American Dream

Metalogue

Metalogue: Why do we go searching for America?

Brother: Sister, why do we go searching for America?
Sister: What do you mean, searching, America?
B: I mean why have we come here, what is all this about? What do we have to learn from doing this?
S: I want to know what unifies desire in relation to consumption? What symbols are creating commonality, that are confirming something in this collective that we are calling America. I am searching for crossover, where can this exist between the desire of the individual and the pack? Brother we must not forget the ruptures and bonds of our decision making and how to avoid the obvious threads. I am looking to decentralize myself within the hierarchy or traditional modes of expression. Are you not?
B: I guess in many ways I am, I am looking for something also, looking for something to propose. What do you propose we should do here sister?
S: How great it would be to make A ceremony of consumption, a glorification of Capitalism to investigate the duality of spirituality and the iconography of consumption for these people. We might find out how the culture of freedom has influenced the aesthetic in this part of the world.
B: Maybe we could learn something about ourselves in doing that also?
S: Yes! Yes! now you have it, but I can’t help feeling like I have lost something, like something was given to me, to take care of but I got distracted by this place and now I cant find it.
B: Maybe we can find it together? Maybe these people can help? Maybe you haven’t lost it at all and its here, it’s all about participation sister, we have to share something in common with these people, find out what works, what doesn’t work, what brings people together?
S: You sound like your Father brother, it sounds like old rhetoric to me, just because we are here and they are all here now we can’t forget that we are all facing a power structure, that it is creating our decisions, controlling us, it’s a foundation for the construction of our identities, that we are facing it together.
There is an Icon. There is a God. There is Power. There is an idea.
B: How right you are.
S: Remember those women we saw, those women picking apples in the fields.
B: Yes, I remember I think, but I don’t remember where we were, just that it was warm and the sun was shining.
S: It’s not important to remember where it was, just focus on where we are going. What are we looking for? We came here to find something. I’m all confused.
B: Me too, it’s hard to know anymore.
S: Well those women in the field, picking apples, they were mining something, they could take those apples home, I wonder what we can bring home?
B: Being here, now, I am interested in the reality of people, and what separates us. I wonder can we bring these people home with us? They are so warm, wouldn’t it be nice to bring them home with us this Winter. Can we create an illusion of togetherness, in order to provoke a response from them?
S: Do you think that’s realistic brother? Is any of this real anyway?
B: Well there are two things happening I think, firstly, what we experience in this “room” and secondly what we experience in this world through our daily lives both are experiences, like an augmented Reality.
S: You have to remind myself that this we are fact finding not on show here. This is not show and tell brother. This is more like something Mother would teach you. Don’t bother yourself worrying about what you are making, but more the reaction people will have or their experiences of it.
B: I want to generate an experience through participation in the event. I am maintaining my borders here, you are helping me do that, but we can’t help uniting with these other states of being.
S: Are you here to make friends brother?
B: I’m not that naive sister, I have been building myself in relation to others since we were born, I am always looking for people to play with father’s sense of nationalism demands that I maintain my own borders.
S: I told you, you were just like him. It’s nice like having him around, but not having to put up with his complaining. What were we talking about again?
B: Forgetfullness and making new friends to play with?
S: No that is not it, it was something else…
B: What we are looking for, I have it written on my hand so we don’t forgot, we just need to remember that it is there.
S: We are so clever, we should eat something, don’t you think?
B: There is no need, We are constantly being fed with connectivity here. Wouldn’t it be better to contrast this with a manifestation of the feeling of isolation within a community context. I am looking for a true individual and a “real” person, like me and you! only then can we explore the individual and the community all at once.
S: What do you think a “real” person is looking for, is it the same as what we are looking for or different? What are you looking for? (direct address to the reader)
B: This person I am looking for exists at the meeting points of inclusivity and commonality. They are always arguing for the justification of the oneness and the wholeness, like a lawyer or something. Community demands inclusivity in order to function. We can’t be here and not play their game, we are required to have an identity but to offer that up to this experience.
S: We really do talk around in circles, we talk so much I forget what we are talking about.
B: Don’t worry that happens me too.
S: Brother, why do grown ups have wars instead of fighting they way children do?
B: Who knows sister, lets not find out either or else we will end up just like them, now where did you put it?
S: Put what?
B: What we are looking for of course!

1 note

0 notes

(Source: fuckyeahgirlssf)

Reblogged from heydrian with 25 notes

Institution

I visited Alcatraz today.

It is the last remaining literal institution. The people were enclosed in concrete. In walls and grids and steel.

The prisoners could see SF through the concrete walls in their outside yard. Some choose not to see it. Some went back to their cells, to paint it from their memory.

Sometimes a prisoner would rip his button from his shirt, flip it in the air, and then look for it in the dark. Then flip it again.

You could see it from both sides of the prisoner/visitor window.

Where the rules are only remains of a practice.

The hard winds and the weather on the island made it impossible to maintain the building. Its becoming ruins of something that used to exist. Tjernobyl. An institution. Almost everything is institutions, the government, schools, workspaces. But we are not aware of it, since we don’t see the boundaries stepping from one institution to the other. But Alcatraz is the remains of a literal institution. On a small island. Very close to the civilization.

Visiting Alcatraz was like visiting Trisha Brown. Its the ruin of a dance that barely is visible. That you only can visit through its remains. Concrete walls, grids, and spacial limitations will never been seen in front of you, but yet they will always exist, in whatever you would try to make in the future.

Happy new time.

0 notes

Bye Ruairi Donovan.

You are a fucking success.

This is not the end, this is only progression.

See you in six weeks in Amsterdam.

Love

0 notes

Amidst all the suffering and displacement, poverty and fear,

there is double parking, open doors, holding hands together, raising your arms up to the sky, crying, clapping and being together.

GLIDE offering new ways of being together, clever dramaturgy and emotional queuing through song.

0 notes

Dramaturgs

While attending Performance Art offerings regularly in the Bay Area, our intrepid heroes adopt the standard euro trash dramaturg physicality.

Have you a photo of them about town interrogating modes of production and intention? send them to sarkissova.donovan@gmail.com

0 notes

Turbulence

(a dance about the economy)
—A collaborative failure (in progress) choreographed by Keith Hennessy

Saturday-Sunday, December 17-18, 8pm, CounterPULSE

-TICKETS-
Discount $9.99
General $14.99
Share the Wealth $19.99
http://turbulencedance.eventbrite.com/

Performer/collaborators: Jassem Hindi (France/Lebanon), Julie Phelps, Emily Leap, Laura Arrington, Jesse Hewit, Jorge De Hoyos, Hana Erdman, Gabriel Todd, Ruairi O’Donovan (Ireland), Karina Sarkissova (Sweden), Jupiter Knows, Keith Hennessy plus special guests.

Unstable structures supported by unsustainable systems, this dance cannot stand up on its own. Turbulence (a dance about the economy) is a bodily response to economic crisis.

Turbulence engages the frictions between economic crisis, disaster capitalism, debt, precarity, propaganda, torture, union busting, magic, collaboration, war, and physical performance.

Instigated before the recent Occupy Wall Street actions, Turbulence is intended as both provocation and affirmation of global movement for economic justice.

Turbulence is made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the MetLife Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Additional funding includes Zellerbach Family Foundation, the New Stages in Dance grant, and the SF Arts Commission OPG.

1 note