Artists Reach Out: Christopher Williams

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody


Christopher Williams

Christopher Williams
(photo: Andrew Jordan)

Christopher Williams is a critically-acclaimed choreographer, dancer, and puppet artist working in New York City and abroad since 1999. His works have been presented internationally in France, England, Italy, Colombia, Holland, Spain, Malawi, and Russia as well as nationally at in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, and at Jacob’s Pillow, and in local venues including Lincoln Center, City Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, PS 122, La Mama, and the 92nd Street Y. His commissioners include The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts, Danspace Project, Opéra National de Bordeaux, English National Opera, Perm Opera & Ballet Theater, Interlochen Center for the Arts, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Princeton University, Philadelphia Dance Projects, Dickinson College, and HERE Arts Center’s Dream Music Puppetry Program. His awards include a 2005 New York Dance & Performance “Bessie” Award and fellowships from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Center for Ballet and the Arts, and Bogliasco Foundation. He has also been awarded residencies via Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, The Liguria Study Center for Arts & Humanities, Bethany Arts Community, the Anderson Center, Movement Research, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, Bates Dance Festival, Djerassi, Yaddo, The Yard, and the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland. He holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq, and has performed for Douglas Dunn, Tere O’Connor, Rebecca Lazier, Yoshiko Chuma, John Kelly, and Basil Twist, among others. http://www.christopherwilliamsdance.org

Three werewolf cubs in Wolf-in-Skins,
a dance-opera co-created by Christopher Williams
composer Gregory Spears and visual designer Andrew Jordan
(photo: Andrew Jordan)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

Indeed. 2020 was to be an unprecedented “two-show” year for me with commissions from both The Joyce Theater for their Pride Festival at the end of June and from New York Live Arts (where I am currently--and now in theory--a Live Feed Resident Artist). A dream and recent project of mine has been to re-imagine a series of celebrated works from the Ballets Russes era in my own queer choreographic idiom. As part of my preparations to present New York premières of my all-male versions of The Afternoon of a Faun and Les Sylphides at the Joyce, I managed to squeeze in an initial rehearsal intensive with New York City Ballet principal dancer Taylor Stanley, Corps de Ballet member Davide Riccardo, and an outstanding group of contemporary dancers (Brandon Collwes, Charles Gowin, Casey Hess, Justin Lynch, Alexander Olivieri, Logan Pedon, Mac Twining, and Carlo Antonio Villanueva) just before the necessity to isolate became apparent. It remains to be seen whether or not the shows will happen, and I am grappling with how to prepare for them if they do.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

As a “noticeably artistic” boy who loved all things magical and mythological, I couldn’t simply draw a unicorn, or sculpt the Pegasus in plasticine, for example. I had to get up snort, stomp, and prance around the house, don faux wings, toss my imaginary mane, and leap off the couch in an effort to embody the mystical essence of such untouchable beings.

My exasperated parents tried putting me in gymnastics. After seeing my neighbor’s local ballet recital (in which I saw dance for the first time as a form of supernatural transformation) I decided that I wanted to be her.

I started classes. I stopped because I was teased by peers. I later found and threw myself into theater in high school. I started contemporary dance in college under the late dame Viola Farber and knew I had come home. I continued my education at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and returned from Europe knowing that I was to be a choreographer.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning? How does your practice function within the world we have now?

During my imposed “home residency” I’ve been afforded the opportunity to practice a “broader picture” viewpoint with regards to the pieces I’ve currently got in the works. A day or two ago I began thinking again about the six-part dance opera cycle I started working on years ago but have had to keep on the back burner because of the especially limited arts funding climate in our country.

As we find ourselves suddenly bereft of live collective cultural experiences, there is an outcry for them. With the outpouring of performance being made available online to answer that call (including Wagner’s entire Ring Cycle thanks to the Met Opera’s recent free live streaming, the watching of which rekindled thought on my own epic work), it is clear to me just how much we’ve always needed them.

I’m having visions once again of commingling art forms that have become codified and disparate over time but that share a common primordial ancestry. I’m tasking myself with further honing this “Gesamtkunstwerk-style” performance genre that will be able to serve my community just as ritualized performance guided society in ancient Greece, or as far back as the Paleolithic, when the distinct function of performed rituals was to ensure the survival and good health of humankind.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

At this moment in my artistic life, I find myself caring most about discovering as much as we can about the origins of humanity, fostering speculation about our evolution, and generating meaningful new cultural experiences while we continue to exist on this planet. All these things--our origins, our future, and meaning in our current existence-- have been poetically addressed from time immemorial in the mythology and folklore of our many cultures. I guess that’s why I’m obsessed with making movement-based performance centering around mythic or folkloric themes. If such themes have survived and evolved for so long (shapeshifting many times over and recurring in a multitude of cultures), there must be something to them--something of innate value to humanity. My artistic practice, a means to flesh out mythopoetic visions from my own contemporary queer perspective, simply aims to further the conversation about the meaning and value of that certain something today.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Artists Reach Out: David Parker

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

David Parker

David Parker (front)
with Jeffrey Kazin, Amber Sloan
and Kathryn Tufano of The Bang Group
(photo: Nicholas Burnham)

Choreographer David Parker directs The Bang Group with Jeffrey Kazin. They founded the company together in 1995 as a collective of dancers with roots in percussive and contemporary forms and an interest in mingling them. Parker's work is dedicated to creative liberty, aesthetic diversity and craftsmanship. The company tours and performs widely throughout North America and Europe and is best known for its comic/subversive, neo-vaudevillian production of The Nutcracker entitled Nut/Cracked. Parker has also created over 60 commissioned works for modern and ballet companies, college and university dance departments and solo artists in both theater and dance. He is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow and has won numerous awards both celebrating and in support of his choreographic work. In addition to regular home seasons in New York City, The Bang Group has established a second home in Boston through commissioning of local artists and ongoing teaching, mentoring and performing.

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

My company, The Bang Group, and I have lost several upcoming jobs so far and surely more to come. Jeff Kazin (co-Director of The Bang Group) and I are dance programmers at The Flea, and it seems now that The Flea will be closed until the Fall. I will not mentor the senior choreographers at Juilliard this year, I will not complete a commissioned work for the students of Hofstra University, I will not complete a commissioned work for 10 Hairy Legs, The Bang Group will not go to Liege, Belgium for a performance and residency, I will not perform in The Horse's Mouth Tribute to New York Theatre Ballet, we will not perform at WestFest, and, for me, the saddest thing is that I will not perform a new duet I've made for myself and Jeffrey Kazin at The Providence Dance Festival which was to be my return to the stage following my knee replacement a year ago.

The fate of other performances and commissions is still in flux. This year's revival of my own ShowDown is still officially happening in Boston, Pennsylvania and NYC later in the year though these remain precarious as well. The Look + Listen Festival, which commissioned a new collaborative music/dance work by me and composer Viola Yip, has been postponed until the fall. We still have Nut/Cracked touring in December.

We are not able to keep our creative work going though we do have regular happy hour meetings via Zoom with as many of The Bang Group as we can. We are paying the dancers as long as we can and trying to give emotional succor and a dose of humor which can seem remote in both senses of the word. Still we're a family, and we're intact.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I grew up in a highly-pressured, verbal household; my father was a writer of detective novels and an English professor, and my mother was a professor of Early Childhood Growth and Development and a philanthropist. My brother is a stage actor. I escaped into a wordless, but not silent, art form by beginning tap and ballet studies when I was 16. I found that I longed to organize everything I knew into beats, shapes and steps.

Dylan Baker and Tommy Seibold in Bang,
the work that gave the group its name.
(photo: Yi-Chun Wu)

I grew up and made a series of a cappella dances in which the music was made by the dancing itself. One of them featured the unadorned body thuds of two men lying on the floor together and culminated in syncopated kissing. Audiences found it funny. I thought it was poignant.  I saw it as a love story about men fitting themselves together, sharing a beat, kissing in 5/4 time. This dance was called Bang, and it gave its name to the company it spawned, The Bang Group. I make rhythm-driven contemporary dance, but I'm not interested in percussion only as music. I'm interested in the ways it echoes deeply personal stories and how we engage with the people that surround us.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I'm practicing a new dance I'm making for myself based on a solo I made for the spectacular Caleb Teicher for my Danspace season in 2017. I'm adapting it to my new capacities and limitations post-knee replacement. I'm also practicing my half of the contrapuntal duet I made for myself and Jeff Kazin that was to have premiered on April 18. I also do about two hours of exercise by myself in my home studio. I work through an amalgam of fitness, physical therapy work, ballet, Pilates and weight lifting. I try to practice tap technique for another 30 minutes per day as well.

Aside from that I've been putting my archives in order and re-experiencing the last forty years of my life in New York City, which I put in perspective during long contemplative walks along the Hudson River in the early morning. I am envisioning a return to full activity after a number of months though with the acknowledgment of as-yet-unknown consequences.

I also see an increase in innovations for online creative practice for dance. I aim to set some in motion next week. The first ones will be linguistic prompts. I will ask the dancers for various mixes of words according to rules I will establish which will serve as the basis for scores for my upcoming collaboration with composer Viola Yip.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I most care about the dancers and our cohesion as people committed to each other and to this enterprise. It is on that alone that our work together depends. I've worked with Jeff for 30 years, Nic Petry and Amber Sloan for more than 15, Chelsea Ainsworth and Dylan Baker for more than 10 and with Tommy Seibold and Louise Benkelman for about 5 years each. I am convinced that the substance of our work together flows as much from our feeling for each other as it does from the ideas and movements that arise from choreographic structures. We have a kind of collective imagination.

The loss of this daily practice is terribly sad but I am keeping the spark fanned as long as I can with regular electronic contact and through continuing my own creative work with my body. As I dance by myself, I am working as hard to dissolve tribal boundaries between dance forms in my own body as I do in my work with others. I can still feel that sense of wholeness and embrace even if the audience at this point is only my corgi Millie.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

I don't know. I'm working to expand the possibility of our interacting with dance beyond proximity with other human beings in-the-flesh while, at the same time, I marvel at and long for that glory.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.
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Artists Reach Out: Benjamin Akio Kimitch

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Benjamin Akio Kimitch

Benjamin Akio Kimitch
(photo: Da Ping Luo)

Benjamin Akio Kimitch is an artist, curator and producer living in Brooklyn, NY. Currently a 2019-2021 Movement Research Artist-in-Residence, his choreography has been supported by The Noguchi Museum, The Kitchen and two commissions from Danspace Project. His performances at Danspace received a 2017 New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award nomination. Benjamin worked full-time on the artistic programming teams at Performance Space New York as Senior Producer (2015-2020), the Park Avenue Armory (2014-15), New York Live Arts and Dance Theater Workshop (2008-2014). benjaminakio.com

Julie McMillan in Kimitch's Ko-bu
(photo: Monika Kratochvil)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I’m in my first year as a Movement Research Artist-in-Residence. My studio hours were paused, and my March 16 Judson showing couldn’t take place as scheduled. However, that same week, I was invited to create something live for AUNTS: WPA. I’m grateful that my immediate relationship to shelter-in-place was anchored by something creative and reactive. I’m in the early phase of planning my next large production 2-3 years out. Right now, the work can feel disingenuous, but the logistical motions help me stay hopeful for the future.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I’m both a producer and choreographer. My path in producing formally began with a programming internship at Dance Theater Workshop, but I always had a knack for organizing people and resources and navigating bureaucratic systems. Dancing was part of my entire childhood, first ballet and then Chinese dance. I also dove into illustration, cello, puppetry, props production, film editing and pursued theater conservatory in NYC after high school. After about a year, I left to study Peking Opera in Shanghai and finally found my way back to dance at NYU Tisch. My time at DTW expanded my understanding of what performance can be.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning? How does your practice function within the world we have now?

Now and prior to this coronavirus outbreak, I think a lot about the recent explosion of new spaces for live performance—Pace Live, MoMA, The Shed, and the forthcoming Pier 55 Little Island, Perelman, L10 Arts and Cultural Center, Mercury Store and the New Museum-expansion. In the wake of layoffs and financial shortfalls, existing institutions are bracing for sheer existence. What will this bricks-and-mortar conversation look like when we are rebuilding after COVID-19? I am envisioning how our sector might find a collaborative way forward for the health of our arts ecosystem, and ask what these siloed, architectural, capital projects can contribute while the rest of us climb out of debt.

Meanwhile, in my artistic practice I am taking time to understand my cultural identity. Over a century after the height of Japonisme and Chinoiserie, Asian American artists, like myself, still have complicated access to our own culture because, under a western gaze, our culture is experienced as caricature before authenticity. In response to this history, I’m looking to create something that will be of these times and my own sensibilities. Serendipitously, I need to do a lot of reading and research that benefits from a healthy amount of isolation.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I care about the bigger picture. I uphold high standards and believe in the importance of good art, but I don’t ever conflate it with the highest social good. I’m regularly evaluating my purpose and contribution. Right now, my practice and visioning are focused on the things within my knowledge, reach and control.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Artists Reach Out: Kelly Bartnik

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody


Kelly Bartnik

Kelly Bartnik
(photo: Maria Baranova)

Kelly Bartnik is a NY-based choreographer, performer, director, teacher and producer.  She was an original cast member of both the Boston and NY productions of Sleep No More.  She recently performed in the Immersive experiences Waking La Llorona, by Optika Moderna and The Unbrunch, created by Cinereal Productions.  She also was Movement Director for Optika Moderna’s latest project, Las Quinceañeras.  She has also had the pleasure of performing with Witness Relocation, Cora Dance, Melissa Briggs Dance, South Brooklyn Shakespeare, Woodshed Collective, Switch N Play, The Pack Theater, Cakeface and Shelter Theatre Group among others. Last spring, Kelly received an evening-length commission by Gibney for the premiere of her new work--Fuck / Love: The Poetics of Adoration.  Kelly has taught at Colby College, Queens College, Playwright’s Horizons Theater School, Emory University, Spelman College and has supervised immersive performance trainings at Meow Wolf, Santa Fe. Kelly is currently mounting a new large-scale immersive production in Atlanta called HERE{after} which is suspended momentarily.  www.kellybartnik.com

Fuck / Love: The Poetics of Adoration,
featuring Alexandra Beller, Donna Costello,
Sara Galassini and Penelope McCourty
(photo: Maria Baranova)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

Yes, I had been in the process of mounting a new immersive show in Atlanta with my co-director Kathleen Wessel entitled HERE{after}. That is obviously on hold indefinitely now.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

My background is rooted in movement training, but after performing in Sleep No More for almost 3 years, I went back to get my MFA in Choreography and Visual Arts. After that I began making my own immersive work, started working with actors in movement training and generally expanded my creative and performance experiences to include a mix of theater and movement.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

On a foundational level, over the past few years, the root of my personal practice has been presence--the practice of awareness, watching the activity of the mind, living in the present moment, etc.  It feels exponentially more potent now that so many of us are faced with being with ourselves for the first time in a long time without the distractive structure or our ‘normal’ daily lives.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I think as artists and creators, we are often mining our own experiences in order to understand ourselves and to ultimately have a deeper relationship with self. We ask questions, we ponder, we research, we experiment. And I think presence really is often the final piece of a puzzle that I am working on. I can ask all the questions I want, but I’ll never hear the answer if I’m not listening.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

I’ve had a morning schedule for myself for quite some time, even prior to social distancing, that allowed at least 2-3 hours to myself to write, meditate, and do something for my body. It’s been helpful to me that I was already accustomed to that structure, because those practices are important to me. 

The interesting part I find about being quarantined in one’s own apartment (and I live alone) is being faced with your own reality that you’ve crafted for yourself without the means to live it (I’m excluding online substitutions). I’m surrounded by all of the things that identify and define me externally--my books, my art, my photos, my notebooks --but have none of the physical interactions in social environments that allow for actualization. So what does that mean relative to who I am and what I do? And I know so many artists are grappling with similar questions and finding substitutions for the moment, which I am grateful for and participating in. But I think the questions themselves are just as important, and this comes back to awareness; actually allowing myself to live in the space right after the question mark and before the first word of the next sentence. 

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

As I mentioned earlier, I do find comfort in my morning ritual that allows me to start my day focused on my mental and physical well-being. I have had days, however, where I just binge-watched Netflix without pants on. And both of those are valid. I’m trying to be compassionate with myself and my needs as they change. 

I have also been having some really amazing phone conversations with friends who I wouldn’t normally get to talk to that long or that often. That connection has helped me feel less alone through all of this, and it has been a more comforting connection than what social media tends to offer me.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Artists Reach Out: Tatyana Tenenbaum

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody


Tatyana Tenenbaum

Tatyana Tenenbaum
(selfie courtesy of the artist)

Choreographer/composer Tatyana Tenenbaum works with breath, voice, fascia and musculature to excavate spaces of power and transformation. Weaving embodied aleatory with deconstructed song, she has created numerous original interdisciplinary works for her own group, as well as collaborated with other artists as a sound designer and performer. Tenenbaum was a 2017-18 Movement Research AIR and recipient of commissions from The Chocolate Factory Theater, Danspace Project and Temple University, among others. She has worked with artists Yoshiko Chuma, Daria Faïn, Jennifer Monson, Emily Johnson/CATALYST, Levi Gonzalez, Juliana May, Andy Luo & lily bo shapiro, Hadar Ahuvia, and Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born. Together with Lydia Bell and Jasmine Hearn, she co-organized the collective terrain/s mini-platform on voice and choreography at Danspace Project. In conversation with Peter Sciocioli and Pyeng Threadgill, she co-instigated the Sounding Body workshop series at Movement Research. www.tatyanatenenbaum.com

Tatyana Tenenbaum and collaborators
Rebeca Medina, Emily Moore, Pareena Lim, Jules Skloot and Saúl Ulerio
(photo: Ian Douglas) 

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

Yes, and no. This period of isolation actually coincided with an intentional moment of pause and tilling of my ongoing creative practice. I have been creating and facilitating collaborative group work--pretty consistently for the last 12 years. Both personally and financially, it was necessary for me to pause and nourish my practice in new ways. One of the undercurrents that has supported my work since 2014 is my relationship with artist Hadar Ahuvia. Descendants of twin diasporas (Hadar’s Jewish family settled in Palestine around the same time my Jewish family immigrated to the US), we have served as special eyes and ears for one another’s work. More recently we’ve begun to co-author text, music and lyrics, and to articulate a more expansive collaboration around folklore, ritual, memory, song and dance. Nicky Paraiso invited us to present work for La MaMa Moves! in June, but everything is up in the air. In the meantime, we are continuing our dialogue remotely.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I was excited to read Kayvon Pourazar’s response to your questions, and to find out that we both read David Abram! For me, I was studying music composition at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, which turned out to be a simultaneously life-changing and traumatic educational event. I grew up steeped in musical theater, so my musical training largely came through participating in high school musicals and listening obsessively to the music of Stephen Sondheim. Oberlin exposed me to the beauty inherent in atonal dissonance, timbral and rhythmic complexity. These experiences were profoundly embodied. However, I was encouraged by my (white) male professors not to trust my body anymore--as it contained my pre-existing habits--and to approach music-making as a largely cerebral and conceptual practice. I was young and impressionable, and this was devastating. Reading Abram reassured me that all language is embodied. A hunger to reunite myself with a corporeal knowledge of sonic vibration led me to dance, and to unfurl the practice I have been building for the past decade.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

My practice engages the voice as a corporeal material; as magical; as medicinal; as inter-generational; as communicative. I am practicing listening to myself, to others, to my ancestors, and to the world around me. A desire to feel “interconnectedness” is something that quite literally comes into being when sounding. Vibration resonates the physical body, but its sound waves move perpetually outward to resonate the space around us. Sound does not exist in a vacuum. Sound is healing! Lately, I have been returning to a practice of songwriting. I have been returning to the music of Stephen Sondheim and writing songs to him. I released a short EP of songs shortly before this epidemic. In these songs I am tracing the lineages of secular Jewish thought and assimilation that have impacted me and my body. I am speaking to various “thought ancestors” in their flawed fullness, seeking resource: Sigmund Freud, Rodgers & Hammerstein…Lynn Riggs. Maybe they’ll hear me.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I mentioned my collaborative work already. It’s something we don’t acknowledge enough: this intentional labor of collaborative making. It is the building and nurturing of trust, shared language and ethics that runs under the soil of a work. I am fortunate to have many long-running collaborative relationships and am now seeing babies being born in my process. This fall, thanks to the organizing of collaborator Rebeca Medina, I decided to jump on a chance to perform in Bogotá, Colombia. We were able to perform at DIY artist-organized festival Pliegues y Despliegues. I was nervous to share my work in South America, but it translated powerfully--both the aleatory / deep listening aspects of the work, and the embodied critique of musical theater--which we were told evoked larger echoes of US cultural imperialism. Performing in another hemisphere and showing up in our collectivity caused us to clarify intentions deep into our bones. Leveraging all my resources for this trip is part of what necessitated a personal “pause,” but I don’t regret it. Especially in light of the Covid-19 shutdown. Because it brought my work and its collaborative relationships many levels deeper.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

I am still tuning in to answer that question…but I think, as we constantly re-tune our bodies and listen, the answers will come. It’s not going to happen quickly, and that’s okay. I think the world has been changing for some time. Many people cannot afford to go to dance class every day. Artists have been building these very virtuosic practices that can change and propagate themselves in many circumstances. We must keep our creativity alive as a daily effort, large or small (see self-care tip below). One thing that I have been thinking about, with all the incredible organizing going on with Covid-19-related relief $ for artists, is having some real conversations with myself about where I need to be. Where am I in relationship to precarity, privilege and inter-generational wealth? Where does my energy and voice need to be right now? This is real, this is not a rehearsal. One thing that this mini “shut-down” of the art market has made clear, is that we NEED to be in this together.

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

Less effort. Slow down and feel all the parts of the movement. I always tell my performers this when it’s the performance because I noticed that they would push too hard in performance and the whole thing would be out of tune…. I always say, “with your voices, pretend you're just marking it.” Then it will sound perfect. I am trying this attitude on for size in my daily life as I can. Thank you to the Feldenkrais Method (particularly Belinda He, my first magical teacher) for seeding this practice into my body over the years. I am still a beginner.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Artists Reach Out: Jordan Demetrius Lloyd

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody


Jordan Demetrius Lloyd

Jordan Demetrius Lloyd
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Jordan Demetrius Lloyd is a dance artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Albany, NY, Lloyd graduated from The College at Brockport where he performed works by Maura Keefe and Alexandra Beller. He has collaborated with and performed for Karl Rogers, Netta Yerushalmy, Tammy Carrasco, Monica Bill Barnes, Catherine Galasso, Laura Peterson, Ambika Raina and David Dorfman Dance. He currently teaches at Rutgers University and Mark Morris Dance Center, and his work has been produced by New York Live Arts, BRIC, Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, The Center for Performance Research and Brooklyn Studios for Dance. He was selected as a 2019 Center for Performance Research Artist in Residence and is a recipient of the 2019-20 Fresh Tracks Performance and Residency Program at New York Live Arts. Most recently, Lloyd was the assistant choreographer of the new off-Broadway show Whisper House at 59E59 Theater. For more please check out jordandlloyd.com

Performing Lloyd's NEIGHBORS
(photos: above, Whitney Browne; below, Maria Baranova)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I am in the process of creating a work formerly known as pink sheets, an investigation of relative time, teetering on the lines of storytelling and abstraction. My cast--Stanley Gambucci, Myssi Robinson, Kennedy Thomas, Ramon Vargas--and I dove back into research in January at New York Live Arts to prepare for a showing in May, the culmination of the Fresh Tracks Performance & Residency Program. While there are conversations between New York Live Arts and my fellow cohort about the reality of our showing, the abrupt halt and unexpected break from our rehearsal flow has shifted how I think about the timeline of this work. I’m a bit stuck and disappointed about how to move forward in light of rehearsal and performance cancellations and shifts in income and the economy, especially when I consider the nine months of rehearsals and the many financial investments made for this work.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I started taking dance classes when I was 8 at a studio nooked in the backside of a local plaza. This felt like the beginning of my formal training, though I started working long before that. My impulses as a child were toward performance, claiming attention for how I expressed through movement. This often brought me into an imaginative space as I transformed garages into stages and early improvisations into elaborate productions. My artistry always lived in a world much larger than the one in front of me.

I was a serious student of dance, and I explored and developed a sense of voice with a lot of rigor. I went from studio hip-hop to the vast competitive dance world and landed at SUNY Brockport, a post-modern, composition-heavy program. Brockport gave birth to curiosities of form, abstraction, and a way of organizing ideas that felt new and familiar at once.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I try to focus on listening. I work intuitively, and I create from impulses of the body, mind and spirit. The range of dance environments that I passed through (I'm still passing through) speak to my present interests. I think about letting go or shedding layers of the self that are no longer speaking to me, offering space for what feels true. In this, I find myself creating performances that span the collective experience through precise manipulations of time and space, with movement being my main tool.

I try to sustain some sort of physical practice that allows my body to be without prompt, which gives me a sense of freedom in responding to what my body needs. It is through this care that I try to listen to the body and the different states of being. I think this is how I access my visions, which are thick and usually saturated with ideas. They come and go at random and are often triggered by sound, light, mood, personal experiences and, of course, movement!

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I feel like I am living in a constant state of allowing. I allow my interests to shift and my moods to swing. Who I am is always transforming and is heavily affected by my environment. Community, even though it feels difficult to sustain in New York, is extremely important to me. The more I engage with people, the more I access and open different parts of myself. I widen my imagination and add to the food bank of ideas that my artistry feeds on.

Right now, this sort of investigation of the self feels integral to me and my work. I spend a lot of time reflecting on who and how I am in the world, and I think these reflections show up in my work in abstract ways. The same expansion of self that I feel when I engage with the world is what I hope a viewer feels as they interact with the fantastical playgrounds that I create.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

Right now, there is a lot of rest. Long improvisations, gentle stretches and walks are getting me through. I’m taking comfort in empowering music: Megan thee Stallion, Beyoncé, Childish Gambino, India Arie, and Stevie Wonder. My experience of time is extreme, and I try not to measure my productivity against that. I am FaceTiming my friends which feels good, and I am trying to watch a lot of dance.

I feel lucky to continue my teaching practice with students at Rutgers University, and I am warmed by their resilience as we transition to an online learning platform. For me, the time is now to be where I’m at, and I’m trying not to judge or criticize when that proves harder than I think. I look forward to seeing how we will shift as a people, and how this moment acts as a portal to alternate ways of being and listening.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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Artists Reach Out: Yo-Yo Lin

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Yo-Yo Lin

Yo-Yo Lin
(photo: Zack Filkoff)

Yo-Yo Lin is a Taiwanese-American interdisciplinary media and performance artist who explores the possibilities of human connection in the context of emerging, embodied technologies. Through an on-going exploration into ‘soft’ illness data, body sonification, and impairment-generated dance, she is researching and developing methodologies in reclaiming and processing chronic health trauma. Her latest solo performance the walls of my room are curved premiered last winter at Gibney. Recently, Yo-Yo co-facilitated a four-part movement workshop series “Modes of Embodiment: An Expressive Toolkit for Chronically Ill and Disabled Bodies” at Movement Research. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Yo-Yo now lives and works in New York City. More info at www.yoyolin.com.

Yo-Yo Lin's the walls of my room are curved
(photo: Steve Dabal)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I had planned on showcasing the performance the walls of my room are curved at two gallery openings this spring, both of which are now postponed indefinitely. the walls of my room are curved is a movement-generated sonic performance of the body living with a connective tissue disorder. The performance uses several microphones attached to my moving body, capturing the live sounds of creaking and crackling bones and joints as they shift, transfer, extend, and rotate. As I dance, an electronic musician samples, processes, synthesizes the sounds of my body into a musical score in real-time. I also have a group show currently up at the Jewish Community Center, entitled Rituals, that is now closed as well. Curated by Ezra Benus, the show addresses living experiences of illness and disability in abstract, ritualistic forms. I had planned on doing a durational performance based off of my data-tracking framework called The Resilience Journal but am now re-imagining it to be done remotely.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I began with drawing and painting, then started making my drawings move. I was interested in moving images as a sculptural element--often taking these moving images and projecting them onto different surfaces. This led me into using real-time technologies--tools that would allow me to live-manipulate the visuals, map them onto 3D shapes, and sync with body movement. Naturally, live performance was the venue for these explorations. I often work collaboratively with musicians, dancers, and other performing artists in turning their visions into reality. As of recent, I’ve been combining my media art based practice with an emerging performance practice. I’ve been doing research into somatics, internal arts (including Tai Chi), and illness/ disability aesthetics in dance.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I am practicing a revealing and re-valuing of realities. Living with an invisibilized illness has prompted me to question the realities of my body in relation to time and space. I am discovering that illness is relativity. Notions of how the ill bodymind can be generative sources for creative expression--in visuals, sound, tactility, shape, space, movement--has coupled with my explorations in time-based media art and technologies, creating works that seek to make the invisibilized not just visible but felt, embodied, and honored in its complexity. These works span from ‘soft’ data visualization to soundscapes made from bone sounds, to impairment-generated dance scores, to extended reality nightlife spaces. These explorations sometimes echo the complicated relationship between the body and technology, often precarious, discomforting, and transformative all at once. But ultimately, these works reveal a yearning for a deeper understanding and vision of the self, reflected back in its wholeness.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

My practice belongs to a lineage of immigrant, ill/ disabled QTPOC womxn artists, all of whom have created art from necessity and with what they had. I find that “necessity” has produced the most honest, provocative art. I have been recently practicing with this idea in mind, unlearning the excess in technology-based art, acquainting myself with my body and the living planet, and holding space for grief and pleasure. I have been doing this not alone but with many others--creating and facilitating spaces for looking inward, safer discussions, and collective growth. Last fall, dancers Lara Marcin, Pelenakeke Brown and I facilitated a four-part movement workshop series entitled, “Modes of Embodiment: An Expressive Toolkit for Chronically Ill and Disabled Bodies” at Movement Research, where we sought to create an access-centered dance-making space. We dream of continuing to create communal space to honor the trauma in the bodyminds we own and building tools and methodologies to do so.

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

My practice continues to function, perhaps ever more urgently, in the world we have now. I see the able-bodied workforce employ techniques that chronically-ill and disabled folks have long asked for and use as a form of access. Suddenly what was deemed “impossible” to do for a disabled person--such as tele-communication, healthcare benefits, paid leave, virtual events--are suddenly possible. I would like to dwell in this reality we live in right now, to hold space for the grief, fear, and anger we feel as chronically-ill and disabled folks in a time where we see ableism in full-force. I also call upon the wisdom we have developed over generations of mutual aid, resilience, and crip magic. For us, illness is nothing new. We’ve been on our own before. In my practice, I hope to further highlight the generative nature of illness by utilizing tools I have to my disposal while in quarantine, and taking this time to rest, listen, and serve the most impacted.

If you can, please donate to: https://www.gofundme.com/f/crip-fund.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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Artists Reach Out: Kayvon Pourazar

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Kayvon Pourazar

Kayvon Pourazar
(photo courtesy of the artist)

Kayvon Pourazar is of Persian origin and spent his formative years in Iran, Turkey and England. Kayvon immigrated to the US in 1995, graduated from SUNY Purchase in May 2000 and has resided in New York City ever since. He has performed in the works of Ivy Baldwin, Michelle Boulé, Beth Gill, Lily Gold, Levi Gonzalez, K.J. Holmes, John Jasperse, Heather Kravas, Juliette Mapp, Gabriel Masson, Juliana May, Jodi Melnick, Jennifer Monson, RoseAnne Spradlin, Wil Swanson, Donna Uchizono, Doug Varone, Gwen Welliver, Yasuko Yokoshi, Yaa Samar Dance Theater and in The Metropolitan Opera productions of Les Troyens and Le Sacre du Printemps. Kayvon's ventures into making dances have been shown in New York City at Danspace Project (Food for Thought), The Kitchen (Dance & Process), P.S. 122 (Hothouse), The Cunningham Studios, Roulette (DanceRoulette), Center for Performance Research, Catch, AUNTS, Dixon Place as well as the Universities of Nebraska, Vermont and Sacramento State. In 2010 he received a New York Dance & Performance "Bessie" Award for Performance. He has served as Adjunct Faculty at Bennington College and The New School, teaches regularly for Movement Research and has taught as guest artist for Tsekh Russia (Moscow) and Workshop Foundation (Budapest).

At center: Kayvon Pourazar
(photo: Alex Escalante)

Editor's Note: Pourazar alerted me to his practice of embedding (or collaging) direct quotes from authors such as David Abram within his own responses (which is different from his credited quotes, rendered in italics). He writes, "My approach...is to weave and construct my frameworks into a combination of my own ideas as well as ideas from a variety of other sources and influences." As editor, and for this piece only, I have taken the unorthodox approach of permitting this usage and highlighting these embedded words in blue. That particular material is, indeed, all sourced from Abram's writing.

*****

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I was scheduled to go to Cairo in April and Croatia in May as part of Movement Research's Global Practice Sharing (GPS) program. We are discussing potential postponement of both of these. The Cairo trip was to attend performances and events as well as participate in panel discussions, presented and organized as part of the Arab Arts Focus segment of the annual Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival in Cairo. In Croatia I was to participate in the Improspekcije2020 improvisation festival held in Zagreb. This year's festival centered around the "topics of aging, disappearing and death...in the body as well as in the wider sense of the decomposition of the larger body of the world we know it." I had proposed to show a new iteration of my most recent improvised solo work initirinisic.

At the current moment, I was scheduled to be in the midst of a 3-week residency with Ivy Baldwin Dance at Gibney for a new dance to be premiered in early 2021. We're not sure if we'll get the chance to reschedule this residency but I sincerely hope so.

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

At a very critical moment in my life, dance became a literal lifeline for me. After fleeing the Islamic Revolution in Iran, my family was repeatedly displaced from one country to another while we waited for our green cards to the US. Ultimately, because of bureaucratic red tape, my parents were forced to leave me to fend for myself in London during my mid-teens living as an illegal immigrant, unable to help me financially because the revolution had rendered them penniless. At its bleakest, I would experience days where I would be beaten up by white nationalists in the neighborhood, come home to an apartment that had been broken into and robbed, receiving letters from the Home Office notifying me of my impending deportation, and eating out of cans without electricity because the little money I was making from my job at the local deli was going to drugs to help me escape the nightmare I was living. All of these things repeatedly happening and sometimes all in the same day. The worst part, of course, was that I had no one to turn to for help.

My only relief was in dance. I had enrolled in a public performing arts school because someone in my family had once convinced me that I possessed some artistic talent (something my parents would never have allowed if they were there), and I dove headlong into dancing. Dance became simultaneously a place for me to process some of the shit I was going through, an escape, another reality to retreat to when things became unbearable. It also provided a sense of place and belonging at a time when I felt like an outsider in every other facet, including my emotional estrangement from my family.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

My practice came about as a result of another critical moment in my life about 20 years ago. After finally making it to the US, and soon after graduating from college, I found myself injured and unable to dance after years of accumulated imbalanced training. Again on my own, in New York City, unable to hang on to my "lifeline." A bodyworker I was seeing at the time magically and unknowingly unlocked something in me, something I can only explain as a vivid self-healing dialogue with the intelligent community of cells, tissues and organs that make up my body, all of them entities with moods and intentions, openness and spontaneity. What I initially perceived as a a long-lasting series of involuntary spasms, tremors, convulsions and unwindings soon became a life-long practice of deepening my attention to this vivid dialogue, and I have come to believe that the ultimate root of the divide-and-conquer strategy that is at the core of colonization is the split between mind and body. The belief that the experiencing self or mind, our innermost essence, as something incorporeal and ultimately independent of the body (and by extension the larger body of the earth) is the original violent hierarchy. By speaking of our bodies and of the larger body of the earth as inert, deterministic biochemical mechanisms or as a spiritless, vacant and corrupting/corruptible carnal realm, we deny their ability to actively engage and interact with us--we foreclose their ability to reciprocate our attentions, to draw us into silent dialogue, to inform and instruct us.

So my practice is a way to exemplify and aspire to the decentralization of power that I wish to see in the world. By working towards collapsing the hierarchical ways of being that I have been socialized with, I realize that mind and spirit is a property of all that exists, just as all of our ancestors once believed, and I'm left with a diversely differentiated field of animate and self-organizing beings, each of which has its gifts relative to the others. And I find myself not above, but in the very midst of this living field, my own sentience part and parcel of the sensuous landscape that is within me and that surrounds me.

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I care about wholeness and resilience, individually and collectively. By engaging in my practice and sharing it with others, particularly through the lens of the trauma that has informed it, I hope to offer others another way of accessing a wholeness that includes all of their wounds and vulnerabilities and a resilience that comes with trusting that our bodies will always be there for us to inhabit, always providing a sense of place and belonging from which we can find the strength and plasticity to choose paradigms that support connection, abundance and love rather than separation, scarcity and competition, no matter the context or conditions we find ourselves in.

To quote philosopher and performance artist David Abram (author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World):

"There are no priests needed in such a faith, no intermediaries or experts necessary to effect our contact with the sacred, since - carnally immersed as we are in the thick of this breathing planet - we each have our own intimate access to the big mystery.

"Each of us must finally enact this rapport in our own unique manner, discerning and learning to trust the particular gifts of our flesh even as we draw insight from the ways of others. Slowly we come to follow the promptings of our heart as it responds to the larger pulse of this earthly cosmos, listening inward even as we listen outward. And thus our voice, tentative at first, finds its own improvisational place in the broader polyphony--informed by, yet subtly altering, the texture of that wider music. Our rapport is ours alone, and yet the quality of our listening, and the depth of our response, can transform the collective texture of the real."

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

My practice, as it pertains to the world we have now, is in relation to our individual and collective approaches to problem-solving. I hold this quote, also from David Abram, close to my heart.

"Any approach to current problems that aims us toward a mentally envisioned future implicitly holds us within the oblivion of linear time. It holds us, that is, within the same illusory dimension that enabled us to neglect and finally to forget the land around us. By projecting the solution somewhere outside of the perceivable present, it invites our attention away from the sensuous surroundings, induces us to dull our senses, yet again, on behalf of a mental idea.

"A genuinely ecological approach does not work to attain a mentally envisioned future. It strives to become ever more awake to the other lives, the other forms of sentience and sensibility that surround us in the open field of the present moment. For the other animals and the gathering clouds do not exist in linear time. We meet them only when the thrust of historical time begins to open itself outward, when we walk out of our heads into the cycling life of the land around us. This wild expanse has its own timing, its rhythms of dawning and dusking, its seasons of gestation and bud and bloom and blossom. It is here, and not in linear history, that the ravens reside."

I believe that we have all, in general, become too quick to translate the qualitative world of sensory experience into the quantitative world of data and information that reside in the domain of linear time. I believe a lot of change and re-balancing can happen if we stay present in the realm of sensory experience, the other animals, the cliffs, the tides, the cells, tissues and organs, become participant in the unfolding of events, and so it no longer falls upon us, alone, to make things happen as we choose. Since we are not the sole bearers of consciousness, we are no longer on top of things, with the crippling responsibility that that entails. We're now accomplices in a vast and steadily unfolding mystery, and our actions have resonance only to the extent that they are awake to the other agencies around us, attuned and responsive to the upwelling creativity in the land itself. And as our own bodies are perfect analogs for the larger body of the earth, then the same applies to the agencies and the upwelling creativity in our own interior worlds.

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

As you can tell, I am hugely influenced by the work of David Abram. Here is a meditative exercise of his to help us enter more fully into the present moment:

"There is a useful exercise that I [have devised] to keep myself from falling completely into the civilized oblivion of linear time. You are welcome to try it the next time you are out of doors. I locate myself in a relatively open space--a low hill is particularly good, or a wide field. I relax a bit, take a few breaths, gaze around. Then I close my eyes, and let myself begin to feel the whole bulk of my past--the whole mass of events leading up to this very moment. And I call into awareness, as well, my whole future--all those projects and possibilities waiting to be realized. I imagine this past and this future as two vast balloons of time, separated from each other like the bulbs of an hourglass, yet linked together at the single moment where I stand pondering them. And then, very slowly, I allow both of these immense bulbs of time to begin leaking their substance into this minute moment between them, into the present. Slowly, imperceptibly at first, the present moment begins to grow. Nourished by the leakage from the past and the future, the present moment swells in proportion as those other dimensions shrink. Soon it is very large; and the past and future have dwindled down to mere knots on the edge of this huge expanse. At this point I let the past and the future dissolve entirely. And I open my eyes...."

I believe this can also be very effective by entering and inhabiting the wilderness of our own bodily interior. Particularly, since many of us are self-isolating in our homes and/or don't have easy access to wide open spaces or low hills.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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