PETER ★APFTDON★ ESSAY★ CV★ TEXTS
The cover page was reformulated as
Table of Contents
PETER
PETER is never about long duration1, endurance, durational performance, etc. No, PETER is about the immediate, its about using what is in the immediate proximity of oneself memory, objects, documents, friends, strangers, used to understand oneself, ones decisions, and situation. This holds much in contradiction but has proven to produce spaces of calmness, safety and void of the stress to achieve, as things emerge and disappear and as importance becomes ephemerali.
Here is a image of a picture posted on Peter Peter Peter, PETER’s facebook wall by Ellen Söderhult, it is taken from the entrance to PETER at about 45 hours into PETER with 3 hour remaining within MDT(Moderna Dansteatern Stockholm). The floor is a mess with papers, black bags and other objects including people. This is generally how PETER looks for the 48 hours.
The following is an extract from Img003.png with is an image of a draft of this essay.
PETER is the author, performer and spectator, a space, duration, performance, dance, dancer,
choreography, choreographer, score, documentation, plan, recording, rehearsal, post performance talk, workshop, self help support group, video, wave, speech, cassette, microwave meal, lecture, essay, experiment, artist, art object, anti-art object, collection, horde, person, life, mess. PETER is all encompassing.
PETER is a year long project which came together as PETER by PETER an encounter of the project so far, situated in one space and open to the public to come and go for 48 hours. The accumulative efforts and materials from PETER fill a studio space at MDT (Moderna Dansteatern Stockholm) in the basement studio, the material covers the floor, collecting, manifesting, concealing, piling, carpeting, spreading and filling the space. It looks like a mess as piles of paper, cassettes, food, plants, soil, photos, laptop, printer, television, record player, folks, microwave, diagrams, lamps, stereos, household items, home made flag, books, pens, people, bodies, paint, texts, instructions, quizs, games, cards, flattened cardboard boxes, emergency tent, sleeping bags, blankets, white sheets and black bags lie on the floor, but everything is situated out of an activity or situation relating to the spaces situational 2 histories with PETER, which have pass through and across its floor.
Photos 1-7 3
Scale
This repeat, it is reformulated, on a scale. It is displaced from its original context and thus always original, also inferring that it itself was a reformulation of something else, which I would agree with, which means that things, anything could be used as a score from which to processed. The nature of the thing, score or reformulation informs us of a ideological stand point, a political positioning scoring and writing how one acts and even perceives within any given situation.
The spectator who walks through and on the material can not avoid altering the material, their mere existence becomes an alteration of the space, material and of the situation. These alterations which the spectator causes can not go unnoticed, as the decision to step into the space, into the mess of things within PETER, can not be taken without negotiating the fact that by doing so, one will alter the situation. This answer-response act of ones actions, begins immediately as the spectator enters PETER, and continues as one navigates through the material and space, continuing new encounters and re-encounters. This constant measuring of ones effect onto PETER is intended as a strong metaphor and example of ones incapacity to not produce violence onto the world in some varying degree, and that the production of negotiation could be considered as a kind of individually implored civic responsibility for ones activities. Using a undefined space for audience and performer/s and a high volume of material with an undefined framing, or staging inhabiting the entire floor space, those within PETER are provoked into a choreographic negotiating movement of themselves and their bodily interaction with their blurry notions of otherness. Img003.png
Photos 8-9
This is an image of a diagram created during a rehearsal period. The diagram speaks of a violence of stability 4 , and how possibility for constant change can function as a more accurate image of reality. The change here is referring to an idea of scale, which I investigated in Img004.jpg a writing I produced after being in PETER.
In Img004.jpg I speak of position’s, like art and not art, or life and performance, and that with any of these binary arguments rather than positioning PETER on one side or the other, I would attempt to position PETER on both sides and with any variation in-between and beyond. So that across time PETER would use both sides of an argument and all positions.
PETER is anti-essentialist, which is ironically essential, and thus essentialist, but I would argue against this notion that PETER’s anti-essentialism as essentialist and refer back to PETER’s use of putting things on a scale, PETER’s aproach to essentialism would be to problemtise it by introducing multiple positions by considering existentialism on a scale from non to essentialist and perform or enact, use, follow, frame both extremes and everything in-between, adding many positions to the collection and not standing by one in particular. The essentialist and the non-essentialist activity of PETER lie next to each other. Extract from Img004.jpg.
In other words to do both, the scale 5 allows for the doing of both, or that the thing done is understood within the context where contradictory activity is acceptable. It shifts the political narrative of picking a side and suggests there maybe things to be gained from both sides. The movement or possibility for movement between two positions allows for the emergence of a third one. A third which is undefined and unconditionally provokes conversation and investigation. The performances of non-positioning, indecisiveness, movement or questioning provides a politics of the unknown, through a practical practise. Which I hope is provided or demonstrated within PETER.
When two things meet a third is born, this third is a monster because it is not yet defined. PETER provides space for things to lie next to each other in contradiction or passing in and out of contradiction, they lie on the floor, in time, in the air and in the social, we watch as they encounter each other and feel the difference, the uncanny, the coincidence, and the spontaneous, we feel our relation as we shift and feel the force of things coming into begin. We begin to learn to be with that which is not yet known, we become empowered and responsible as we feel the movement of measuring between us and the thing which is not yet, impossible but
yet there it is. And we must learn to adventure, to explore. Within PETER we are no long limited to one place essentialist or non-essentialist but to all places, and these movement through the scale of things causes a shift toward a subjective exploration of the
unknown. extract from Img004.jpg.
Through time PETER will move between and amongst different arguments, but over time one could imagine one may see a tendency which would have arisen from the constant choices and changes, and traces would inform one of a trend. But the trend or position would be so personally and individually specific one could perhaps only position, represent it as the name of the person who made the traces (if the person had not changed name). Similarly, PETER becomes that which one could represent as that which my life and actions are aligned to, PETER the religion, political ideology etc. But unlike religion or politic ideology PETER would always have to avoid using PETER as a position from which to position. But would instead have to maintain, a politics of unknowing6 which produced the trend, and in turn PETER, in order to sustain the result of the traces. To position on a scale, never fixing or positioning but creating a third, a third yet to come.
Choreography
Choreography can be defined as the writing of the chorus. It is the creating of text, images etc. which will inform oneself or another on how to behave or organise, the chorus, body or situation. So the act of choreographing would then be to make a score which is to be followed in the performance or dance. My personal interpretation of scores and thus choreography is that the score is that which informs, the manipulation choreography the practice of negotiating that which informs in-order to understand and alter. But when I think choreography this way, I can only imagine it being a personal internal practice, which can be apart of activity and perception but does not necessary have to be. Because for me to choreograph onto someone else or even write a score, I must interrupt or negotiate my own personal score of how to tell the person I choreograph onto or how to write the score, the emphasise being on the how to. So the act of choreographing is actively negotiating the how of activity. Which does not mean one can not tell someone what to do but that they are not altering or choreographing them but are enacting of their own choreography which is informing the person of their negotiation of the situation, and the person being choreographed onto uses the situation with instruction given as one part as the score by which to negotiate their choreography. I believe this way of thinking choreography could help us understand that the instruction is not always the message, but that the message is the reason for the instruction.
This is a broad understanding of score as possibility anything which informs one on how to act and perceive and a understanding of choreography as defined to that which is into and onto itself, and then the negotiation of the situation of the scores which underline our activities would be a new interpretation of dance, and what it means to dance. These rethinking of score, choreography and dance have caused me to think in two states by which I work, the first state being documentation which is the concept of that which is other than the moment and informs the future, our histories and ideologies, and the second performativity everything in the moment, the enactment of the situation informed by the situation and all its documentation. I have even come to the conclusion that is some way documentation only exists as concept or thought or memory, and that it is the performances of the documentation that exists not the documentation itself, as it is the concept of it referring to another performance or moment, and the enacting of the concept in thought or practice is performative. Which is the same as saying nothing happens twice the same. For example the text does not exist as a documentation it is performing, it performs its objecthood and it performs its informing of a memory that speaks of something other that itself. The documentation performance divide allows me to think things in complex relations informing and reinforming each other, in a constant performance, apart of a entangled ecology. It means that the creative process is removed from the tradition of creating a concept, refine the idea, rehearse, produce, performance and then document, but that things can be more nuanced and move differently with a subtle blurring of definition and an allowing for something unknown to appear.
I also view this notion of choreography and score as the choreography of the situation, where the one is constantly measuring the situation, with the situation being that which is immediately close to a person, objects, vision, memories and concepts. So when I think close I am thinking that a meta concept could be close, as long as it is directly relational to the situation. The composition of spaces where one encounters contradiction must continue to search for sense be it on a micro or micro scale, but they must engage with the situation. I consider PETER as a situational choreography, as I create a space of contradicting, materials, mixed and messed together, where one encounters themselves through their role, part, placement contamination of and within PETER. The physical and thought practice that is needed to be within an immediacy of things, information must be ephemeral, so to allow one to remain with that which is in the situation and not construct importances over time removing the attention from the momentary situation. The situational choreograph needs to provide the collapse and inability to construct importance and order which will effect and have a over bearing influence upon the entire situation as a whole over a extend period of time. Scale, reformulation and thing lying next to each other has provided for PETER this situational choreography which allows one to remain with the immediate.
It is the push and pull the leading and following of things within oneself as apart of an immediate situation which means the use and investigation or choreography becomes a fascinating tool against authority against authoritarianism7.
Photos 10-15
Lists
The score of the century has lay amongst PETER for a length of time I can not remember, it is a list of statements and directives titled as steps. PETER acts as a long list with multiple pathways, or perhaps like hyper-links, but a list which an
individual spectator would follow via coincidence or choice but would give a individual dramaturgy, narrative and general idea of PETER as a whole. Causing PETER to be specific for each person. These specific readings of PETER play an important role in maintaining a scale for the audience, PETER and for all that surrounds PETER.
Lists are a great way of understanding the scale as the list puts things out of position and into
another, opening up for variation rather than conclusions Extract from Img004.jpg.
The method of the list extends things across a space (the page) and across time (the length it takes to read), as one follows the list one has to manage the items on the list in their mind allowing for an understanding of all the items in all their combinations, together, next to, alongside etc. so to be considered. When the list extends a comprehendible length or complexity one must start to make choice upon relevance or interest, the action causes the reader to have to become more active in the activity of making sense from the list or situation. As the list continues without clear end, resolution or clarity the reader becomes increasingly creative with their reading, and perhaps enters a mode of reformulating the situation. But the question is to what end or for what purpose would I intentionally want to cause the reader to find themselves in this ambiguity of knowing and unable to know. My intention is to provide the space to follow and encounter ones own interests. I would like to imagine if everyone had the possibility to follow their interests in all their complexity, absurdity and unsureness then people would be able to make decision in relation to their immediate situation, in a implicitly responsible manner. The compromise to represent success often allows a person to ignore the damage they do to their situation, selves and the situation of others. For example when the persons in the seats of funding bodies do not receive applications for funding beyond the clique, representation of what the funding bodies want to fund because applicants use the representations or cliques of what the funding bodies wants, because the applicant thinks that is how to receive funding, rather than following an interest and giving the persons working for the funding bodies the chance to find solutions. Within PETER success PETERs out as one follows the complex list of encounters.
Here I will give an example of the kind of list one may encounter within PETER.
Then someone tells you a story about how to legally have someone assist your suicide you give many people separately separate task, like pour a glass of water, and for another person put some rat poison in a bowl, then for someone else to add the bowls contents to the water, and finally for a persons to feed you the glass of water.
This listing effect along with the multiple forms created through the use of scale, creates a sense of contradiction. Causing meaning, importance and sense making more of a sensorial individual practice than a rational logical practice. So when the spectator is sorting through their interpretations from macro to micro they are confronted by their own practices of organisation, confronted with their ideologies. The use of contradiction and confrontation with ones own trajectory provides a politics of unknowing, a way of thinking which allows for a lack of knowledge, producing a safe and calm space, to adventure. 8
Calmness
Calmness has been a running theme through PETER, () to start thinking about it I would like to share this extract from Img014.jpg.
So now I would like to write a little about calmness in relation to the performance. I did not expect that people would feel clam within this space, with it being very noisy both visually and audibly. But I liked the idea and have since sort to understand the calmness. One thing I deliberately worked on was that I now think could have contributed to the calmness was the ungraspablity of the performance. I wanted that people experienced the incapacity to see and understand everything, something which I believed to be a phenomena of reality. I saw this inability to know exactly what reality is because of our inability to see and understand everything something which was not taken into consideration when writing laws and constructing society. These ideas causes me to question representative democracy and also peoples difficulties to take civic responsibility and thus I wanted to explore the notion that if one can experience ones own lake of knowledge when making choices one can make responsible choices and see choices made for them like laws etc. as difficult to be accurate and or necessary. So the space for me was to act truer to reality as ungraspable leaving the audience member in the position of having to choose how to cope with this confrontation. I imagine people would either get annoyed, angry or frustrated with the situation but the opposite was true, people felt calm and relaxed. People fount themselves falling into the situation enjoying what was graspable, wandering around finding little things of interest or beauty. People started to socialize with one and other showing things to each other. This was slightly unexpected but very desirable.
This was a large shift in my work where before when tackling political issues I would put the audience in a situation or give a representation where they would have to encounter or experience would I deemed as wrong with the world, but with this project I wished to make a proposal not a provocation. This meant working with the individual audience members as persons with their own agency or free will by giving them space and time to negotiate, test, try, fail and play, and I think the most fascinating or telling thing about this space which emerged was that it produced a calmness. Which I believe is the result, as it prosed an alternative to a society based upon successe and gain, people felt calm being able to be with their immediate situation, no longer having to deal with objective power struggles and complex systematic obligations.
The revelation of calmness here expressed a month or two before PETER was shown at MDT, became not only the result but also the mechanism used, this releasing and letting go became a strong activity. A very conceptual activity because as PETER had shown me before the possibility for things like noise etc. often recognised with stress could still be but used in a manner to provide calmness. It was as if calmness became the message of PETER transmitted through its many scores, objects and performances accumulating in a state and space of calmness.
Calmness is more than a spa, holiday, calmness is a quality of living. We are so used to dividing our lives and selves into work, family, alone time etc. that the narrative extremly strong, our ability to act or function with variety is obstructed, calmness is monopolies and demonised as not conducive of work or seriousness, and in the same line importance is removed from play and spending time with a thing. I would like to propose that calmness could be a meta practice within our lives, which means that calmness would not be treated like an aesthetic for example in Buddhism where simplicity is used to enforce a calm approach to life, but that by a person function on a scale, and be able to move between and around simplicity or the opposite but still place their activities within a kind of economy, where empathise is on shifting value, following interesting and practising an importance for oneself, which would provide a condition of calmness.
It is not important to achieve calmness. If you want something you will have to do something other than it to produce it. Calmness is not only a practice but also that which slithers, wiggles, glides, slides, sneaks and approaches unnoticed into the situation when we become immersed in a practise of dropping and letting go, reformulation and repositioning. PETER constructs situations where the necessity to achieve is blurred or removed and one finds themselves resorting to that which is interesting.
The ability to drop and let things fall and lie on the floor. Composed disorganisation
It is not achieved, It is not complete. Writes Anne lise le gac in an email after PETER is placed in
MDT,
The ability to drop and let go, to find and move safe without judgement and to be provided with access tools and possibilities. To have to possibility to try, which means to venture from ones position and into another, without anxiety or stress. This has been a large question around participatory performance, and how one can partake without feeling exposed, or how one can leave the position they find themselves. The space of PETER provided this, but not only to move into activity or performance but to always be free to move back into passivity or observing. I believe the undefined nature of the spectator and performers space also of what is observing and performing allowed for the easy movement from one to another. But also my commitment as the creator and for my instruction for the dancers and performers to never do something which makes them feel uncomfortable or exposed, and if something does then to drop it or remove themselves from that situation. These were powerful tools as they not only inform use the performers but also the audience and the space, and generated the atmosphere which was calm and safe. Even where this generosity of agency was challenged as two person threw food at the wall, and the activity was absorbed into space as not more or less important than any other and the persons become bored and turn to another less provoking activity.
Returning to Img004.jpg I speak about entropy.
A question which has followed me and PETER is of entropy and life. And a poor interpretation of entropy being the movement toward chaos or disorder, as energy is lost and things become less complex and break down into their simplest form, where as life fights against entropy and for structure in order to survive. From habit to tools and technology there is a clear line for or towards organization in order to survive. But as we posses the ability to be conscious of this and survival breaks from survival of the fittest, the question arises how do we avoid bad habits and or bad organizations, which is different to asking how do we orgainse? or allowing ourselves to revert back to survival of the fittest and not orgainise. The ability to avoid bad orgainsation measured by our ability to test, to be outside of that orgainisation, but how does one leave their orgainsation without risking the possibility that the lack of that orgainsation could kill or damage oneself?! There needs to be an environment with provides safe conditions to move in and out of different ogranisations, and which I feel PETER allows us to imagine. A space where orgainsation is facilitated by immediacy always driving for and toward safety and calmness.
The movement from an order, this order into another, is always out of order. Which means the movement towards entropy is a reformulation, which allows us to reconsider chaos as that which is our of order and thus not useless, but to think of it as reformulated, energy is never lost it only redistributed, and from the ash of a forest breeds diversity. PETER gives a space without organisational tools such as the shelf or table causing everything to have to lie on the floor of fall to the floor, where it can become apart of another ecosystem of creativity.
Photos 16-21
To visit order and the composition of PETER I will share two results from a workshop held within the performance.
PETER is composed9 by invitation and invitations to and within different schedule’s which cross over and expand PETER before, during and after. The schedule’s differed in type, expression and care, allowing for multiple entries with different knowledge, instruction and expectation. So tobegin PETER with the inclusion of a individuals trajectory or dramaturgy before even arriving at PETER or encountering PETER. Providing the sentiment the PETER is what it is and what it is is what it is, a inescapable inclusion of the inevitable. So as the seemingly spontaneous becomes included as apart of PETER so does the workshop which has been planned and organised, providing the questioning of the difference of the spontaneous and well organised, as both slip and become contaminated by each other and of the same experience. Img017.jpg and Img018.jpg demonstrate the brushing between the organised and unorgainsed as the practitioners navigate between ordering the information and emergence of other information. This workshop was scheduled and advertised the next img’s are from activity which were not scheduled or advertise, but lay in the space for people to stumble across.
These are of workshops which were planned but never hosted within the frame of a workshop but were created planned and left for another time. Some where planned and created within the space whilst the performance was happen, and even created from a task of another workshop. As you can see the layering is not only spacial but also temporal, like a Russian doll, allowing for workshops within workshops, performances within rehearsals, ritual at the same time as discussion and so on, things do not only lie next to each other but within each other. Although PETER was composed schedule and planned by using organisational methods none of them were maintained or was it necessary for them to be maintained and thus were left to become another or other reformulation of PETER.
Reformulation
The reformulation handbook 2013.PETER was created just under a year before PETER was staged at MDT. The creating of the book and ideas10 , produced and informed PETER on wayshow it treats material. To think material as something processual. The material relates to its future, past and combination with other material. The material can no long be thought singular, with must be thought within its context. It reflects upon and is reflected on, through through the term I used called reformulations, including the act of interpretation, copying and association. The relational quality of things is emphasised through the constant reformulating which occurs within PETER because things lie out of context, contaminate and produce another by using another, redistributing and redefining things and their meanings. As I started to treat everything as apart of a journey the things quickly lost their ownership, as if to say when you are singing a Madonna song it is not Madonna’s song but your song because you are singing it. Things are performative and belong in the moment to the person performing them. It is only the belief of them being outside this moment that they belong to another. Within PETER this meant that PETER was always the belief that it is PETER authorising things within the space, found objects, commissioned objects, produced, purchased objects all become entitled as PETER’s, apart of PETER and by PETER. But only as a belief, the reality is that any one could leave with anything from the space 
when someone is reading a text on the floor it belongs to no one. Ownership is a belief, even our bodily notions of ownership, the ownership passes through and by each other manifesting in different beliefs, within PETER these beliefs are constantly dropped and shifted, allowing space for new interpretations.
Sometimes it feels like things of belonging to each other, that the paper owns the lamp and that the person using to lamp owns the lamp but the light owns the person and the paper owns the light. These indistinguishable movements within cause for more release of self and identity. Moritz Frischkorn writes
I had a discussion with PETER. I took a break with PETER. In PETER, I remembered childhood games I used to play back then. I saw exaggeration, fantasy and blasphemy in PETER. PETER gave me a hand massage. With PETER, I spoke to CIA agents. I did PETER-yoga and tried some PETERosophy. I drank from PETERs cup and ate his beans. I had time for PETER. I spent a night with PETER. I got an ambulating light from PETER. I could smell pizza in PETER. I was angry at PETER. I had breakfast with PETER. I still fancy PETER. I think I maybe misunderstood PETER.Or maybe PETER misunderstood me. I spent all my summer-holidays in PETER. I met friends in PETER. Life goes on without PETER. Life goes on for PETER. I took my shoes off in PETER. I left PETER. I met my dead aunt in PETER. Why did I ever talk to PETER? And why the hell did I start net-working with PETER? How much time I joyfully killed with PETER. I took a garbage bag from PETER, finally. I was brainwashed by PETER and he seduced me to convince him to work with me. I rested well with PETER. I had a déjà-vu of PETER. A dream of spring outside of PETER. UnPETER my heart. Hey hey, my my, PETER PETER will never die. I spoke Farsi and Hindu with PETER
Extract from peterpeteringout.
Whilst PETER was being performed I invited Moritz to reformulate the PR text for PETER.
Moritz would write within, outside and in between PETER. At the same time I had invited Robin Dingemans to write as PETER on peter peter peter’s facebook wall.
I had asked people to be PETER outside of PETER for me when I was in PETER, I had given pre-recorded material for Robin to post and asked that he would take material from within PETER.
PETER becomes like a ghost, impossibly omnipresent through the power of belief. PETER as a belief allows us to include in our situation that which is not yet available to us, such as history, future and that which is other to ourselves, and use it as if it was real in order to experience it in relation to our situation. Testing a touching the possible and impossible around us so to adventure into the unknown, known which is not yet known. PETER allows for the freedom to let go as it gives to the possibility to believe in anything and does not loss the value of it in the immediate situation.
https://fbcdn-video-a.akamaihd.net/hvideo-ak-xap1/v/t43.1792-2/10336348_1424907857784054_1222134784_n.mp4?oh=fef41f55d2784e1c4164874fbe80cfa0&oe=5399CE98&__gda__=1402588949_359295451b64ff58b4dec0b7827a6b23A video from within PETER posted by Robin.
There were a few alternative ends, in Img029.jpg PETER speaks about how the performance ended at MDT, by just leaving after printing the word PETER, but PETER did not end at the locking of the studio door, it continues in the tidying of the space as me and my father explored our relationship in light of the post apocalyptic event, and in the writing and rewriting of this essay.
Conversational reformulation community production space calm, safe of the immediate situation
To expand the concept situational choreography PETER also included community as choreography, choreographing onto others in every encounter with the material or person PETER has encountered and is choreographed onto by every material and person PETER encountered. Reformulation continues and constantly plays a role in the community around PETER, to the extent that all encounters become and are a reformulation within PETER. PETER is all encompassing. If PETER was to tour there would have to be a week or more before, during and after of workshops, meetings etc., encounters with children, adults, artists etc. to build a community of PETER within the locality of the tour. PETER proposes a different mode of art production and consumption, one within an economy of calmness and following interest. This different mode would be for and within a community, not for an abstract public only giving a one direction conversation, but for an audience of voices ready to speak back and communicate through creation through reformulation. And also not for an exclusive art community, or sub culture where artists struggle to justify their art by using peer interest for self gain and success, constantly stunting conversation which moves value away from ones art product. But apart of a community which works for a safe, calm space where success is not an aim and persons apart of the community or conversation follow interest and see their art objects, performative encounters as apart of a conversation which the whole community is having and owning. The community would have to allow for interests to split and divide for persons to level and enter. And to enter means there needs to be a constant acknowledgement of the situation of the new arrivals and for the conversation to adjust in accordance to it. Just like in PETER the community must have to space calm and safe in which to invest in the immediate situation.
Photos 22-28
The Ephemeral City
PETER taught me the importance of ephemeral information11 , to hold knowledge as fleeting and
dynamic but yet hold it still the same, a politics of unknowing. “PETER is dead, long live PETER.” Emma Tolander sitting outside MDT days before the performance of PETER. Things echo and allow to arise anew, these things will be informed by your presence in a situation, not by will or force, histories move and so must we if we are to keep up with them, there is no point in knowing a history. The score reflects, in reformulations of themselves, individually we are implored to act in response to the echoing sound of our being within the world, a measure of violence not just nor justified but measured all the same.
The creation of these types of spaces has been the most exciting and rewarding part of working with PETER. With likes of the discussion game and café by Emma and PETER 2014 (discussiongamecafe2014tdiscussion game cafe 2014) which uses ephemeral practices to have a discussion and which has been a great success. But the desire is to take these tools into daring forms and multiple nuances in other fields. Before starting my MA I worked as an activist from No Borders, a global network of activists working against deportation and problems surrounding deportation. One of the issues to resolve, coming from being an activist was to understand how one can maintain a safe environment but still take space and perform daring activities, and I believe the work done around ephemeral spaces and information is in a direction which will see these help achieve these aims.
Photos 29-30
The golden dress
I’m looking for my golden dress.
The one I cover with a black top or a jacket.
When I want to be daring and beautiful but I worry I may loss my street cred. Because there is a fine line between taking things too far and not trying at all, which lies somewhat in a liminal space. If I challenge the norm too much I risk being an outcast, as my action is seen as a provocation of the norm, or if I do not challenge the norm enough, it means I can not succeed within the group as I can be seen as not supporting my peers.
There is a definition of cool, being that which subverts but is not socially endangering 12 ,
I have been interested in how one can tell someone something without the person rejecting it on face value because it proposes something not of their situation, forcing the proposal into argumentation, with both sides only defending their proposal or situation. Which could be considered as a reason to why change through this type of political discussion is so difficult because the person defending their situation does not consider a different idea of things but merely strengthens their argument for their situation.
It is almost the same question as how do we talk from different ideologies.
Within this project I wanted to understand how to create an art object from my interests which doesnot cause a divide between those who refuse it and those who do not. So to create a piece where one can experience my interests but not feel like they have to defend themselves in relation to them.
Like wearing the golden dress with a top which covers it, I want to be daring with me desires but yet safe from exclusion.
But here I would like to say and understand what is my golden dress. Which is difficult.
Photo 31
I believe my interest is political. Political because I would like to fight authoritarianism, but authoritarianism in all aspects of life, I propose the idea that authoritarianism is everywhere including in ourselves, in our choices and activities, and I believe the largest fight is in this place, within oneself a constant fight to firstly understand what one believes as authoritarian, how to act in relation to that belief and the construction of a faith in an alternative to authoritarian, what authoritarianism is and how to act, in order to have motivation to act.
And in part the reason I wish to work in this way which does not produce my interest as a argument is coming from my interest, as it installs the belief that everyone has potential, as long as they have to space to try. It speaks of a belief in a individualist empowerment where the individual has the ability to construct destruct authoritarianism.
Which is perhaps why when looking in retrospect at my work I am not sure whether it succeeded at producing a place of experience rather that argumentation by not giving a proposal. Because although it did move more towards giving space for testing and trying my interests it also caused people to refuse it on face value because it still proposed something.
But although it proposes something I still belief the proposal interesting which in the end is my message, if it is no longer interesting, drop it and move onto something else which I in fact belief is a great individualist strategy against authoritarianism.
Photo 32
HEART PIECE (by Heiner Müller)
ONE: May I put my heart at your feet?
TWO: As long as you don’t soil my floor.
ONE: My heart is pure.
TWO: We’ll see to that.
ONE: I can’t get it out.
TWO: You’d like me to help you?
ONE: If you don’t mind.
TWO: It is my pleasure.
I can’t get it out.
CRIES
TWO: I’ ll take out by surgery.
What do I have a penknife for.
We’ll this in a minute.
To work and not to despair.
TWO: Well, it’s done.
But this is a brick.
This is a brick.
ONE: Yes.
But it beats only for you.
This was the final illustration for the essay.Which has been since reformulated as
But I will leave you with this instead.
PETER
Footnotes
- Long durational performance is often used in performance art as a way of testing the limits of the human body, challenged conventional production modes in art, exhaust a task or concept or blur the lines between life and art, but my interest for PETER being so long was namely because PETER is long and infact longer that the 48 hours which were presented, PETER shifted the mode of performance into everyday situations as I turned social encounters into the choreographing or informing of others on how to behave or understand PETER. PETER the whole process became a blurring in order to show how one has to deal with the questions PETER addresses life, love, faith etc. all the time, and that we are all entrapped by our conditions of being. And in some sense PETER is my very own personal entrapment, the 48 hours is intend to illustrate that, as does the title ‘PETER’. Me, Peter entrapped by PETER
i
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- Here PETER is referring to situation choreography, which is expanded on in Conversational reformulation community production space calm, safe of the immediate situation.↑
- PETER was partly documented with disposable cameras left in the space.↑
- Stability here is being used to refer to as that which in a situation where something is promoted for it representation of stability over and rather than considering the situation. To forcefully commit to something other than the situation.↑
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- Scale is a measure which can be placed over a situation, concept or history and allow for one the consider variation beyond, in opposition and in between. Scale is used within many disciplines to set parameters from which to work from but which it not treated as the thing is is placed over can provide an expansion of ones understanding of the thing, providing variation and for undefined things to emerge.↑
- Politics of unknowing, is a proposal that rather than producing political régime, ideology, party, group, which comes together around a topic, idea, issue, problem or common interest, which has the constant problem of what would the resolve of the problem be or the justification of the idea above others. Where as a politics of unknowing would gather around the desire not to gather around a issue or idea etc. but for individual specify interests for the individual, with possibility to share or remain silent.↑
- When I speak of authoritarianism I speak of the internal struggle with ones effects onto the world.↑
- This list here is deliberately open ended so to allow for confusion of where the list is and what direction the list takes, does it continue into the writing, into one of the referenced links or into your life your choreographic situation, your situation.↑
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- Here when im talking about composition, I am referring to composition within the realm of situational choreography, so in the examples Img017.jpg and Img018.jpg I consider the giving of the paper with instructions on within a frame of a workshop inside of PETER as the composition of the situation.↑
- My work on reformulation builds on from the work of Myriam Van Imschoot, Victoria Perez Rojo, Litó Walkey,Siegmar Zacharias and the das arts feeback methods. Reformulation and those practices like it are apart of a vocal interest in choreography today, for me it shifts our way notion of creativity.↑
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- Ephemeral information refers to practices where persons are invited to share information without pressure for the information to have a specific value or meaning and that the information will be considered by all persons involved as apart of this specific moment, and not as a statement of claim to be carried into further engagements. For example the practice of a “round” rather than an open discussion, where in the round everyone has the opportunity to take space in the meeting to say something or not without interruption. Where as in a general discussion one must take space to contribute information and only being given space if the information is deemed valuable or relevant by andfor the most powerful voice or voices in the discussion.↑
PETER 
