weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 23
“This is an experiment in conversation. […]
The idea of the Mbari isn’t to arrive summarily to a notion
of truth. We’re not looking for truth here. As important as
that designation is, we’re not looking for a way to arrive at
consensus or agreement, as useful as those are strategically
as well. The idea here is to listen with each other, to
listen defractively, to create art, with words and textures
and memory and feeling that allows us to see each other,
including you, listening as gestures, minor gestures, instead
of stabilized points in space-time. So we are not atomic
entities trying to finalize our positions. We are touching each
other, so to speak, and creating art with our conversation
that we allow to be composted by the Earth. Nothing that
is said here needs to be grasped, as some final principle of
fundamental reality. We give it back to the earth […].”
Bayo Akomolafe26
Weaving and singing together with perfect strangers on
a square in Leeds is what we did. We created little popup communities for a few hours in which we listened
together to our reciprocal relationship as fellow human
beings.
“And if art is a verb, we – you and I and it – are in reciprocal
relationship. Open to the eye (I) of the other. [...] Where I am
not you but we are not apart.”
Margaret Cameron27
Weaving and singing together half the night is what we
did, experiencing structure and freedom. We laughed
about ourselves, discovering our conditionings and
assumptions. We played so seriously that we got upset
at times.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose
ourselves at the same time.”
Thomas Merton 40
“…to draw from life for the artwork, the
lived, hot and cold and funny and sad
life, the painful and the humorous, the
life from all fibers, the life from flesh and
blood.”
Walli Höfinger
“Art is a verb…”
Margaret Cameron 41
“The unfolding of the unexpected
becomes the energy that drives you.
You discover how thirsty you are for
exploration without analysis.
You feel strangely at home in a place you
can’t define. You are truly creating.”
Michell Cassou and Stewart Cubley 42
27 Cameron, M. (2016) I Shudder to Think: Performance as Philosophy. Brisbane: Lady昀椀nger Press, p. 64.
. Brisbane: Lady昀椀n
44
I now start to move with my legs, crawling around the
room, letting my spine twitch, twist and turn in relation
to my legs so that I can feel it better. My partner just
goes with it, now I feel her hands on my feet, as if
she is talking to one foot and saying, ‘Yes, go ahead!
Everything is allowed now…’”
It was curiosity that brought me to the voice work. The
curiosity to try something that almost scared me. With
the whole body, with the whole soul, with all the feelings
and states that show up on the way.
And then to let all that motion impact the artistic
process, not to keep life out of the artwork. No, on the
contrary, to draw from life for the artwork, the lived,
hot and cold and funny and sad life, the painful and the
humorous, the life from all fibres, the life from flesh and
blood. Singing flows through all realms, exploring the
voices that are potentially always there, even when they
are silent.
Experience of a creation process 1#
40 Merton, T. (1955) No Man is an Island. Veghel: Image
Books.
26 Ekrem, E. et al. (eds.) (2023) Transcript: The edges in the middle, III: Báyò Akómoláfé
and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, For the Wild. Available at: https://forthewild.world/podcast-transcripts/the-edges-in-the-middle-bayo-and-keeanga [Accessed 16 September
2024].
Now the screams come from deep in my chest, they go
from a low tone to a very high tone, all shades of broken
tones can be heard, it really sounds like a wild animal,
now I go on all fours, it really seems like tones in my
legs want to free themselves.
40
T. M.
(1955)
NoI Man
is anto
Island.
Image as
41 Merton,
Cameron,
(2016)
Shudder
Think:Veghel:
Performance
Books.
Philosophy. Brisbane: Lady昀椀nger Press, p. 29.
41
(2016)
I Shudder
to Think:
Performance
as
42 Cameron,
Cassou, M.M.
and
Cubley,
S. (1996)
Life, Paint
and Passion:
Philosophy.
Brisbane:
Press, New
p. 29.York: Tarcher/
Reclaiming the
Magic Lady昀椀nger
of Spontaneous.
Perigee.
42 Cassou, M. and Cubley, S. (1996) Life, Paint and Passion:
“…I gather all my courage. My collaborator is sitting
next to me, looking at his thighs. ‘Just try what it is
going to do. You don’t need to know how it is going to
sound. Try to go with the energy and follow it. The spirit
Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous. New York: Tarcher/
Perigee.
45
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