Interview about Distant Movements (English version)

Interview about Distant Movements

Annie Abrahams, Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau (1)(2), Alix de Morant (3), Dabiel Pinheiro, Muriel Piqué (1)

(1) Aix-Marseille Univ, CNRS, PRISM, Marseille, France
(2) Chapman University, Orange, California
(3) Université Paul Valéry Montpellier3, Montpellier, France

To Cite this Article

Abrahams A., Magrin-Chagnolleau I., de Morant A., Pinheiro D., Piqué M. (2022). Entretien au sujet de Distant Movements. p-e-r-f-o-r-m-a-n-c-e, 6.

Ivan: Let’s get started. We are here today to have a conversation around the experimentation called Distant Movements. This experimentation was devised by Annie Abrahams, Daniel Pinheiro, and Muriel Pique. Alix De Morant and I will also be part of the conversation.

One first question, can each of you, Daniel, Annie, and Muriel, just say a few words about who you are?

Annie: Ok. I am Annie Abrahams, I’m an artist who’s working on… what to say? My subject is collaboration. I’m especially interested in the online environment, but not only. Behavior is THE aesthetic element in my art.

Muriel: My name is Muriel Piqué, I am a choreographic artist. And today, I am doing a practical and theoretical doctorate on artistic creation. My research mainly focuses on the question of the emergence of dance in the daily life of everyone. Maybe I could sum up my research issue by remarking that it is a kind of transition, of translation between the aesthetics and the ethics of the attitude, and even also of the guidance, that would allow the dance to arise, to appear. I came to the Distant Movements project thanks to Annie, or with Annie, because Annie is also my thesis artistic director. As a result, our exchanges are frequent, and fertile!

Daniel: I’m Daniel Pinheiro and I am based in Porto. My background is in the performing arts, more specifically theatre. Over the past nine years I’ve been growing an interest in technologies, and more specifically in the video conferencing environment as a way to develop performative work. In this realm of my practice, I came across Annie’s work and then we connected and started collaborating and, that’s how I joined Distant Movements through a previous project we have together, which is Distant Feelings. Yes. I’m interested in the potential of performativity and artistic research of the online environment. Mostly but not only.

Ivan: Alix, do you want to say a few words too?

Alix: I’m Alix De Morant, and I am a researcher, and my field of research is mostly in situ practice, site specific practice. So, we could say in one word that virtual environments can also be site specific. I am mostly interested in intermediality, performance and choreographic situations.

Ivan: I am Ivan Magrin-Chagnolleau, I’m an artist and a researcher. As an artist, I work in theater, film, music, and photography. I’ve done some stage directing, film directing, photography, and music composing. As a researcher, I’m currently particularly interested in the creative process. So, anything that has to do with the creative process, in particular its phenomenology, the creative process from the point of view of the experience of the maker.

First, one little thing, can you just tell me where you are located right now, it’s Porto for Daniel, you told us.

Annie: I am in Montpellier.

Alix: I am in Montpellier.

Muriel: I am in Cotterêts, it’s in the Pyrénées Atlantiques.

Ivan: And I’m in the suburbs of Paris. Okay, so, the first question I wanted to ask, can you say a few words about the genesis of the project, how it all started. In my understanding you were doing Distant Feelings before you started Distant Movements. So, is one a continuation of the other one? Maybe you can just say a few words about how it got started?

Annie: I would like to go a little bit further back in time than Distant Feelings, if you don’t mind. I’ve been doing online experiments already for a long time. In 2012, I wrote an article called Trapped to Reveal1 that was about collaboration and communication through webcams. In that article, I formulated what was most important for me at the time. I will read a small part of it:

“Collaboration as an art practice is highly debated. I would like to think that as soon as you consider collaboration not as necessarily consensual, you can go beyond these binary problematics and start navigating in a domain that doesn’t make you choose between politics and art. A domain that uses difference and singularities to open up a new space of being with others, and thereby enable new unspectacular ways of communicating. In this perspective it would be interesting to explore the operationality of Jean-Luc Nancy’s concepts of “we” and “being with” as I met them via the article The Joy of Co-belonging?2 by Martina Ruhsam, in my performance practice.”

Since then, I have been exploring these concepts of “with” and “being with”3. And this interest led among others to the performance practice of Distant Feelings and Distant Movements.

Daniel: Indeed, Distant Movements was born from certain characteristics and specificities already present in Distant Feelings. Annie and I responded to a particular call for projects and Muriel joined us at Annie’s invitation. So, it was Annie who brought us together. We wanted to explore the idea of movement at a distance, so this was the opportunity. At the beginning, this very first Distant Movements, presented in a Festival in Italy during the summer 2017, did not show any movement of the bodies. The guidance invited to feel an inner, invisible movement. In short, we were brought together by Annie, through our collaborations with her, individually.

Alix: Muriel, would you like to add anything?

Muriel: I took part in Distant Feelings only from time to time, so it’s hard for me to talk about the topic of the project. However, from the perspective of my experience, there is indeed the same quality of the inner gaze and of listening to oneself which, if it is not the driving force, is at least a prerequisite.

Ivan: What made you go somehow from Distant Feelings to Distant Movements? And, more importantly, what was your initial motivation for doing Distant Movements? What were you trying to aim for? This, of course, could be different for each of you. Also, it could be very different from when you started to where you are now.

Annie: At some point, Muriel talked about “interior dance” to me. In Distant Feelings we noticed that if you watch a screen full of people with their eyes closed, you can see a lot of subtle things happening in their faces. So, the first time in Distant Movements Daniel and I tested what would happen to our faces when Muriel described an interior dance. We closed our eyes. Was there something visible on our faces trying to follow that dance in our heads? Not a lot could be seen afterwards on our faces; but it was very clear, to both Daniel and me, that we wanted to move, we wanted so much to move. That is how Distant Movements started.

Now, after 15 sessions, I would like to come back to this first stage and try again… We have changed a lot in our manner of guiding, maybe now something could be visible on our faces of what is happening inside us.

Daniel: Indeed, at the beginning nothing seemed to happen. I remember that Muriel proposed an inner dance very much linked to our position in front of the computer, in front of the webcam. Imagining this dance made micro-movements appear on our faces that were not intentional. At that moment, what I felt echoed another practice I share with Lisa Parra, an artist and choreographer from New York, called Land Project: we are exploring the possibilities of actually moving together at a distance. So, for me, the direction was very clear. “What happens if we start moving with our eyes closed and what is this relationship that we establish via the computer?” Unlike what I share with Lisa, the proposition was: how can an internalised dance in relation to the computer, actually affect our movement? How can remote guidance influence it? How can we start to play with these constraints and build from the environment itself? It seems to me that this is how we started to formulate our questions from the needs and curiosities that we would like to see addressed in Distant Movements. That’s how I suppose, in addition to what Annie said, the process started, and the engine started working.

Ivan: There is a lot of variation from one session of Distant Movements to another. So, how would you describe the core of the protocol or of the device to someone who doesn’t know Distant Movements? What are the commonalities of all the various versions of Distant Movements?

Alix: I would like to add something to your question Ivan. The first thing, before describing what is for you and for someone who doesn’t know Distant Movements its protocol, I would like each of you to say very clearly what is his or her approach to movement? What is behind this word movement? Then, you’ve already mentioned guidance, but in a rather implicit way. Muriel, what were the first guidelines given?

Muriel: I will start by answering this last question. From memory, and I prefer to keep the subjectivity of the memory which has to be verified in the video traces, I had a very tactile guidance, very close to the borders of the body, the skin, the periphery of the body. A guidance that proposed touching: for example, the computer keyboard, approaching the screen, feeling the air around us. This first experience of movement at a distance gave rise to another quality of guidance, when the question of being together at a distance began to become clearer in me, in my body. It’s a question of feeling, I’m not talking about emotional feeling, I’m talking about physical, embodied feeling. So, when the approach of being together at a distance became clear inside me, the guidance I offered became perhaps more universal, more transversal. I felt like it could address everyone. So, I started looking for something in common for all, something that everyone could express differently, respecting their differences. I have circled around this commonality for a while: going through some very intimate moments that I shared with the hope that others would feel that same intimate approach. Sometimes it was a lure, other times not. I was also looking for the intimacy of the other, physically. The question of the presence of the body that you pose, Alix, is essential for me.

Alix: I’ve asked the question of movement rather than the question of the body, so that you can situate from where the movement starts for you. Annie, for example, said earlier: “At this point I wanted to move.” Let’s go back to the question: “How would you characterize Distant Movements for someone who has not known this project before?”. I would like you to speak about what movement is exactly for each of you? What is your practice? And how do you translate this practice to Distant Movements?

Muriel: So, to refocus … I try to question the guidance, the quality of guidance. I’m looking to approach movement by calling it out, not just naming it, but almost hailing it. It is a different way of looking at movement. And doing it from a distance was the only way I thought possible at first : to call the movement to make it occur. How could the movement have happened if we didn’t name it, if we didn’t hail it? Since there is no flow, no real feeling of the people near me, I can only imagine them. It would be interesting to share with you my realization: I abandoned this preconceived idea that one could not really feel the other at a distance…

Ivan: So how would you describe the procedure (or protocol or practice?)? Again, coming back to that, because I think it’s a very interesting question in the sense that your project (?) is participative. You’re asking people to be part of it. Then, how do you describe the process they’ll be joining?

Daniel: I think this has been one of the central questions in the research so far. In that sense, it is perhaps a very complex question, even if it seems very simple. Whenever we found time to practice with each other, we would experiment in a very open way: experimenting with different things that interested us. Should the three of us lead? Or take turns? What if we invited someone else who didn’t know the project to get feedback? During the first period of COVID containment, when we challenged ourselves to commit to weekly Distant Movements sessions, we began to realise that we needed to find a simple way to involve a wider audience, something that would be understandable and in which everyone could feel welcome to engage in. What was the trigger to really activate what is at the heart of this project: the movement? I guess we’ve reached a stage where if we’re talking about methodology, for me it’s a practice that allows people to move together at a distance, while trying to interrogate the relationships between what’s happening in their bodies, when they have their eyes closed, and the instructions they’re receiving from elsewhere. How does it affect their physical presence to move in the same virtual space with other people? To answer Alix about my perception of what movement is, I don’t come from dance, I come from theatre. During my training, I had more experience with movement than with dance. So, I see movement, not as an individual movement, but as the consequence of a relationship with other bodies situated in the same space. The body is always perceived in relation to the space. Therefore, my question in this environment, also because of my other online projects, has been: “What is happening in this digital space? While the bodies do not share the same physical space, how can I investigate how what I do or say might influence other bodies? And vice versa?” I feel that Distant Movements is a way for everyone to enter into movement at a distance, with their eyes closed. Also, there is this specific question: what are we looking for in this online practice: in what way can we move together? Why are we doing it in this space? What makes it so different from any other space?

Alix: Annie, would you like to add a few words?

Annie: There’s a lot to say, but if I have to talk about where dance comes from, for me, dance comes from my inner (or inside?), from everything I’ve ever seen, known and experienced around dance. When I dance myself, I build upon all that. So, it’s a combination of images and things I have in my head and what my body can do. What I’m looking for in dance is freedom and joy and desire and being happy and maybe also expression. For me it’s very related to painting and drawing, my body being the pencil. When talking about what is “Distant Movements”, I think Daniel gave a good overview, but for me, there’s one very special aspect that we didn’t broach (or address?) so far. Distant Movements is also a coming together of different universes. It took us a very long time to find where we could meet and to know how we could meet, and we are still evolving. Distant Movements is a process not only depending on what we want and what we think, but also on what we discover in the others and how we can go on with that.

Alix: Yes. There are many things there, but I just want to react to the last point that you said Annie, which is that Distant Movements is a coming together from different universes, and that involves the relationship you have with each other.  But at what point did you think you could extend an invitation to others? How would you describe Distant Movements to someone joining a session for the first time? Someone you don’t know.

Annie: I don’t have the exact words right now. I think it can be linked to the protocol we developed in the confinement period for people we don’t know. T During the confinement, the research became a practice, and the protocol was developed. A few days ago, I watched again all the videos and the comments from the people who we had invited to work with us. There were things that I didn’t understand at the time, but that later somehow influenced my own understanding of what we were doing in a significant way. The process is ongoing, or maybe it’s just begun, I don’t know. Now, the three of us have to continue researching Distant Movements, sometimes with a guest as an outside view on the process.

Ivan: Can we say that Distant Movements includes in itself the idea that the protocol is constantly evolving. Would it be correct to say that it’s part of the research, which is to refine the protocol as the questions evolve?

Muriel: Every time, I have the impression that we will find the right protocol and keep it. I have the conviction that something will deepen by repeating the same protocol. But no! So far, the protocol has constantly changed. Perhaps this is part of what Annie describes? Maybe it is a consequence of our different worlds? In dance, there is a certain search for a form of stability in the protocol linked to the movement. Each movement is so rich, there is so much information to be decoded, that it is necessary to do it over and over again to allow the incredible amount of information that each movement underlies to emerge. So, my training naturally leads me to seek stability in the protocol. I don’t have the impression that it is the same for Annie and Daniel. When the protocol is constantly questioned, it has very positive effects on the collaborative process. Indeed, as soon as one becomes rooted (immobilised or trapped?) in an attitude, the relationship becomes less fluid, less free. However, the lack of stability has effects on the absence of deepening the very presence of the body in movement and the awareness of the micro-information produced by the body in movement, in my eyes…

Annie: I am ready to repeat with you Muriel, over and over again. But I’m not looking for stability through that. That’s the difference, I believe

Muriel: For sure! For sure! (laughs) But perhaps there is something revealing in this reflection: the guidelines I propose are not the mirror of what I am. There is a gap in me, quite a big one, between the stability of the protocol (which I tend to aim for) and the multiple variations of the movement I experience. I would even say that there is very little link between the instructions given to guide the movement and my perception (or sense?), my background, or my experience of the moment.

Ivan: I was going to say that what I hear is that maybe your primary goal is not to stabilise the protocol, but your primary goal is to get to know each other better. As the dynamics of getting to know each other are constantly evolving, so is the experience. Here’s just one thought…

Alix: I’m going to stay on this aspect of stability and instability. This resonates very clearly in what you say because I think each of you has a very different relationship to movement. Daniel mentioned a movement which is different from what you’re saying, Muriel and Annie. So, if we just try to observe this question of movement, there is already a world opening up because you already have three different conceptions of it. They may intersect but you have three very distinct approaches. Let’s start with the framework, because if we talk about instability and a protocol that is constantly evolving, the framework remains unchanged. It’s a common framework and it’s an artificial media device and it’s initially purely commercial. I think you are trying to establish a bifurcation, questioning how to speculate with the device to change its codes. How will you deal with the question of “presence” that Daniel was talking about? He was the first, I think, to mention this term of presence: “I wanted to look at how I can be present in the distance.” So, how are you looking at the question of presence inside such a rigid frame? Could you just be maybe more specific about that?

Daniel: Do we give the camera a central place, from which we build up our research? Or not? With Distant Movements we don’t create images, but presence. We discussed this very early on. The video recordings we keep of all the sessions are also documentation, and this is the only way we can go back through the experience afterwards. I have already explored the idea of presence, with eyes open through the action/reaction process in Land Project. I’ve also seen some of Annie’s experiments (Besides with Martina Ruhsam and Online En-semble, for example), where I feel I can talk about presence too. In the context of Distant Movements, I have always tried to perceive other bodies in a different way than if the bodies were in the same space as me. For example, there is noise, sounds, breathing, etc. And all of this goes through what you call “a very rigid frame”. What is specific to Distant Movements is that we do all this with our eyes closed. The frame set by the webcam is there, but it’s not the main concern, and it’s not what delimits our movements. Often in other projects I work on, the frame (screen) determines the space in which I move. With Distant Movements I don’t think this can be the case, in fact we have already discussed it together and concluded that it was of no interest… Here, between my body and the body of the other, at a distance, I would bring the word “resonance”: because it has to do with the way things (words, the sound of breaths, the presence of others, etc.) resonate in my body from the other side of the screen, and vice versa…

Annie: Through the machines?

Daniel: Through the machines. Yes, sometimes I forget to mention it because I have worked with it so much.

Ivan: You tend to forget sometimes that there is a device between us.

Ivan: It was fun looking at the different versions of Distant Movements you sent us, to see the evolution of Daniel’s look!

[Laughs]

Alix: He is very careful with his image in the practice, just as Muriel unwittingly pays close attention to the image of her gesture, even when her back is turned to the camera.

[Laughs]

Annie: It’s true, it’s true. There is a little anecdote. The first time I met Muriel, it was in a performance in which she was performing.

Muriel: For you!

Annie: Yes. In this performance were participating two people who had no experience with theater or dance and two who were either from dance or theater. And for what I I preferred the ones with no experience! Muriel and the others had habits. As soon as there is a camera, as soon as there is an audience, professionals unconsciously react to that immediately.

[Laughs]

Alix: When we watch the different recordings, you can see it.

Ivan: This is a very good transition to restart the discussion. What is the influence of having it filmed on the freedom and awareness that each participant has and on what they do. I mean, can you elaborate on your thoughts about that?

Muriel: So, consciously I don’t think I’m doing anything for the camera. But, unconsciously as Alix suggests, it is indeed possible that my awareness of the form of the movement is participating in what is taking place! The practice, Annie pointed out, is not just about the screen and the computer in front of you, nor the question of clouds and distance. To me, bringing in a dance state, bringing out a dance state, is also part of the practice, and that is an important marker for me. Perhaps this influences my relationship with the camera? That is to say, I immediately seek to enter a state of dance, which implies visibility, legibility, clarity, awareness of what is happening inside and outside, awareness of the existence of form, of temporality, of the contours of gesture. In short, the questions that are essential to dance have a huge influence on the quality of my presence, one could say the quality of the presence that I nourish.

And then I believe that the more I am in a state of dance, the more anyone, even from a distance, can enter the dance… The state of dance creates an intermediate space, an “intermediary” space: it is this “intermediary” space that allows us to enter into a relationship, that makes that we are together, dancing together, in a common environment even from a distance. Is it a projection? Is it real? I just see that generating an “intermediary” relational space specific to the state of dance is a constantly evolving intention, it cannot stop or freeze. In this sense, it is similar to the notion that Annie called the absence of stability: there is no finality, there is no end to my intention

And then there is another aspect of the device that interests me and feeds my imagination of movement (and this will bring the camera back into the discussion): it is to take into consideration that people are at home. They are in a state of intimacy, in a context of invisibility, while they are made visible by the device. This context, I imagine, is favorable towards revealing the incongruity of the dancing body. Because the dancing body is not a socially accepted body. The dancing body is a body that does strange things, gestures that are not agreed upon, that go beyond the boundaries of discretion in which the body should be kept in the framework of a normal social relationship. The dancing body approaches incongruity. Distant Movements proposes to find oneself in an intimate space, a place that finally allows one to accept to enter into an inventiveness of movement.

Annie: I would like to formulate this differently. The webcam’s eye is something that makes people responsible. It makes you feel like you are in a public space. When you agree to participate in Distant Movements, you know you will reveal something of yourself. That’s the role of the webcam in the practice.

Muriel: Perhaps everyone is not conscious on the same scale of what they reveal about themselves?

Ivan: I understand what you say, because there is the notion of learning, learning through practice, of learning to be in front of a camera. Being an actor myself, having done some parts in films, that’s something I experienced as well. You “learn” to forget the camera, you learn to know that the camera is there, and you are always aware, but at the same time you’re working on your ability to have an experience almost as if the camera was not there. That’s definitely due to training. It’s the same with dancing. If you are trained to dance in front of an audience or if you are not trained to dance in front of an audience makes a difference. And I think this has an impact on the impact of the practice on your experience.

Muriel: Especially with the closed eyes.

Annie: I just have a small remark. When I look at the session recording afterwards, it’s important for me to find something I don’t like about myself. If I wouldn’t find that anymore, I consider the performance wouldn’t be good anymore.

Daniel: I would add to what Annie says that from the moment we open the webcam, together we create a public space, which is constructed from all the environments in which we find ourselves, whatever they may be. And to extend what you said, Ivan: the more you practice Distant Movements, the more you forget this constraint. But there are other constraints that come with the practice: for example, how do you engage with Distant Movements? I’ve approached this question in different ways, testing different settings: I’ve practiced Distant Movements on the floor, standing up, with small headphones, and then larger ones for better movement. All these variations have an impact on the way I move and make me aware that I am always connected to a machine, in this intermediary space… especially with my eyes closed! Our protocol determines a duration beforehand which defines the time during which we will be moving together, with our eyes closed. So, we know in advance that it’s going to end; that’s something.

Annie: Unless you invite Ienke. (Ienke Kastelein, performer and photographer, was our first guest, while attending Distant Movement – Session # 9 – she hadn’t heard the alarm ringing at the end of the session.)

Daniel: Indeed, it was very beautiful… It is very beautiful! That moment when, as you open your eyes, you see someone continuing the movement on his own: that’s what happened with Ienke… Maybe I’m deviating? I can’t help thinking of an iteration, not of Distant Movements, but of Distant Feelings, a few years ago with Annie, Lisa and myself. Distant Feelings does not contain any instructions towards movement. However, in this specific iteration we moved: We went into movement because we were looking for each other’s presence while we had our eyes closed and were not talking to each other. I felt like I was trying to understand, to feel if Annie and Lisa were there, and that’s what made me move and made my body move. And I think that’s part of Distant Movements in particular with the simple protocol that we came up with during the quarantine period. We wanted the participants to experience a certain quality of movement, to be able to move as they wanted to, while being aware that there were also other bodies moving or trying to perceive the other bodies. How do you understand this? I can only speak for myself: I use my other senses, trying to capture movements from a distance, keeping in mind that someone is there, observing how my body reacts. Then I forget about the webcam: I concentrate on what I hear, I can turn my back on it and it doesn’t bother me. I stay focused on hearing the sound of the computer and perceiving how it affects me. The short instructions that we expressed at the end of the confinement were not descriptive instructions: we shared what we felt in the moment, and we indicated a quality, a state of the body, that could induce some kind of movement. Then, by watching the video recordings, we were able to observe what this produced. This protocol contrasts with the sessions before, where we gave specific instructions: even though they could be about the imaginary, they were linked to what my body was doing and transcribed into instructions.

Ivan: Alix, you want to…?

Alix: Yes. I would like to express my reactions from my own experience of participating in Distant Movements and by something I also said in the recording of the last session during the confinement. For me, the sense that was the most triggered was my listening. Listening to the white noise of the computer was really helping me to feel connected to others. I think there are different things to be discussed. The first one is a question of space, space as the protagonist of the experience. I think what the device is creating is an intermedial space that has already been named. But, if we also relate to the space in which we find ourselves during the experience, then an atmosphere is also built, as far as I’m concerned, that of my office, my library. And I find that very interesting to think that Distant Movements also creates performativity in a place of life, that the common work is created in the conjunction of all these in situ dances. Another question that comes with it is the question of being together. The togetherness we talked about, which brings me to one point in the session of May. Muriel is saying there’s no limit to the experience but of course there is a limit. You are the guarantors of a liminal space, but you are also there to mediate it. So of course, there is a limit, which brings me back to guiding. Finally, one last thought for Annie, about the collaboration. What is the difference between collaborating in the process and making a movement in unison? How does guidance make a difference?

Ivan: Yes. So maybe if you want to react to what Alix just said, in terms of the space, the room, the togetherness, the unison, all these different aspects of the experience?

Annie: Does the guidance bring difference? It took us a long time to find some freedom in what we were doing. It took us at least seven sessions before we started dancing, before we were allowed to move more or less freely. All the time Muriel was saying that she wasn’t looking for something that was the same. Not that Daniel and I ever were looking for that, but it seemed to be Muriel’s “fear” that we might do that. I wanted something else… When I look back closely at our respective different guidances, I see a lot of differences: we put emphasis on different things. I’m always the one who tries to interrupt, when I feel that it’s going too far, somewhere I don’t want to go. I don’t know.

Alix: You’re saying that the roles are distributed inside the guidance. That’s what you just said. This is for me very clear. So maybe it’s important that the authors also name their roles. You say, “I’m the one who’s interrupting when I feel that it’s becoming too smooth.” So, what is your role, Daniel?

Daniel: My role?

Ivan: In the guidance?

Daniel: It shifts a lot, mostly because I’m always in the process. I’m always thinking “What am I doing here?” Not in the sense “What am I doing here in this project?” But more like: “How can I contribute? What am I looking for?” So I keep testing things, trying to make some sense to myself. Many times, maybe not in the confinement period, I tried to follow the instructions openly, to let them drive my body and to express this immediate reaction. Afterwards in the video documentation I try to see if that actually had an effect, if the others could pick up on what I said. Of course, each interpretation is always very individual, very personal. What has always been in the back of my mind, is: “How can I actually let the instruction affect my own space and in my own body in that space? And how can I make it (the instruction) bounce back in order to create some kind of flow, of ripple, linked to the movement that I’m making? Sometimes I’m really frustrated because I feel I’m not always able to create the link. Not in the confinement period because then we engaged in a continuous practice, and we discussed a lot about what it was that we were doing… I guess this greatly enlightened our practice. We were also concerned about how to make our practice more open and less demanding for other people.

Alix: Therefore, Muriel, what is your role in the guidance?

Muriel: I try to bring out anything that can nourish a state of dance. Everything is good for me that somehow gets us out of the movement into the dance.

Annie: Sorry Muriel, can you be clearer?

Muriel: Yes … to be clearer, I can only express my vision of dance more intimately. That is to say, dance, for me, feeds not only on the inner gaze, on the awareness of the movement that circulates inside oneself and therefore awakens the inner gaze, but also calls upon an imaginary of oneself, of the other and an incorporation of one’s environment. It is for example, to feel through the skin of the other, to imagine the tactility of the other. In fact, dance, for me, appears when the imagination and sensation begin to converse: it would be a conversation between imagination and sensation. I often have the impression in the instructions that I bring to Distant Movements that what is most complex to share is the imagination. Because the imagination is something that cannot be shared; I mean, it’s something that allows you to relate to others, but my imagination is not someone else’s, that’s obvious. The imagination is very intimate. However, if the imagination is not awakened, the integrity of the dance movement is not complete, in my eyes a part of it would be missing. Without imagination, the danced movement is just executed… So, in Distant Movements… Yes Annie, I recognize your power to interrupt and more than interrupting, indeed, you have the ability to quickly introduce a change, to instantly call up another dimension. And Daniel’s great strength lies in his way of integrating the environment in which we live: I often feel in his guidance his ability to take the real environment into consideration: where are we? While on my side, I would say that I have a propensity to bring the imagination in … And those roles were decided in an interrelation: as none of you took charge of the imagination, it’s me who took it; as neither of us took charge of the interruption, Annie took it; and since none of us talked about the daily life, it was Daniel who took it. In this distribution, something comes into vibration, in connection.

Annie: I would like to respond , Muriel, because for me, you are the one who guides me in my inner self. You are making me aware of my body and what’s happening inside. Sometimes Daniel does this too. However, my imagination has to do only with me; I mean I’m convinced that it’s not possible to share it.

Muriel: I understand that. I know that. (laughs)

Annie: This is where we really differ. Because if we are talking about resonance, resonance for me is something different than for you, I think. Because I cannot resonate…

Ivan: Let’s speak about resonance.

Annie: It’s a notion that was rather strange to me until recently. Muriel had me read something from, I forgot… (“Hartmut Rosa” says Alix) It was not something that pleased me. I could not do a lot with it. But then in “Listening” by Jean Luc Nancy I found another resonance, that I could relate to and could feel. Resonance for me is something that is happening between me and everything around me, and it’s something that changes me all the time. That’s what Distant Movements also does for me, and what I look for in it, what I like in it. So, resonance is not between you and me, Muriel, and not between me and Daniel nor between me and the other people who are participating. Resonance for me is something that is inside me, but which includes everything around, all the time. Thus, also you and, also Daniel and, also… That’s how I can feel and do something with it.

Ivan: There is something very interesting about what you just said Annie, and it made me think about enaction, which is a concept that was developed in cognitive science by Francisco Varela, among other people. Because it’s very close to what you just described. This permanent interaction between what we could say the inside, which is cognitive and body sensation, and the outside, which is the environment, and the way that they interact permanently and shape each other permanently. Therefore, you shape your environment from your inside and the environment shapes your inside. At least that’s how I understand enaction. Other people might give a different definition of it. There is this constant interaction between inside, outside, and my cognitive system in the broad sense. My body, mind, and the outside, which is not me but for a certain tradition, it is also me, in fact for the distant tradition.

Annie: Yes.

Ivan: It’s very interesting.

Annie: I’ve been reading Varela and Maturana in the 90’s. And they very much influenced me… In the meantime, I have forgotten them a little, but they were always in the back of my head. Nowadays, I feel more connected with – but I’m no philosopher, I just read things here and there – Karen Barad and to intra-action. That’s how I try to understand things nowadays. Just before this interview, I listened to a podcast by Martina Ruhsam who is teaching at Giessen and who talks about her research on the thematization of non-human entities in contemporary dance, how human beings can already be considered as cyborgs and how, sometimes, virtual presence can be experienced as more intimate than a physical encounter. But… Why am I telling this?

Alix: Because it’s a good reference.

Annie: Martina is important to me. I worked with her in an online performance project on object agency that was called “besides,” (2015 -2018). I first met her when, in 2010, she wrote about my online collaborative practice in her book “Kollaborative Praxis.”, she is the one who first made me read Nancy, etc. Today, I want everyone to listen to “A podcast on the future of dance and performance” where she is interviewed by Beatrix Joyce.

Alix: Okay thank you.

Muriel: I also want to express what the issue of resonance evokes in me… It is not yet a completely clear concept, but there is something really very strong that is carried by Hartmut Rosa and it is close to the state of improvisation in dance. Let’s see! If I caricature what I mean, there would be two sides: one is close to the Actors Studio, that is to say, “I feel, I express and I show what constitutes me”. And then there is the other side probably closer to intra-action, which proposes that the “I” that I am is also in resonance with the world, it is a relation to the world. Resonance is being in touch with the world. And in my eyes, it is not “I am” in touch with the world that is important. Certainly, these two sides are involved in a qualitative state: there is no need to oppose them.
What seems important to me is that this state of resonance is present in dance improvisation, and finally also, in dance composition, which is my main concern. When a movement follows another movement, when there is something that enters a succession in an evident way, it is a resonance that lurks from one movement to another. A state of… I don’t know… In fact, it’s not that I don’t know, it’s that we would have to find a way to say it… It’s something that’s called… There is a call, a necessity, which is not a necessity of the “I”, rather a necessity of movement towards the following movement and the space in which it is located. Resonance expresses this necessity. And it would perhaps still distinctly be understood if we were to talk about unavailability (cf. Hartmut Rosa). It seems to me that that is the key, at least it was for me. To realise that the world is, in essence, unavailable to my perception, i.e. the prerequisite is that the world is unavailable to me. This hypothesis forces me to adopt a state of listening, of acceptance that something cannot repeat itself, nor reproduce itself, nor be there, frozen, while I am elsewhere, a state of availability for what happens. It is this attitude that in my eyes feeds the resonance. There is no “me” in the question of resonance, but I have the impression that very often, we would tend to stop at “I resonate with” or “it resonates in me”…

Annie: We agree with you, Muriel.

Muriel: Yes, i believe we agree! But that’s not the matter in fact.

Alix: Daniel. Maybe Daniel wants to add something or go in another direction because it becomes a dialogue between Muriel and Annie. In the introduction that you sent before this conversation, resonance took a big place. I would like Daniel to react to see if he has also something to say in this debate around the resonance.

Daniel: I would say, I have a more physical approach to it, and this is perhaps against what Muriel is saying, for me there is a “me” included. Each iteration being very specific because there are a lot of things that I cannot control that have to be taken into consideration: my mood, what time of the day it is etc. Those are also constraints, and they will fit the things that I will be available or not to receive. So, for me it has always been a way of trying to understand what resonates and what doesn’t with what I’m doing at that moment. This is not a logical decision; it has to do with these other variables that I just named. Sometimes I want to follow a certain path, sometimes not. The space that we’ve created is open enough to go in any direction. When I was speaking about how I follow the instructions and how that does have an effect on me and how I bounce it back as a ripple, like a stone falling into the water and it ripples, that I am trying to understand if it’s actually possible through the digital to have that ripple effect. So, in this case, whatever resonates with my feeling, okay, I follow it. I am open to following the path, whatever it is that Annie or Muriel might bring. Resonance from my perspective is very pragmatic, but not logical. I don’t make a conscious decision; I just think about it afterwards.

Ivan: There are many more questions we could ask but time is running out. I’d like to finish with one closing question: What is the future of Distant Movements or the next project that’s going to start from Distant Movements?

Annie: We don’t proceed like that. All three of us have wishes, some of them are already formulated. We first must make this article work. And that will take us time and energy. We will have lots of nurturing things to think about and discuss. So maybe this is also the moment where we should try to write a little bit more about the project. Something will come out of that, and we will catch up with what is most urgent, or in the meantime, one of us really wants to do something and proposes that to the other two. Or suddenly we see a call “Whoa, that’s a nice way to work on Distant Movements. Let’s try.”

Daniel: Until now, we perhaps reached the beginning of this coming together of the universes we talked about, that we are perhaps now ready to write about it. We agree that things will come out of what we’ve done so far. Also, for me, at least the confinement period was very demanding, but I was really happy with us arriving at some sort of practice that we can go back to, while also continuing the research on what I call urgencies. For example, I would like to go through the experience of a longer session, at least 1 hour, perhaps in silence, without guidance…

Annie: And we are not paid for this. So somehow at a certain point…

Alix: This must stop.

[Laughter]

Ivan: Not to get paid…

Annie: I would like to find, for instance, a residency or a way to have at least a small part of it paid. So that’s also something that’s in the…

Muriel: To answer your question, Ivan. For me also it’s not over, the research is not over yet. And it’s already very good to tell us that. Of course, I will adapt to the temporality of each person… The subject that would interest me to question today, in addition to making dance appear again and again, would be the notion of performativity: How to relate, how to link this issue of experience to the issue of performativity? These are maybe in Distant Movements two concepts that are still opposed… However, the question of what is at stake in practice is posed both in performativity and in experience. It is this question that is also dealt with within the “research practices” axis 2 of PRISM (the laboratory where my doctoral thesis is based). Across Distant Movements, it seems to me, we could too easily be limited by our ideas of practice and sharing of practices! Something could lead us to believe that Distant Movements will limit itself to awakening in our guests a practice of the inner gaze or of dance at a distance. Yet, it is an essential question, this relationship to the practice of research. Therefore, to the practice of performativity as well…

Annie: Interesting!

Ivan: What I suggest closing this session is that each of us has a two, three minutes statement on something they want to say as a conclusion. You don’t have to, but if you want to wrap up, just say the last one thing you haven’t said and wanted to talk about, but you only have two to three minutes.

Muriel: I would like to take just 10 seconds to say how important it is for dance to be present in territories that are not usual for it. And how important it is to question its presence in an intermedial space.

Alix: Faire de l’in situ.

[Laughter]

Muriel: Yes, that’s exactly it!

Annie: I would like to say something about language, which is a big “constraint”, “issue” in our group. It even is an obstacle sometimes. But I think we flipped it into an advantage. It is somehow an advantage in our research. I can’t describe exactly why but this is how I feel it.

Since then, I’ve figured out that not being able to name or explain everything helps us to focus on the body. And: in addition, a bodily empathy could come from the way we look at the recordings, as they show the intimacy of our bodies in movement.

Daniel: I don’t want to say anything specific. Sorry.

[Laughter]

Ivan: Alix, do you want to say something?

Alix: Well just a question. You had this very regular practice during the confinement that had to do with the period. So, will you continue to invite us from time to time? Or do you consider it’s time to foreclosure and to work more as a trio to understand what you have done?

Daniel: From my perspective, it will depend on whatever specific thing we might be wanting to work on. Invitations to others are still possible. The quarantine was a very specific context that we were all going through when we decided to open the process up to more people, but it kind of went a bit away from the original research. Like I said previously, it informed the research and continues to be important because of that. I’m not sure if we will arrive at a conclusion; if that practice finds a context to be applied again, things will be open if the research asks for it.

Ivan: And for myself, I have the feeling that I would have loved to speak more about the notion of experience. Because I think it’s also a wonderful practice to research the notion of experience, how each participant goes through the same iteration and how they can live something entirely different. In particular, the experience of time that we haven’t spoken about. Why 15 minutes and the reason for that? Also, the experience of time is extremely different from one person to another. That would be an entirely other subject of conversation.

References

« Distant Feeling(s) » Daniel Pinheiro & Annie Abrahams in Video Vortex* Reader III: Inside the YouTube Decade. Page 185-193. Edited by Geert Lovink and Andreas Treske, Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, 2020, ISBN/EAN Paperback: 978-94-92302-61-8, ISBN EPUB: 978-94-92302-60-1
https://networkcultures.org/blog/publication/video-vortex-reader-iii-inside-the-youtube-decade/

Why is the use of videoconferencing so exhausting? An analysis on the demands. Video essay by ANNIE ABRAHAMS and DANIEL PINHEIRO, in Abrahams, A., Pinheiro, D., Carrasco, M., Zea, D., La Porta, T., de Manuel, A., … Varin, M. (2020). Embodiment and Social Distancing: Projects. Journal of Embodied Research, 3(2), 4 (27:52). DOI: http://doi.org/10.16995/jer.67

NANCY Jean-Luc, Listening, https://manchesterarthistory.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/listening-by-jean-luc-nancy.pdf

NANCY Jean-Luc, A l’Ecoute, https://monoskop.org/images/1/15/Nancy_Jean-Luc_A_lecoute.pdf

“Trapped to Reveal – On webcam mediated communication and collaboration”, Annie Abrahams, JAR #2 (Journal for Artistic Research) 2012, ISSN 2235-0225. https://www.jar-online.net/exposition/abstract/trapped-reveal-webcam-mediated-communication-and-collaboration

“Performance como Processo: Práticas de “Embodiment” à Distância.” PINHEIRO, Daniel; PARRA, Lisa. eRevista Performatus, Inhumas, ano 3, n. 14, jan. 2015. ISSN: 2316-8102. http://performatus.net/estudos/performance-como-processo/

How to walk in the specificity of the undefined space of the digital, Daniel Pinheiro. ‘“Atos de Intimidade: cartografias para uma prática artística”, MARISA, Cláudia. Cadernos da Pandemia, vol 1, Jun. 2020. ISBN: 978-989-8969-52-1
https://www.academia.edu/43789306/How_to_walk_in_the_specificity_of_the_undefined_space_of_the_digital

L’Agency Art ou une Éthologie Participative dans des Environnements Artificiels ?, Annie Abrahams, LINKs séries 1-2. ISSN 2592-6756. Directeur de la publication Louis-José Lestocart. http://links-series.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/L%E2%80%99Agency-Art-ou-une-%C3%89thologie-Participative-dans-des-Environnements.pdf

Martina Ruhsam, ‘The Joy of Co-belonging?’, June 2012.
https://fabricoftrust.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/the-joy-of-co-belonging-symposium-in-zagreb/

Sylvie Roques, « Entre dystopies et utopies artistiques : la création au temps du coronavirus », Recherches & éducations [En ligne], HS | Juillet 2020, consulté le 27 juillet 2020.
https://journals.openedition.org/rechercheseducations/9993

LE BRETON David – La sociologie du corps, Collection : Que sais-je ? : Presses Universitaires de France, 2016

BARAD Karen – Meeting the Universe Halfway, Edition Aux cahiers de L’une des Vues

ROSA Hartmut – Résonance – Une sociologie de la relation au monde, 2018

GODFROY Alice CLAM Jean – (2014, avril 4). “Vers une phénoménologie interne du corps dansant”. Communication dans le cadre du Colloque international “La recherche en danse entre France et Italie : approches, méthodes et objets”

POUILLAUDE Frédéric – Le Désœuvrement chorégraphique : étude sur la notion d’œuvre en danse, Paris, Vrin, 2009

DEWEY John – L’art comme expérience, Folio Essais n°534, Galimard, 2005

Martina Ruhsam interviewed by Beatrix Joyce in “A podcast on the future of dance and performance” https://www.artconnect.com/projects/dis-tanz-podcast-7abda6c2-0c7e-4a34-962d-8f21b9d4e778

Landproject https://landproject.tumblr.com/

Distant Feelings https://www.bram.org/distantF/ and https://landproject.tumblr.com/distantfeelings Annie Abrahams, Lisa Parra, Daniel Pinheiro, 2015 – ongoing

Besides, – on Object Agency https://bram.org/besides/ Annie Abrahams, Martina Ruhsam 2015-2016

Online en-semble https://bram.org/en-semble/index.html, online performance 29 of March 2018, Art of the Networked Practice symposium, School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Invited by Randall Packer.

History of Distant Movements sessions till Mai 2020

The first time: 30 June 2018 as part of “Pisa Performing Art” (12 minutes, only one voice is guiding, Muriel’s, in French, translated into Italian – we are not moving yet, we are listening to a description of dance to make our interior move – is this visible on the face?).

Annie opens a space on the web, dedicated to collect our notes (reflexive or in projection) and video images of the sessions: https://distantmovements.tumblr.com

#2: Guided by Muriel, who imagines the movement and describes it (Fr, 12 min, 28/07/18)

#3: Guided by Muriel, who relies on breathing and introduces sound (Fr, 12 min, 28/07/18)

#4: Guided by Annie, who focuses on the relationship with the webcam (Fr, 12 min, 01/08/18)

#5: Guided by Daniel, who brings an awareness of the space and field of the webcam image (Ang, 12 min, 01/08/18)

#6 : Start of the alternating guidance (Fr, Ang, 20 min, 06/09/18)

#7: 3 individual guidances: Daniel uses listening (no recording) – Muriel examines light and touch and leads us towards sensation; Annie guides with her eyes open while looking at the screen, she proposes free movement and the notion of pleasure, uses memory and introduces a break by opening her eyes for a few seconds (Fr, Ang, 3 times 10 min, 30/09/18)

Self-presence and silence are posited as important factors (cf. Muriel’s text of 20/10/18). Shared guidance is adopted.

#8: Test with the mobile phones, alternating guidance (12 min., Fr, Ang, 08/11/18). In December 2019, Annie took up this idea again for the performance Mobile Movements at the Biennale de Lyon.

#9: First guest: Ienke Kastelein. Preparation, silence, slowness, body awareness, pleasure, breath, the screen as a partner. Ienke overflows with time, she continues the experience by seizing the guidance. Muriel says she is beginning to understand the virtual physically. We start to put into words the basics of our project (see the conversation following the session). (15 min. +, Fr, Ang, 26/11/18)

#10: With Elsa Decaudin, Jean-Marc Matos and Isabel Costa. (15 min., Fr, Ang, Pt, 25/03/19)

#11: With Martina Ruhsam and Johannes Birringer. (15 min., Fr, Ang, 25/03/19) Centered on the screen as an object/presence – we feel it doesn’t work.

#12: With Hélène Roussel and Déborah Nourrit. The emphasis is on each person’s body and their own sensations. The nose that guides, becomes the first anecdote linked to the concept of resonance. It should be noted that the invitation to seize the guidance is not followed by the facts. (15 min., Fr, Ang, 26/03/19)

#13: Session presented live as part of a university workshop in which Muriel took part. Guests, online Alice Lenay and among the audience Guilherme Silveira-Carvalho. Between the assembly and the participants, a hiatus was highlighted: the importance of preparation time beforehand. Does the presence of an audience play, does it harm? (15min., Fr, Ang 17/01/20)

#14: 2 sessions in a row with Christine Graz, Marina Pirot and Laetitia Madancos. The guidance is entrusted to the guests: not a convincing attempt. (2 times 15min., Fr, Ang 28/02/20)

#15: 7 Experiments open to all during the confinement period. Different protocols were experimented, raising a number of questions about the aim, the how du projet and the concept of resonance. This series leads to the establishment of a protocol for Distant Movements as a practice: its validity is reduced to sessions open to strangers. (7 times 15min, Fr, Ang 25/03/20 – 06/05/20)