"I ACT WITH THE CUP, THE CUP DOESN'T ACT WITH ME!" 2010

This piece is named after a quotation I came across during my stay in a.pass (Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies)
“I ACT WITH THE CUP, THE CUP DOESN’T ACT WITH ME!”

Triple piece: “I ACT WITH THE CUP, THE CUP DOESN’T ACT WITH ME!”
Section 1 Sound Piece Monologue: voice Iuliana Varodi
Section 2 Video Piece: a.pass participants
Section 3 Interactive Performance: Kelly, Ana, Adva, Dominik, Birgit, Marcello and perhaps you?

The piece “I ACT WITH THE CUP, THE CUP DOESN’T ACT WITH ME!” is composed out of fragments taken from the 12 month research environment a.pass itself and was represented, replayed on in the context of Re-ject, E-ject in deSingel in Antwerp.

The piece examples how I deal with “material” and how I replay that material on an artistic platform.

The material I choose to work with comes out of social environments, habitats, closed systems. I observe setting, words, tone, timing, gesture and arrangement.

My focus lay on basic questions like: What is rhetorical? What is attention? What is performative? How are narrations generated? These questions are aimed at all the elements that make up a setting as it is.

By observing words, tone, timing, gesture and arrangement I often finds beauty in the hypnotic economics that reveal themselves over time. In this triple experimental piece I reframe and rearrange some of the observed elements mentioned above to sense once more the effect of them.

Does the words once spoken, the gestures once made in a certain setting save and pass information of that original setting when you replay them in a different place and time, in a different set up? Is the information once inscribed part of the air they breath? Or do they transform that information? How in which way? Is there something that remains unchangeable?

I observe how different actors and different platforms organize their environments and how the environment organizes the actors. My perspective is based on the assumption that a certain setting is made up by the mutual inscription of all the elements involved in that setting.

Therefore the seemingly meaningless quote “I ACT WITH THE CUP, THE CUP DOESN’T ACT WITH ME!” is a quote I fundamentally disagree with.

What exactly is this mutual inscription made of? Does the inscription remain when we dislocate parts of a certain setting? Is the information once inscribed forever?

Section 1 Sound Piece Monologue

We enter a private space where we listen individually to a documented dialogue that is here replayed for you as a monologue.
The experiment focuses on questions like: Can we still distinct 2 voices when we listen to a single person? Do we sense the possible opposites? Is the monologued voice neutralised from its original dialogue context?

Section 2

A video recording of 33 minutes is here projected in three separate parts and slightly slowed down. Sound is removed. The camera is travelling in a circle staging 9 persons individually in a constant flow of one after the other. The staged persons are pointing at each other and they are being pointed at. Gestures, face and body expression, directing, looking and being looked at are in section 2 replayed in a new constellation.

Section 3 Interactive Performance

In this piece the audience will be lectured about the exact meaning of Rhetoric and Attention. This takes place around the table in the kitchen. Secondly the audience is confronted with a “discussion” at the same table in the kitchen. The participants of the discussion are random persons. They wear headphones. Their task is to mainly focus on reproducing sentences they hear through the headphones. They copy tone, timing and color. The sentences are one side of a documented interview namely the part of the interviewer. The random persons are sitting around the table facing each other. None of them were present at the original set up. Which information do they transit by hearing and reproducing?

Piece by Fanny Zaman in the context of a.pass Re-ject, E-ject 6th an 7th of May 2010, deSingel Antwerp

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Documentation and interesting links

tradition
Manuel De Landa
MATTER MATTERS
Chris Marker
Atlas Group

Song Mountain area, THE CENTRE DIRECTION

screened at FIDMarseille 2010

In March 2009 a project started at Song Mountain, a mountain range which lies on the southern bank of the Yellow River in China. It mainly revolved around martial arts and religion in the form of performance, choreography, group, landscape and setting. I was interested in a correlation between geography and choreography. The approach was like making an inventory bound by the time of one month aiming to reveal inspiring shapes and form stories of interest.

My aims and interests were to observe large scale pattern and choreography in the form of martial arts and industrial sites on a location that is concidered 'energetic'.

The landscape of Song-mountain is characteristic and pronounced. Apart from religion and martial arts, the naturally rich soil has also produced industry. This industry has significantly changed the lay out of the landscape. This makes the interaction between the surroundings and the industry visible and concrete. The interface between surroundings and industry has stipulated the patterns of and the figures in the lay out. This lay out or composition that evolves and transforms, sometimes gradual, sometimes radical, can be seen as a form of choreography. The industrial sites are set up and organised in the way that the division and structure of the soil has indicated it.

The 'Shaolin Temple' proves to be a powerful epicentre with a gathering effect.

I observe the organization and the set-up of the training spaces. What is the division like, the lay out, the surface, the colour? What attributes are present and how are they organized?

We observe the number of students and their division in the landscape, in the indoor settings , their clothes: color and pieces, weapons, flags and attributes, the pattern of the training, the recurrence, the sound of the training: voice, cries, songs, touching of music/fighting instruments, walls and floors, the sound of the environment, wind, industry, etc.

The set-up of the recording is repetitive because this set-up makes the figures and stories visible.

It is said that the number of martial arts students practising in Deng Feng should be around seventy-thousand.

It is said that this makes half of the entire population.



meer

trope-platform

trope01: Sunday 25th of February 2007 (8 pm) Begijnenvest 53, 2000 Antwerpen
0101 Shifting Zones or God’s eye perspective, Fanny Zaman (B), Lecture 2007
0102 Mental Fashion, Inge Nederkoorn (NL), Performance 2007
0103 Here, Elizabeth Haines (UK), Audio-visual 2007

trope02: Sunday 22nd of April 2007 (8 pm)Begijnenvest 53, 2000 Antwerpen
0201 Zwarte gaten, parels en kiezen ( en snijtanden en ...), Kelly De Wilde (B), Lecture 2007
0202 Gitaar en Toon, Christophe Albertijn (B), Sound piece 2007
0203 Mag men de teksten van Antonin Artaud voordragen? Thomas Crombez (B), Lecture 2007

trope03: Sunday 23rd of September 2007 (8 pm)Begijnenvest 53, 2000 Antwerpen
0301 little big sculpture, Wouter Davidts (B), Lezing 2007
0302 Séance een model, Fanny Zaman (B), Test01 2007
0303 Campanella, Inge Nederkoorn (NL), Video 2005
bonus As Far As I’m Concerned, Marc Nagtzaam (NL), Interieur 2007

trope04: Sunday 24th of February 2008 (8 pm) Begijnenvest 53, 2000 Antwerpen
0401 Rocks and Minerals, Pedro Teodosio (P), Lecture 2008
0402 De Avatar, zijn wereld en zijn vrienden, Herman Verhagen (NL), Lecture 2008
0403 Hell/Dunkel, Ivan Willemijns (B) Blockprint on silkpaper 2008

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Paradigm, 2003

-The limit is x going to a. -














The paradigm is a model of variation.
X is consideration, negotiation and transformation. The identity  is a.
The limit is x going to a, the identity (a) only exist in terms of interpretation (x). The paradigm embodies the whole.
The constant flow between these two is a very interesting domain. Edith Doove calls it “The grey mass of strategy” referring to the chess play of Duchamp.

The paradigm is context; it is a situation that is not an element by itself but a group of elements in position towards each other but also towards other groups and other elements. The elements should be posed towards an identity. This identity however is not fixed or isolated either; it’s a new network of stressed points.
To study context: how, when, where and what is off an endless complexity.
Henri Bergson explained that deconstruction wouldn’t help to reach a. He was right but deconstruction isn’t a tool to reach a, it is a tool to reach a higher level in the game; the game called paradigm.

Deleuze’s stressing to differentiate has been of great importance, instead of syntheses, to accomplish a synthesiser. But what is the identity and what is his differentiation? The identity is more fixed and the differentiation is less fixed, this seems to be the only plausible definition because they are both influenced by context. The identity embodies the differentiation and vice versa they can’t be separated as two elements. Depending on the context an element is identity or differentiation. They can only be separated in terms of their context.

If differentiation can’t be an enduring product, how to be a synthesiser?
By subjective choice!
Or as how Lyotard puts it, to understand the social relations, at any level, there is not only a theory of communication but also a game theory: to know these game theories you should know how to act, when to act, depending on who you are and where you are.
The issue is that in our new globalised world of total accessibility it still comes down to the impossibility of transmitting a situation.

How to transmit a situation?
The differentiation of a subjective identity is constructed.
Creating a situation, the location of an occasion, the drafts of the identity at best.

By leaving out the identity you loose as well its differentiation which is obvious. Still I see many attempts to create differentiation by itself.
“Bridge the Gap” by Akiko Miyake and Hans Ulrich Obrist is a very good example for this. The observation that “the most important things in conferences usually happen in the ‘in between’ – between different disciplines and geographies, but also in the ‘in between’ of the actual conference programme.” cit. janus is interesting. But in their conference “Bridge the Gap” they did exactly this, leaving out the identity (the conference) thinking they could have the in between by itself. By attending similar attempts I observed myself as well as other audience and I noticed a strange awareness. It was an implosion what it caused. There was no synthesiser going on or crossing points, nothing as how Deleuze had meant it with his theory of the rhizome. It was movement by itself, which is as good as standing still. It was exhausting diffusion but my friend calls it cynicism.

Fanny Zaman

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Organised Landscape, March 2003

Exhibition project Organised Landscape part of The memory of the landscape FLACC Genk  2003
Fanny Zaman


Organised Landscape is a continuation of my former project IN/OUT What is, for you, the difference between interior and exterior architecture? (HISK Antwerp 2002). It raises out of the following questions: what is the difference between inside and outside, open and closed, two and three dimensional, reality and virtuality, form and content, physiology and psychology, event and situation, subjective and objective, individual and general? At the two extremes, the difference is clear to see, but where is the point of transition? What is the essence of the difference? Where are the thresholds?
The IN/OUT project started out from architectural spatiality, an installation composed of scaffolding that redrew the space. What is considered inside and what outside? There is of course no solution, the question remains, and this makes the problem that much more captivating. The horizontal and vertical lines of the scaffolding created a framework, a physical and psychological space in which an image was projected. It created a situation (the scaffolding) in which something could happen (the projection). What was projected was so minimal that an interaction arose between situation and event. The question of which is the more important cannot be answered.
The IN/OUT installation remained an interesting location, while the subsequent video dealt with both new questions and the old ones, but now in a different way. The camera glides through the space and adopts angles reminiscent of the point of view of a player in a virtual landscape.

What does the overall title  The memory of the landscape mean? In the broadest sense of the word, the landscape is the reality that surrounds us. History teaches us that evolution involves both quantitative growth and radical breaks. These breaks or shifts seem more unexpected, and we must study this more in order to understand it. What is more, we can immediately link the expected or unexpected to the memory.
Firstly, what is the model and what is the copy? The memory plays an important part in this. Subjectively, the things that remind you of something take place later, though historically it can be the other way round. The subjective memory does not observe the linear laws of history. Secondly, in the urban landscape we find sites that look like enlarged models, instead of being designed at full size. Blocks of houses are composed of elements that are more easily managed on the scale of a model.
Thirdly, new technology has had an influence not only on execution but also on design, whereby the direct link with the previous one is removed. A new design is not based on a previous one but is given a different appearance as a consequence of, for example, software with a different look.
Fourthly, the interdisciplinary nature of the world we live in means that in a particular discipline a project is not necessarily based on a previous one in the same discipline; insights can be acquired elsewhere.
This form of reference has of course been going on for some time, but we are gradually coming to the point where the references themselves form the basis. In the long run, all this brings about a shift. The historical order becomes less important or else is no longer of decisive importance. The subjective memory plays a key part in this, and as a result of our subjective way of remembering, the aesthetic field is reshaped in a way that is no longer linear.

Standing on top of a slagheap you imagine yourself in a model, a surreal landscape. The fascination of such a place lies in man’s changes to nature. The geometric position of the trees creates a pattern, an order. Order is possibly the ultimate human quality. Understanding is equal to ordering.
The perfectly flat truncation of a hill, the slope just slightly too round, the grass stuck on as if in a model, are elements that create associations in the memory, and one cannot determine what was the model and what the copy.

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IN/OUT WHAT IS, FOR YOU, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ARCHITECTURE?, 2002

Exhibition project September 2002 Higher Institute of Fine Arts (HISK)
Fanny Zaman




The project is accomplished out of this question, but it also returns the question to the viewer.
The project is a working-model and a thinking-model. What makes inside to be inside and outside to be outside?
The installation exists out of scaffolds, which are taking the room as their structure unfolds. Seven projections are integrated within this landscape. Outside images are projected inside the model. Interior becomes exterior and exterior becomes interior. What causes this inversion and how long can it remain?
Cities on the move from Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist concerns economy, culture and politics in Asia. It strokes me how it seems to describe our installation: “The line between inner and outer landscape is breaking down. The installation spreads like a rhizome. Motion, displacement and transformation reorganised both horizontally and vertically, new zones or layers marked and measured by different speed.” “A condensed spectacle of vertical growth and horizontal displacement, a spectacle of leaping between fullness and emptiness. Between linear growth and ‘irrational’ intuition. Boundaries such as inside/outside private/public are becoming porous.”
How come the description tailors so well? The processes they are describing resembles the process of our brains, it describes the process of the World Wide Web, and it even describes the process of chemical process. Everything seems to follow this inside/outside pattern.

Our generation seems to be brought up in a decentralised society. We grew on decentralisation. The loss of a centre we never had does not paralyse or disappoint. We are part of a tissue that has long lasting centres and fast passing centres. We realise that the pause (the absence) between things can be as much a dispositif (presence) of things.

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ORDNUNG BITTE! 2004

Laisser faire.
16 maart 2004 Fanny Zaman


De tracé van een passage?

Het allerkleinste deeltje schijnt niet veel meer met materie te maken te hebben. Het blijkt veeleer een wiskundige ‘uitdrukking’ te zijn.
Eerder een filosofische dan een materiële aangelegenheid.
Eerder een exacte dan een speculatieve aangelegenheid.
Het kleinste deeltje wordt berekend.
Het kleinste deeltje wordt uitgedrukt a.d.h.v. een formule.

De formule drukt.
Zij drukt uit maar zij drukt ook in.

Duchamp is heel zijn leven geïntrigeerd geweest door het schaakspel. Het schaakspel is iets gelijkaardigs als een formule. De betekenaars of de materie zijn eenvoudig, namelijk de schaakstukken en het bord. Ook een zet op zich is beperkt in zijn mogelijkheden. Doch elke zet houdt een geconcentreerde potentie, aan mogelijke zetten in zich die bovendien stuk voor stuk exact zijn. Er zijn namelijk geen halve zetten mogelijk.

“In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It is the imagining of the movement or of the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It’s completely in one’s grey matter.” Duchamp

De formule en het schaakspel zijn twee voorbeelden van een bijzondere verhouding tussen betekenaar en betekenis. Het zijn betekenaars met geconcentreerde betekenis, met een hoger betekenis gehalte.

Het ideeële versus het reële: God schiep de wereld uit het niets (dat was) door het te groeperen, te ordenen, hij creëerde het paradigma, hij zette het weefgetouw op. Adam, vervolgens, heeft deze wereld benoemd, hij gaf de dieren een naam en oriënteerde zichzelf in deze wereld.
Derrida: “De betekenis is het effect van de gebruikte woorden.” Of zijn de woorden eerder het effect zijn van betekenissen? Levert het kruisen van verschillende betekenissen een betekenaar op?

Wat is betekenaar?
De drager, de materie.
Wat is materie, of uit wat is het opgebouwd?
Uit tracé’s van een passage. Uit punten zonder afmetingen.

Het kleinste deeltje is een complexe potentiële concentratie. Het kleinste deeltje is een aangelegenheid. Het kleinste deeltje is betekenis.

Betekenis is betekenaar ... op een paradoxale manier! En deze specifieke verhouding, deze wijze waarop, is bijzonder.
De verhouding is een probleem.

De term centrumloosheid is misschien te vaak ongenuanceerd gebruikt.

Betekenissen maken gebruik van tijd. Het samenkomen of kruisen van betekenissen vormt een concentraat, een centrum, een ruimtelijke betekenaar. Deze groep (deze centra) klonteren op hun beurt met andere groepen en samen vormen zij waarneembare materie.
Betekenis kent een periode ‘ervoor’ en een periode ‘erna’. Een periode voor de kruising en een periode na de kruising. Het vindt haar breuk in het kruisingsmoment. Een betekenaar heeft altijd tenminste twee betekenisvelden namelijk naar de essentie toe en van de essentie weg, naar de breuk toe en van de breuk weg.

De betekenaar en zijn twee betekenissen creëren hierdoor spontaan verschijnende complexiteit.

Het schaakspel en de formule zijn zo bijzonder door de verhouding van de eenvoudige vorm tegenover de complexe inhoud. Deze inhouden ontsluiten in een klimax. De orde van deze afzonderlijke articulaties vormt plots een patroon, een besef en deze ‘aha’ is prettig.
In het geval van de formule is een deel van het esthetische beleven de contradictie tussen de eenvoudige vorm en de complexe inhoud.


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WIND 2004

21/02/2004


Goed, we denken niet langer vanuit een gesloten (newtoniaans) systeem, vanwaar hoge druk toewaait naar lage druk tot er geen drukverschil meer is .

Doch de wind waait nog steeds van hoge druk naar lage druk toe. Denken vanuit een open systeem noopt ons echter te spreken:

vanwaar hogere druk toewaait naar lagere druk, waarbij lagere druk in het ene geval hogere druk is; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk; waarbij lagere druk, in het ene geval, hogere druk is, vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk de andere keer lagere druk is, waartoe de wind vanwaait van hogere druk; vanwaar de wind toewaait naar lagere druk, de andere keer lagere ...

U had toch niet gedacht dat “in het ene geval” en “de andere keer” elkaar evenwichtig afwisselden? Dat doen ze dus niet!

Is er een gestage vermeerdering van complexiteit? Dat ook niet. Of wou U beweren dat de wind er met de jaren complexer op wordt?

Wou U beweren dat hoog en laag van geen tel meer zijn?

Dan vergist U zich schromelijk en ontkent U het waaien van de wind!


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