Temporary Monuments - "monuments" created temporarily. Monuments as sites/events. A tableau - An altar...the altar carried within and always with the ability to manifest as signage of HOPE.
What if there was a set of materials that are able to be organized and created with and then reused? What would be collected in the bodies' of these materials? What would our shared bodies collect and then transfer through the reuse? What would be created and collected? What would the "what elseness" of their collection be both activated and gathered? It might be something very mixed up and unrecognizable - or “reuse as queer use” as Sara Ahmed has offered.
“Choreography becomes a field for movement expression when the body becomes an intensive participant with the evolving milieu rather than simply the instigator of the action.” Here, Erin Manning helps us put into context the importance of the relationship of material and performer.
As Manning would put it ,the “technicity” or “what else-ness” of the event can only be possible when the performer is able to decenter the ego and allow the materials to speak with them. This type of attention to the relationship helps to bypass a scenario that might be contrived or flat. Practices that have no predetermined arrival must be activated so that the event may be possible to present new possibilities.
Sum Performance
I offered a performance called “**Middle of Sumthing**” in December of 2022 that enacted Temporary Monuments as a portal for a group to experience the multitudes of the “what elseness”. The evening was called “**Middle of Sumthing**” to speak directly to where I was situated inside of my graduate school work. The hope is that the name of the performance would help deepen and further what would be shared in the evening and the evening would turn back toward the title of the performance to help the title to unfurl. This unfurling that happens might help to attach and weave an unseen, but felt, interconnected textile amongst the work, the title, the audience, and me. The accumulation of these forces is what helps the event open out toward possibilities that cannot be known until afterwards. This textile that is created also acts as a springboard for the accumulated potentials to be launched out and realized beyond the evening’s performance.
I believe it to be the relationship that the human has with the material that activates this potential as event…event as potential. Imagine a dancer in a space alone. Any container will do as long as they are by themselves. Now imagine the moment an audience enters the space. The amount of audience does not matter here, what is important is the moment the gaze/gays of an observer meets the performance of a body. This is the type of activation I seek to implement with materials within Temporary Monuments. Until the moment of the togetherness the event is in a dormant state.
AND what about a "dormant" state ?
*Dormant as a state of physical pause yet still in the process. Instead of the binary of movement and non movement I wonder with the potential of everything moving. Now if we work with everything moving and nothing being stopped or still then I think about volumes. Nothing is ever at the same exact volume and so now instead of having discourse around what “is” and what “isn’t” maybe the discourse is much more around “how much”. Manning again offers her versions on the “how”. “The how of the in-act is the more interesting and complex issue. For it is what consistently outlives the actual as defined by this or that singular expression of composition that touches on how a life courses through this life.”
The how of it all seems to be particularly important in my wonderings of new ways of being with each other. In the classical formation of dance making there is the arcitype of the choreographer and the dancers. As dancers we spend a lot of time in spaces together waiting for the big idea to be delivered and laid on top of us. Like a costume that really only fits one person well and the rest of the bodies in the room are in constant struggle of figuring out how to make the costume fit them. Most of the time the dancers are just trying to keep it on their bodies without it ripping or looking out of place. I offer another way of making dances (being together). What if we became less interested in using exact forms that we had been taught ,and never served us too well in the first place, and we entered the space with a desire of being together. In this version the formation is not beholden to forms or aesthetics that were built with the intent to control bodies. The formation is able to find new aesthetics and containers together. I will admit this is a large task and takes time and a lot of attention but the possibilities here are endless and have the opportunity for change beyond the event of the performance. Through the many desires, a collective desire is found amongst the maniness and in turn the event's force is felt in a way that was not possible before.
Lewking Queer
It will never quite look like we think it's going to look like. That is queerness’ whole mode and force and seed of "making new" or maybe another way of identifying that would be "making queer" or "queer making". “Making queer” might be seen as a reaching or a failing of a desire felt. “Queer making” might be something or someone that is in transit towards a something else that is being felt in the moment. For me, both of these terms I am speaking around must be danced with. These terms must be wondered/wandered…
When the reach towards queer is performed it draws attention, like a wonky line - something out of order. Our eye has been programmed to notice this by a magnetism created by normative culture. Sara Ahmed would say “The collective takes shape through the act of ‘facing’.” As we repetitively “face” or witness the same event two things will happen. It will contour the person witnessing and will also affirm the act in its happening. Seeing something recognizable ,like a line, offers a sense of safety. When reaching towards queerness safety comes into question. Like taking a leap and not being sure about the surface your foot will land on. In this version if we were to think a little further we might find that it is control we are seeking in our adherence to “the line”. The “line”...more on that later.
A multitude of happenings happen during the event of witnessing something being created with a queer force. The moment we encounter something out of line we must reckon with the event that has now affected our internal landscape. This witnessing of something new has now sculpted something new within us.
Sara Ahmed offers “If we rethink with and through orientation we might allow the moments of disorientation to gather, almost as if they are bodies around a different table. We might, in the gathering, face a different way. Queer objects might take us to the very limits of social gathering, even when they still lead us to gather at a table. Indeed, to live out a politics of disorientation might be to sustain wonder about the very forms of social gathering.”
In the Temporary Monument of this paragraph I will sculpt myself as a queer maker. I hope to create a container for the queer to present. I do not make with knowing where I am going, I make with a feeling of somewhere that could be. As I allow the queer maker to be made, I am reckoning with something that feels like somewhere I might have been before but the new formation of the body being made is quite new to me.
In a way, queering the queer.
As I make the queer thing it might feel out of sorts. How do I continue to be with something I do not understand but can only feel? This feeling is not only felt but it is being transmitted in a physical gesture. As I make the thing, the thing makes me. Sticking with a thing in its making requires trust. Trust is integral to the thing’s potential becoming. How does one create a stamina of trust? or maybe “allowing” might be a version as well. More on trust later.
TEMPORALITY AND QUEERNESS
If we say that queerness is a constant reaching towards....maybe queerness is a temporary state. These monuments are momentary realizations .... breadcrumbs that we follow to signal us to "keep going" or say "Im here"- “ Im there”. The consistency with queerness is with desire. Desire - as a human condition has no end and no beginning. A constant tumbling towards. Erin Manning’s offerings help to support this idea. “There is no stable identity that emerges once and for all. Becoming-human is expressed singularly and repeatedly in the multiphasing passage from the feeling of content to the content of feeling, a shift from the force of divergent flows to a systematic integration. This is not a containment toward a stable self. It is a momentary cohesiveness, a sense of self that always remains colored by the interweaving forces that both direct and destabilize the ‘self’s’ proto-unification into an ‘I’.”
THE NEW QUEER ICON - FROGS
A frog as an example of the transess within a queer body. A frog as an example of the movement of a Temporary Monument. A frog as an embodiment of HOPE - or more specifically - queer hope. More on that later.
THE PRECARIOUS NATURE OF THE LILY PAD
There is a slipperiness in the journey to and from this lily pad, maybe even precarious. The liminal space that is a constant transition - confidence comes to mind in these moments. How do we gather ourselves so that we may be able to show ourselves to others...and further, how do we release the grip of the ego and expectation after a monument is shared? I think the frog helps us here again.
WHAT HAPPENS ON THE LILY PAD
What happens on the lily pad is not a landing or arrival. This formation is one of a situation becoming and in the becoming we are in a constant flux or movement of organizing and de-organizing. Or maybe not even that linear. Something that is becoming has no linear structuring. A formation formulating. formING
This Temporary Monument is a pond. A pond with frogs and lily pads. We are all frogs in this pond. The frog is an amorphous creature, sparkly and changing. Living in both water and on land. The frog is a living monument to the “both and”. This creature does not adhere to one identity. The frog allows themselves to slip from one space to the next, they are everything and nothing at the same time. One might use the word versatile when describing a frog, I would like to go further and say…
Frogs have been studied by scientists and researchers and much confusion has been had when they discovered that these creatures are able to slip and slide between sexes, further destroying the binary by having unrecognizable behaviors and organizations of sex organs. For me this is where the frog as a queer archetype performs so well. Anytime there is confusion while trying to understand something we are in the presence of queer. This slippery/sparkly nature of the frog helps me move and supports me in my wanderings with and through Temporary Monuments. The frog is not just a tool for reaching towards queerness…the frog is queerness being performed. A queer maker perhaps.
The frog is a living example of a future body. A body that is not yet “here”. But we have learned through the frog that this new body is “here”. So if we have evidence of this new body why do we allow the frog the privilege to slip and slide around but we don’t allow each other to? There it is again - allow - allowance - more on that later.
LILY PADS - A CONTAINER - THOUGHTS ON PERFORMANCE
As I reflect on the importance of my work and how that work meets the current time we are in I wonder how my work meets the desire of the moment. Both within me and within the we. TM as a pond...a site for possibility...the lily pond is a container in which one can temporarily embody possibility through performance.
Erin Manning writes “ Choreographic object: a proposition for the ‘what else’ of choreographic thought, a proposition that moves the milieu, the associated milieu of relation.”
I read this statement from Manning as one of hope and reaching toward…reaching from a place of here and now towards something being offered in a not so distant future. Like a beacon that signals and supports our dancing toward something new. This offering helps our reach toward a new possibility. Maybe hope? Maybe not hope itself...more on that later.
In between these lily pads are moments of swimming. I want to connect these moments of swimming with listening/living/getting on with it. All these things we do in the space of semi-conscious living. A lot is done in the water. When there is a desire to share we reach up towards this lily pad. There is labor there, labor in getting onto the lily pad. more on that later.
How do we know when these TMs are "finished"....when is the moment of the monument done? These monuments are temporary....there is a terminal moment
Sara Ahmed writes “A queer phenomenology might offer an approach…by re-thinking how the bodily direction ‘toward’ objects shapes the surfaces of bodily and social space.”
I am filled with hope and possibility from this passage from Ahmed. It provides legs and furthers the importance of Temporary Monuments. While approaching with queerness in mind, Temporary Monuments move beyond the performative and into the bodies of those witnessing these events. The queer TRANSformational process of something being seen and moving into the felt can begin to change not just what we think but how we think. The shaping that has taken place will in turn continue to shape us as we move amongst and together.
If this helps us to think about togetherness then what is it when we are apart? We seem to know our purpose quite clearly when we are together - we might not exactly "know" but we feel - we sense ricocheting desires. bouncing. vibrating. moving. movement. DANCE.
Might that be because of some event or collection of events that are behind us that continue to shape us in the now? That constant feeling of wondering what other people are thinking or feeling - sensing and responding to the thing in between us. Maybe this thing in between us is not something separate or "other" than us but something that is making us...something that is actually forming our matter in the moment...something OF us-there it is again...moment...the monument of the moment - the moment of the monument...our bodies' Minor gesture-gesturing...back to Erin
Walk with DJ
DJ and I are taking a walk through Perkerson Park right after a large rainfall. While we are making our way, I am noticing there are patches of ground that are more wet earth than lush grass. As DJ leads us through the park I notice the marks left by our footsteps. Each footfall has left its own mark, a contour. These muddy footprints remind me of little hugs. Little hugs that got stuck in their wanting to be hugged back and got left behind. They seem to have a memory of my foot and they are still yearning for my foot to be there. What’s left is the earth reaching back toward me, a monument of the relationship between my foot and the earth. They temporarily hold honor to the time we had together. But these monuments will not last forever. We just need to wait for the temperature to change or the rain to begin again for them to shift and the earth to become material for a new desire. When these Temporary Monuments transition, the contours that remain are desiring bodies. These contours might not be “seen” per se but they are felt. They desire to be felt. The brain does not remember each monument. I can’t recall the exact path we took or each footfall during my walk with DJ but during this event of the walk I have contoured the earth and the earth has contoured me. These are new monuments that are living in me now.
These monuments are constantly collecting and reorganizing and reformulating within the container of the body. This collection is an independent event and also a collective event. The collections are tethering us to each other.
MORE ON HOPE
Hope as the force which reaches our arm from beneath the water to the lily pad. Hope does not live somewhere beyond our grasp. Hope lives with us…it is the thing that moves us…the gas in our tank. Hope dances our bodies. Even further…hope is our bodies, a queer body. Yes - hope as energy or force but the queer body is hope manifest. The full embodiment and performance of something that has yet to arrive and that is always moving toward an unlanded.
MORE ON TRUST
What constitutes trust? Constitutes? Constituents? Bodies? Body parts? Parts? Is trust made up of parts? Are there pieces that have accumulated to manifest trust?
I might be with trust through repetition. Well, let me backup. It all starts with a queer feeling. A feeling felt that might not be organized or understood, but the feeling is there. I cannot deny this force that is moving me. This might be the first conscientiousness of a new idea. This new feeling must be allowed to grow within me. I do not take allowance lightly. Allowance is what feeds this new feeling and grows it into something that can be embodied. And time after time this practice of allowance becomes trust.
MORE ON ALLOWANCE
As we allow ourselves to be - the being that is performed sends out signals to those we come in contact with. This allowance is infectious. It becomes a rhizomatic structure, an interconnected system of relating to one another. This allowance offers an opening to opportunity that we didn't know existed. There is a release that is intrinsic to allowing, a “letting go” if you will.
WAVES - TEMPORARY - NEW FORMATIONS CALLING IN THE DISTANCE
During the performance of **Middle of Sumthing**, a moment that might be seen as a closing moment, I activated a spinning practice. In this moment I was wearing underwear and a mesh shirt with long sleeves. The shirt was white with brightly colored yarn woven in and hanging like tufts of hair or fur or feathers. Or maybe the yarn was a root system that had been cut from its family where it had grown and these roots were searching for a new formation, a different type of family. The spinning happened approximately 35 minutes into the performance and lasted roughly 7 minutes. I did not understand then why this was important but while I am writing this, the previous version of Jimmy is now informing the Jimmy in this moment. The spinning created a casting out effect so that what was collected during the performance could be sent out into the bodies in the space and support the event of the talk back, which was happening later. The spinning casted out into unknown spaces and also to inform a future Jimmy. One of those future Jimmys being me now…in this moment.
In this next Temporary Monument I hope to perform a “calling into distance”.
waves rolling
tops of cresting water
forever coming
if I listen
we can hear
move me continuously
FUTURE MONUMENTS
MONUMENTS WITHIN MONUMENTS
these TMs like becoming....like mandalas
There is a "creating and being created" happening simultaneously. How do I create the scenario so that the force is set up in the front end? how do I create that world?
Not creation to give an answer but this creation to create a container to allow these yearnings/not yets/to bes to come into this world?
Monument - monumental
Is there anything that is not temporary?
SPIRITUAL SHIT
From The Art of the Occult "it was inevitable that artists might turn their attention to spirituality at the dawn of the materialistic age of the twentieth century, and Theosophy gave them a perspective that became the fundamental groundwork of their beliefs; from this vantage, they believed they were able to see beyond the natural world into otherworldly realms. They stood in this doorway between
Worlds as messengers, and communicating this knowledge became the objective of their art"
SLOMO-HOMO
Slow moving so that every moment has the potential to be a monument-because the "thingness" (spirit,purpose,importance) of the monument lies in the embodiment and presence of its making/becoming. The thing of the thing is not in the thing but in the creation of the thing.
In this way - if this "embodiment" or "attention" comes to the forefront then every moment is not filled with potential for a monument ... every moment IS a monument. Potential potentially not as something that is as an achievable arrival but as something that is already inherent within the event.
FORGET - QUICK - QUEER
The forgetfulness with queerness.
Maybe it is difficult to accept queer bodies in space because we forget about what queer thought has offered. Queerness is quick - as quickly as it arrives it slips away. The Majority has now landed on the previous offering and queer has moved on. I say that as if queer was ever here. Queer was never actually here…wherever “here” is.
Bibliography
Erin Manning. “Always More Than One: Individuation’s Dance”. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013.
Sara Ahmed. “Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others”. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006.
Sara Ahmed. “Queer Use” Lecture presented at LGBTQ+@cam, Cambridge, November 7, 2018. https://feministkilljoys.com/2018/11/08/queer-use/comment-page-1/