than from Brussels to Berlin. Monday was a day to pass without the hectic routine of the previous weeks. No rising in a stupor, no walking the route to and from Bains, no rehearsals on green dance floor, no baguettes and coffee for lunch, nor cooking in the kitchen.
Some organising of suitcases and luggage which results in meeting the weight allowance for what goes beneath in the hold, and transferring the excess to carry-on. Hence, carry-on weighs more than suitcase.
I meet Gala in Parvais/Vorplein around lunch. We begin with a coffee, continue with another, and talk for hours. One of the results of that is she is off to PAF Riems in a week, and we have plans perhaps to be there in late January. So it seems I’ll be passing through Brussels again soon.
We amble up to the commune for the market, and I discover the delights of Piadina. That it is made with pig lard only adds to the oral splendour. Dasniya joins us after a morning finding her way through an old cemetery south of Parc Dudin.
And then to finish packing, to airport, to sleep on the flight, to arrive.
the n+2 dimensional space
n+2 dimensional space – Dasniya
n+2 Lab Outthe n+2 dimensional space for n>1 — day 10 & 11
It’s already over. We performed last night and today is Saturday, the residency finished. In-between now and Thursday morning, we spent most of our time in the studio, walking to and from, or asleep.
To Thursday then. A day for technical sortings out, with Silvano calmly attending to our needs, and the mess we had been accruing getting shifted to one side to be replaced with lights and other equipment. We worked out a couple more sections before, after, around this, and got through most of the list piled up before ‘tech run’.
After six o’clock, on our own, we prepared for our own run, which fell apart right where I begin tying Dasniya. This messy tying breeds uncertainty. Will the ropes hold or slip? Cinch in a bad place or begin sliding apart until all previous efforts are rendered null? It’s so unpredictable for me and the anxiety of it was making it impossible to even consider why I might be doing this, to concentrate on performing and directorial issues.
To make a performance in which the audience sees suffering or experiences it personally is one thing, and a thing which I’ve always had an attraction for. Against that, the last thing I want to do is cause the performers I work with to suffer, for the performance to be an unpleasant endurance. It’s easy enough when one is outside and observing something not working and causing pain to stop it, take a pause, try it in another way. When I’m inside it myself though, this ability vanishes. And so I became quite overwrought because of lengths of recalcitrant rope.
After much experimenting, failing, trying other approaches, we had something that worked, and commenced the run again. Alas what worked for me did not for Dasniya, and sliding the ropes off thwarted her.
Thursday finished around eleven in the evening, and Friday began twelve hours later.
…
Warming up three times, rehearsing some parts, getting through a dress run with Silvano, taking pauses, rummaging through the checklist, it starts, we wait, Jolivet begins, Ligeti, we progress through the scenes (five or seven depending on how you count), and it becomes over.
…
We have the videos, and some time next week photos from Silvano, so these shall make it here and elsewhere in due course. Today and Sunday we are still at Bains with a Yoga and Shibari workshop (which fortuitously has led to some China and South-East Asia connections), and Monday afternoon the flight (would that it were the train) t0 Berlin.
Some thank yous:
Bains Connective have made these two weeks possible and a joy in many ways. Dasniya and I would like to thank both Lilia and Diana for inviting us and our ropes. A particular mention must be for Silvano, for numerous things, not the least for operating sound, lights, filming with two cameras, taking photos, drilling suspension points, and keeping everything running smoothly. Also to Gala, who came in on Tuesday, watched through our first attempt at a run, gave an hour of of very appreciated notes, and cooked us dinner.
the n+2 dimensional space for n>1 — day 9
The last proper day of rehearsal, where we have the entire time to ourselves. Tomorrow we find our way through a couple of tech runs, make something of light and sound, and have an approximation of a dress rehearsal. Friday is dealing with the detritus of that and fixing whatever remains for the evening showing.
I spent some time on my own, working my way through Gala’s notes, trying to change things into something I can feel comfortable with, analysing each scene to define the changing relationship to the ropes, getting stuck once more on the only scene without ropes. It wasn’t until around 2 o’clock, schedules for the coming days written up, all the impedimenta between us and Friday evening accounted for, that we began rehearsing.
Yesterday in the last time before our first run-through, we played through a scene of tying each other together, which ends on the floor and somehow became tormenting each other, savaging nipples, lips, nostrils with pinching toes. We worked through this again, from my self-bondage (for some reason I think of Ophelia and Gertrude, or more precisely of what I imagine Daniel Schlusser’s recent performance looked like), to paired humiliation (which is really not the right work, it’s more of causing discomfort with rope), and through this scene of shame.
I’d found a video of Osada Steve tying Madame Butterfly, and this roughness, along with some videos we’ve watched a while ago of Japanese Shibari masters grunting and muttering as they tie fell into this scene today. It’s a little rough, also painful, and has sometimes for me a disturbing air about it.
Dasniya and I swapped roles in the final scene in darkness. Now she ties part of the room into an installation while I am outside untying the remaining ropes. She thought this scene should go for around half an hour or more, depending on the first half.
I find myself spending much time disentangling nests of ropes that are the leftovers from each scene and run-through, coiling, laying them in order … We began a run-through around 6 o’clock, this time taking 45 minutes. I’m not sure if we were much slower, or if all the scenes together now last that long, or if yesterday we were just fast with nerves. It’s a lot for only a few days rehearsing.
Questions of music remain. We’re using André Jolivet at the beginning, and some Ligeti also – both wind chamber music compositions. Throbbing Gristle also make an appearance. This is, along with lights, something for tomorrow to sort out. I find it difficult being on the inside to hear the music; it’s not like we are counting to it, so it rapidly leaves my attention. Everything is reducing to technical questions, transitions, where to go when so it works with what comes later, all the usual arrangements of objects in space over time. What it looks like by this time tomorrow is probably mostly what it will be for Friday.
the n+2 dimensional space for n>1 — day 7
The first day returning after (most of) one day off, and ten hours rotating between studio and kitchen with a string of meetings to remind that it’s the end which is looming. To begin, a cup of tea and one and an half hours talking about what we needed to do; all quite practical, from the production elements – lighting, sound, videoing – to what we would get through today in rehearsal.
After some scruffing around it was already midday, so we warmed our ligaments and bones for an hour and were about to begin beating up on some ropes when Silvano arrived. By the time he’d departed most of the day’s first meeting questions had been sorted out, an incomprehensibly rough lighting plan scribbled together (we hope for absence of rain, hail, snow, general wetness on Friday), and it was two o’clock without a single leg having been swung.
The rope beating/flailing idea, which has gone through three iterations now, arriving somewhat back where it started, has possibly become what it will generally resemble on Friday. If I could make a more qualified statement emphasising the complete lack of certainty, I would. Our right hips get quite battered, so we thought we’d warm up next by doing it on the other leg also.
For music, we try André Jolivet’s Pastorales de Noël for Flute, Harp and Bassoon once more, occasionally underlaying Throbbing Gristle to fill it out somewhat. Music has been a peculiar problem for these days; something that deserves more time to attend to, but also keeps getting pushed to one side.
Two hours later, we pause for a late lunch, before I wander off into some self-bondage of an especially disorderly type. Dasniya hangs herself by the neck, and so we move erratically through our day’s list.
I had an idea last night, that I thought could fix, or return to something we’d worked on last week that hadn’t been so successful. We’d been trying to make some kind of movement from knot theory tables, but it looked kind of empty. It seemed to me that if there was a need for movement as movement, it already existed in the tying of someone. Remove the rope and the other person (and either blindfold oneself, or close one’s eyes), and restage the process of tying a Takatekote or Teppo or suspension, and it’s possible there would be the foundations for movement (or to call it dance). This, as with the next project, seemed to have something in it.
Approaching tiredness, the final idea we worked on was something of room installation bondage tying rope-knot mess. I’d also been thinking about untying – possibly one of the rings with all the leftover ropes attached. Our studio has a terrace with a glass door leading to it at the far, southern-ish end. It’s large enough to work on, and so it seems we may be splitting ourselves here; one to tie all the ropes together, the other to untie what was removed.
And so, we now have six or seven small scenes somewhat connected, overlapping each other, certainly unfinished and needing the coming days to make sense of, elaborate upon, find each other in. There are one or two (or three) more we have yet to reach, which may have to wait for the next rehearsals, though it would be good to find time for these also. No pictures again, and words that are mostly descriptive of what we did, missing all the in-betweens, the talking back and forth, worrying at ideas, finding things, breathing rope dust.
the n+2 dimensional space for n>1 — day 5 & 6
Too fast go the days from Friday to Saturday and now the unexpected one day off. I go to the market in St Gillis Vorplein and buy bread, cheese, fig jam, fruit and vegetables for the week. A day of not thinking about what we’re doing, to let it settle and rest a little.
Dasniya and I have spent much of the last two days working on the repetitive, exhausting leg rope ideas. These ideas are a little like the tide, it comes in, pauses, retreats; sometimes they seem like they’re really making sense, other times wondering if they will also be assigned to the list of ideas that went nowhere.
Last night, after we’d finished and while angling towards bed, Dasniya played the video of us working through this section, into and out of the humiliation stuff, along with some music Michael in Guangzhou had sent — André Jolivet’s Pastorales de Noël for Flute, Harp, and Bassoon.
Trying to find the singular discussion in an idea, also without distilling so much it becomes reduced and tends to wards nothing, finding how it fits together with itself and with other ideas (here I mean the above-mentioned presenting the representations of humiliation), and finding where the air leaves the room in this, where the idea is empty or has an overwhelming lack.
This music, on its own I would not have expected to be something I’d use, but seeing the video with this overlaid, somehow it worked. Perhaps it won’t work when we try it again … nonetheless … It’s not a case of the contradictory and opposing creating a complimentary milieu.
The first week is finished. We have some ideas, hopefully they will evolve in the coming week, as well as be met by some other things we haven’t worked on. Having a pause, even for a day, is a welcome occurrence. We’d planned to rehearse every day, but Bains is closed on Sunday, and towards the end of last night I was feeling decidedly unable to coerce myself to be inspired or creative.
plant arm bondage
unshibari and unsuspension
whale skeletonthe n+2 dimensional space for n>1 — day 2
There is a kitchen, where we cook a late lunch or early dinner, eat baguette and drink tea or coffee, right across from the door to our studio. We arrive before 10am, and leave after 7 in the evening. The walk there and back is in one direction a slight warmup and on the return, a calming down.
What to do with rope? Quite a lot really. The inner life of inanimate things lends itself though to clichéd symbolism, so in fact there are many limitations. We have a lot of ideas, which is good, yet these do not necessarily transpose into useful events. It is good nonetheless to discard things. It becomes more of a question of which performance is being made here.
There is a frustration in rope, in handling it. It tends to get knotted up, tangled, not behave the way it should, slip out of fingers or never get there in the first place. It gets caught on things, or doesn’t go where it’s supposed to. We are supposed to regard this with equanimous poise. Suppose we don’t though.
I try scratching at the ropes until they stick, thrashing and yanking. It’s again something of an idea of un-shibari; pathetic, failed ropework. Dasniya continues with what she was doing yesterday, feet in ropes, active/passive, leading/led. We try beating the ropes against the floor, or slinging them back and forth – repetition. Something here also.
We spend the beginning trying to walk the way Japanese Kyudo archery masters do, a kind of sliding of the feet that is beguilingly difficult. Forward then backward,over and over on our grass-green dance floor.
Lunch. Silvano drills some holes and fills them with metal bars for us to hang suspension lines from. We eat together and talk about ourselves, where we are from, what we do, ow we live. After this, it is 1630, so a short pause and to continue.
Dasniya wants to try movement, somehow in a circle of rope. We begin using knot groups as something to move from. It’s obvious in some ways, recreating these shapes with our arms or legs. Possibly something there, possibly not. We try again, covered in rope, ties together. It becomes something of a baroque dance. It works better when we have a unity of movement, but equally looks largely nonsensical. It’s an idea that might go further, or like much of today, might depart. It’s good to eliminate things.
We talk about doing everything below the height of the suspension rings. They are quite low. Also about endurance and exhaustion. Some ideas for tomorrow. Perhaps the idea that remains is the one that appeals in the moment of rehearsal and in itself has no special, unique value. At another time, what was discarded now would be the one to remain.
Two days is not much time to talk about what I or we like, don’t like, what’s working, not working, though equally, we have little time for indulgence, or for worrying at an idea until it yields whatever we suspect is within. Still…
Repetition, flailing ropes, on the floor, on the floor yet not relaxed, discomfort. Sometimes unison, sometimes alone (unison is nice, but equally takes time to get it looking worthwhile). This Japanese Kyudo tea ceremony tatami mat sliding walk. Rope mess, but also rope order. The ever-present suspension rings and their enticements. For me personally, pain, humiliation, disgust, or rather not the representation or literal act of, but things that could cause these, for example clothes shibari, where the cinching of rope exposes, or rope in mouth. How much do we want to show also? 15 minutes? Half an hour? One thing? Many? Perhaps other warmups besides yoga would lend our bodies something else? It is enjoyable being there from early to late, thinking that remaining even later is also possible.
the n+2 dimensional space for n>1 — day 1
We arrive at Bains around 11am. It’s a half hour easy walk from St Gilles Vorplein to beside the park in a part of town I was last in for process/unprocess. No macrobiotic lunches this time, but an entire industrial kitchen, plenty of coffee, and a stroll to buy our standard cuisine of shibari: broccoli.
Silvano was there to meet us, and by late afternoon had supplied us with our studio for the next two weeks, pillows, blankets, and a large bolt, which sometime tomorrow shall be drilled through the ceiling beam for us to hang from. It seems we leave a trail of drill holes and bolts wherever we arrive.
Once we’d settled – Dasniya cleaning the floor while I procured said broccoli and sundry lunch ingredients – we ate a baguette. And then made yoga. The last two nights we’ve been doing this, so for me at least there’s a bit of energy and fatigue from all the asanas. Yoga today was not so heavy; just enough to remind us we have told each other how we’d like to be exhausted quite often the coming days.
How to start a rehearsal? Last night we talked about our notes. I spent a couple of hours going through all my rope folders – everything from Japanese traditional Shibari to Forsythe’s Suspense to knot theory to BDSM rope work … – and old writings here on the topic, coming up with some pages of ideas that we have talked back and forth since early last year. Dasniya had a similar wad of pages in her notebook, some which overlapped my notes, others not.
Being practical, what we’d do each day for a warmup, how long we might rehearse, and so on gives something of a framework for the less tangible elucidation of ideas. Today then, we started apart. Me working on Japanese Kyudo / tea ceremony footwork and walking (something of a formal sock-slide), a pathetic, unshibari suspension failure which might get taken somewhere in the coming days. Dasniya with feet. A single rope and some things that we talked about for much of the rest of the day, over dinner (broccoli), and which after dinner I tried something of a repeat with, with my hands.
Quite an opaque description. We have far more than we can possibly get through in two weeks, and have talked through much of what we did today with a depth that would suffice for a day’s work even without the rehearsal. Tomorrow more of the same and something completely different.
Michael has sent some thoughts on music, including a trio for bassoon, flute, and harp.
morning east over st gilles vorplein
vacuuming, smoking in background
dasniya single rope foot improvisation
dasniya single rope leg irritationthe n+2 dimensional space for n>1
Once more going west, we take the ungodly hour flight from Schönefeld to Brussels. Dasniya and I are having a two-week residency at Bains Connective to work on pretty much everything we’ve ever talked about to do with Shibari and ropes. It’s heading towards something I’ve been slowly working on for some time, which is a return to Guangzhou.
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