All summer the grasses have been springing upwards, and now flowering riotously, it could be so easily – with the slightest imagination – a garden in a forest somewhere, or the Steppe reaching on endlessly. It’s where I practice archery, which of course I nominally practice for abjection, which I make for my own enjoyment.

There is a routine to preparation: assembling the bow; stringing it; applying the guards to forearm and fingers … sighting the target, aiming, drawing, a pause, releasing. Breathing. Christian also filmed me, so I discover how I align myself, how much I wobble or shake when drawing and finding the last instant. I am quite amateur, even if I bring whatever I might know about a body to this pursuit.

The scene in abjection requires all of this, with the exception of release. It makes good practice then, as Christian photographs in the low sun, to hold this draw, until my shoulders and and upper torso start to burn, and to do this over and over. If I plan to hold this for at least a few minutes, I’ll really need to engage in a process of suffering now.

He takes some 200 images and a couple of videos of me shooting over an hour while the sun passes below the tops of the neighbouring apartment blocks. In all this, I shot perhaps six times. Here are some … something of a sequence.

abjection archery photoshoot – 1

abjection archery photoshoot – 2

abjection archery photoshoot – 3

abjection archery photoshoot – 4

abjection archery photoshoot – 5

abjection archery photoshoot – 6

abjection archery photoshoot – 7

abjection archery photoshoot – 8

abjection archery photoshoot – 9

abjection archery photoshoot – 10

Last time I was in Brussels, I found an application for Rosas Summer Studios in my email, and having abstained from application writing for some time, thought perhaps it was time to do this again. Gala and I have had vague ideas about working together on something for quite a while, and two weeks working time, along with macrobiotic lunches and a vegetable garden is quite a luxury.

What are we doing then? We are joined this week by Lewis, who came down from Amsterdam (by way of Suisse Alps in an old Renault) to do the workshops last week. Gala and I have been talking about how to make something of the stupidity stuff we do, though certainly this is harder than it looks.

We decided then, to start today with where we’d both just come from: ropes. I’ve been wanting to work on some kind of installation/performance piece, and feeling particularly inspired at the moment coming out of the workshop and much talking over the previous weeks with Dasniya, so this seemed a fairly uncomplicated place to start.

I failed to remember almost everything I’d written a couple of days ago on the various things we have been doing with rope, but somehow it all came together, all three of us bound and connected and rolling across the studio (Lewis even managing a counter-balanced headstand). The studio—large and a wall of glass along one side looking over the train line, has the addition of a solidly bolted bar on the ceiling which we wasted no time in throwing a sling over.

One thing I’d been wanting to try for a while was using all this messy tying and also suspending, for which Lewis was happy to try. It was unsurprisingly easy, and the subsequent generated tangle of ropes was also rather beautiful. Gala also tried this, and I ended up watching for half an hour or so as many of the various ideas we’d been talking around somehow emerged.

Tomorrow it’s my turn, along with some idea of vocalisation. Lately, I’ve mostly been listening to Attila Csihar.

We don’t really know what we’ll be doing; which is something of the point, an un-process, an un-preparation. We have some ideas, things that amuse us – this is tricky though, can what makes us laugh when we’re messing around transcribe itself into something watchable? And not in a transfixed horror of , ‘What are they doing?’, but something quantifiable as a performance.

So we have three ideas to begin with. The first is our shared love of making each other laugh. It’s hard work. I wrote, “We would like to work with this in a more coherent manner, to see if is possible to make something repeatable from our improvisations, and to see if it can fit in with the other interests, and can transcend into subjects of debate and serious issues in performance.”

Then we like reading. For me, there is something of Wittgenstein in this. I’m thinking of what he wrote post-Tractatus on the contents of that. For Gala, she’s long had a Bertrand Russell lying about, but has instead gained a fondness for Nietzsche. He wrote some poetry at the end of Beyond Good and Evil.

And of course, Shibari. Ropes and bondage and all this.

We start in a little over two weeks, and I return to Brussels next weekend with Dasniya. It really is my second home. I am planning on writing again on what we do also.

howard barker – death, the one and the art of theatre

james r. brandon – theatre in southeast asia

christoph schlingensief

Gerald Siegmund – William Forsythe: Denken in Bewegung

jonathan burrows – a choreographer’s handbook

Opening found us later at the ImPulsTanz lounge. I seem to have been not so social this festival, and this was my first visit there. I expect likely to have one more, though am more excited about returning to Lainzer Tiergarten, where I went on Saturday, our day off.

Also a day of cold, grey rain and wind. I decided some 20km of walking up and down and back up again might be perfect, and standing atop the tower at Hubertuswarte, above the crowns of the forest, belted by the inclement storm and near swept off and become airborne myself … mmm perfect way to spend a day.

Café Prückel is going rather well, somewhat chaotic each time in different ways, and becoming more a bacchanalia each time also. Four more to go, then back to Berlin on Wednesday — it’s been a while since I was properly there.

Back to opening night, Lewis — who has absconded from Wellington — and I practice our feast and the beast scene. I haven’t been taking any other photos lately (even missing the families of wild boars in the Tiergarten), and anyway… he’s been an avid stalker of supernaut for years, so it’s only fitting he finds his way into here now.