Disclaimer:
Dit blog zal in een soort mengelmoes van Nederlands en Engels geschreven worden. Het onderzoek vindt plaats in een Engelstalige omgeving en zal dus noodzakelijk in het Engels moeten uitgeschreven worden.
Maar in dit blog richt ik mij niet enkel tot de omgeving van het onderzoek. Dit is een openbaar blog, naar iedereen gericht die interesse heeft. Toeschouwer, deelnemer, voorbijganger, iedereen is vrij om deze gedachten te beschouwen. Dus hier ik kan de taal kiezen.
Mijn gedachten zullen voornamelijk in het Nederlands worden weergegeven. Maar vaak zullen teksten, data, parafrasen of quotes in het Engels geschreven zijn.
Dit om het karakter van het onderzoek zo waarachtig mogelijk weer te geven.
Een nieuw artistiek onderzoek biedt zich aan.
Voor het lectoraat Artistic Connective Practices aan de Fontys Academy of the Arts
en in samenwerking met Dans Brabant, mag ik dans in de openbare ruimte in Tilburg onderzoeken.
Al lijkt het me juister te zeggen dat ik mag onderzoeken wat er zo uitzonderlijk is aan Tilburg waardoor er veel dans in de openbare ruimte plaatsvindt.
Voor mij betekent het dat ik de openbare ruimte al dansend onderzoek.
Mijn eerste echte baan als artistiek onderzoeker.
Het onderzoekspanel bestaat uit meerdere mensen, met verschillend perspectieven.
Maar ik mag dus echt vanuit mijn eigen praktijk aan de slag.
Het voelt als erg spannend en opwindend aan. Dit is toch iets op mijn lijf(elijkheid) geschreven?
En al ben ik ruime tijd geleden gecontacteerd, toch heb ik er nog niet over bericht.
Iets hield me tegen.
Onzekerheid, schrik, angst?
De eerste hindernissen kwamen al snel.
E-mails die onbeantwoord bleven, moeilijk te vinden data en locaties, een beperkt openbaar digitaal archief.
Dit zijn geen verrassingen. Binnen het onderzoek voor mijn opleiding kwam ik deze obstakels ook tegen. En er is ook nu geen andere oplossing dan toen.
Geduld, aandacht en kleine persoonlijke stapjes en bewegingen.
Doordat ik het gevoel had geen startpunt aan te kunnen knopen aan mijn eigen onderzoeksplan, ging ik het opnieuw analyseren.
Ik las Research For People Who (Think They) Would Rather Create. (Vis, D. 2023)
En daar vond ik de stappen in terug die ik voor mezelf diende te zetten. Ook al had ik een goedgekeurd onderzoeksplan, dan nog moest ik dit terug ontleden. Een soort reflectie voor de actie. Een circulaire beweging.
Een 'Think before you act' en tegelijk ook een 'Act before you think'.
Ik stootte op pagina 33 op de term 'Synopsis'.
"a tool for reflection"
Een beweging in 6 stappen:
motivation
problem statement
approach
methodology - methods
findings
conclusions
En ik kreeg meteen een fysieke gewaarwording.
De eerste 4 stappen besloot ik toe te passen op het woord 'start'.
Want dat is wat ik wil maken, een start.
1. Motivation:
How do I start? Where do I start?
These questions have been drumming in my head since the beginning of January. I’ve been searching for information about locations in the public space of Tilburg where dance performances took place. I found locations dating from 2017 till 2021. Not sure if there was much more to find, feeling insecure about this brief moment in history, I decided to wait. Maybe my fellow researchers came with more information.
The pounding question ‘where to start?’ became a first barrier instead of a push forward.
Feeling rather paralyzed, I felt trapped in my head.
What does a dancer need to do to get out of their head?
Move!
So I decided to plan my first move.
2. Problem:
I was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and I still live there. This city resonates with me.
I feel the possibilities and the impossibilities. I sense a connection and the prohibition.
I feel the approach and its inequality.
Here I live, here I dance.
Here I find rest and breathe.
I inhale and exhale the city.
Just as the city engulfs and spits me out.
I know beauty and ugliness here.
I am both beautiful and ugly here.
Here, I come together.
But who am I in Tilburg?
Over the past two years, I studied at the Master of Arts in Education at the Fontys Academy of the Arts.
My graduation focused on an investigation into 'What the dance artist can contribute to social cohesion in the city?'
But 'the city' was my city, Antwerp. My research took place in my home town. In Tilburg, I am a 'guest.'
Can I feel, turn, notice, shift, move deeper into Tilburg?
Nervous, curious, eager to hear what Tilburg will tell me.
Is Tilburg welcoming me?
3. Approach:
I’ll get moving. I’ll walk.
From Antwerp to Tilburg, to cross the distance and to feel the difference.
I’ll have more than 15 hours to feel, and 67.2 kilometers to observe my body in the body of surroundings.
Because it is impossible for me to walk 67.2 km in one day, I’ll do it in two days.
I will walk to Hoogstraten first. A town somewhere in the middle of the journey, some 40 km from Antwerp.
Hoogstraten is not unfamiliar to me. My husband was raised there. I know how it feels to me. And I have a place to sleep there. (Which is not unimportant)
The next day I will continue my journey to Tilburg.
And then I hope, Tilburg will receive me with its hospitality.
4. Methodology - methods
WHY I WALK
(I dance)
The distance between Tilburg and me feels like a stretched rubber band. While I have connections with people in Tilburg, and I studied in this city, I don’t have any connections with the place, the surroundings, the space, the geography, the architecture, the anthropology, …
To overcome these obstacles, I must immerse myself in the city and its surroundings.
Because I want to make the distance smaller between my own city and Tilburg, I will walk the distance to observe, witness, and feel the connection I register while walking this so-called distance.
The connection I may register as a wanderer already exists. It’s not me who makes it or lays it there on the path in between the two places. I might feel, absorb, and preserve observations while walking on the path, but I don’t create them. So how does walking fit into my artistic practice then?
Therefore, I must explain what I feel, absorb or preserve while walking.
Rebecca Solnit (2014) speaks of bodily movements trespassing through anatomy, anthropology, architecture, geography, both political and cultural history, and more.
Walking is surely a bodily movement. Amy Gowen (2021) makes sure that when we move, or when we walk, we move away from an emphasis on the purely visual senses we experience while moving. She states that there is a performativity when somebody walks, allowing other senses and emotions to live through a kind of physicality and psychogeography. Walking provides us a rich and complex understanding of the environments.
I would like to say that when I dance in public space, as a dancer or choreographer, I have a similar experience. My body moving through public space gives me an experience of observing and feeling, witnessing the anatomy of the surroundings, holding anthropology, archaeology, history, politics, and social movements in its body. I would like to dance with this body and place my own body in the complex body of the environment.
And while dancing is often seen as an artistic practice, walking tends to be overlooked.
But I really do feel that walking, as a bodily movement, can be an artistic practice.
To state this, I would like you to read the following quote:
“Walking has always generated architecture and landscape, and this practice, all but totally forgotten by architects themselves, has been reactivated by poets, philosophers, and artists capable of seeing precisely what is not there, in order to make ‘something’ be there.” Francesca Careri (2017)
Dancing and walking give me data to work with. They both do. It’s a duet of seeing and feeling. It’s seeing with the body.
While Careri gives us a perspective on seeing what is not (yet) there, I believe that as a body moving through space, I can even ‘see’ what IS there.
I see what is there, what is not there and what could become there.
It is like walking, as dancing, is a transitional act. A mimesis in public space, transforming the surroundings.
But why walk to Tilburg instead of dance to Tilburg?
While dance is my favorite modus of bodily movement, walking is simply a more purified form of movement. I would like to think that walking is a movement in dance. Like turning, jumping, rolling, walking is a movement through space.
Is it an ordinary movement? It might be for you. The late choreographer Steve Paxton called it dance (2019). He saw walking as material for a performance named Satisfyin' Lover, Letting various people, dancers, and non-dancers cross the stage. Each in their own way. Making the audience experience walking as a performative movement.
And I even believe that we cannot dance without walking. Try… try dancing without doing a step forward or backward.
So I dance from Antwerp to Tilburg.
I choose a very fundamental movement to do so.
The step is called “walking”.
And by doing this dance, I perform.
Walking through public space is performing public space.
Stap 5 en 6, findings en conclusions kan ik nog niet weergeven.
Het wandelen moet nog beginnen.
Maar zodra ik bevindingen en conclusies kan weergeven zien we elkaar weer, hier op dit blog.
Wandelen jullie mee?
References:
Careri, F. (2017). Walkspaces: Walking as an aesthetic practice. Cullicidae Architectural Press.
Gowen, A. (2021). Rights of Way, the body as witness in public space. Onomatopee
Solnit, R. (2014). A History of Walking. Granta Books
Paxton, S. (2019). Steve Paxton conference at Culturgest. [Video]. Youtube. Geraadpleegd op 20 februari 2024, van https://www.youtube.com/live/LFn8JuCkVrM?si=k8NDqPzH8-DX2_UP&t=6580
Vis, D. (2023). Research For People Who (Think They) Would Rather Create. Onomatopee Projects
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