June 12th 2018, 2pm-5pm
Middle day of residency.
A short sleepy plane body day. Came in to show up, to take note of what will be tomorrow and take inventory of process.
I took off where I left last week – working through the sollu kattu of the backwards steps. Its hard to find the most accurate boys because the emphasis of the beat is unusual. I attempted this, but I need my head not be in the clouds to really focus on every little step.
Most steps have morphed into a jump with this reversal. I frequent Thai Hut Thai He.
So far I have:
- Trialled the reverse teermanum without video, then with video
- Experimented with video and dance – Ushi
- Played around with the computer, illustrating it as the Guru of Reverse
- Conversational/casual/funny with the video camera
- Some new ideas fro video body relationships
- Some mime/spatial trials
- Made a video diary every day
- Started to learn the dance in reverse
- Tried different ways of reciting the bol
- Realised that the sollu kattu is important for memory – writing it out
- Meditated and did pilates every day within residency
- Wrote in the blog every day
- Visualised the end product of the project clearly
- Realised that this is going to take a lot longer than I thought
Im looking forward to meeting with Priya Srinivasan to make some new investigative spaces.
Coming up:
Write out the full reverse sollu kattu for the dance. Then record my voice saying it to the dance. Overlay the new bols. Listen, watch and learn the new beats over and over again. Slow down the video with the bols to go back to early stages of learning – this dance moves very fast, and the speed needs to accelerate slowly over the course of learning.
….
On another note.
As I was drifting off to sleep in the warm breeze of Vietnam, I realised that my investigation and creation of the simultaneous occurrences of binaries (the suspension of knowing the source of an image, its ambiguity) has been a ecological investigation (through the thinking of Timothy Morton) since way back to polaroid making days. The imagery I make is already speaking to these ideas, I just now have the words to articulate them further.
DEVIKA 