Instants of Metamorphosis 02

Instants of Matemorphosis v.02

“I’m going to go back to the unknown within myself and when I’m born I’ll speak of “him” or “her”. For the time being, what sustains me is the ‘that’ which is an “it”. To create a being from oneself is something very serious. I’m creating myself. And walking in complete darkness in search of ourselves is what we do. It hurts. But it’s labor pain: something is being born that is. It is itself. It is hard like a dry stone. But the core is “it”, soft and alive, perishable, in danger. The life of elementary matter.” (LISPECTOR, p.35)

Via msn I was talking with Graziele Lautenschlaeger about the seminal ideas of a second version of Instants of Metamorphosis. The ideas I was discussing last Sunday (04/04/2010) with Jacques Chueke here in Plymouth, after our Easter lunch with our friends Fernanda and Marcelo Gimenes – ideas concerning a big organic structure that must have a sensorial appeal and onto which will be projected several video performances activated by the presence of trans-actors via sensors installed in the structure skin and connected to an Arduino board (or similar).

My first idea was to work with different stages of development of a being - the development stages of an embryo, as an exaple. I invited Chueke to work together in this project, as an invited member of the Double Collective, and he started thinking about the video performances from a different point of view, focusing on the intention of to awaken in the one who is trans-acting, the sensation of displacement, mixing spatial temporal dimension through designing the performances considering space (movement along axes, crossing planes, zoom, frames, notions of ground, ceiling and walls, different notions of space as outer and inner space, for instance ) and time (temporal row, slow motion, delay, rewind) to help in blurring the borders between concrete and virtual in experiences that transport the trans-actor beyond the material, experiencing complex space and time.
In the book ‘The Stream of Life’, that continues to be the base to the reflections, or the conception of a consciousness process that is the installation-process itself, Clarice Lispector explores recurrently the relativity in the perception and the self experience of time and space. I search and selected now some excerpts from the book ‘by chance’:
“I’m so vast. I’m coherent: my canticle is profound. Slow. But growing. It’s growing still more. If it grows enough, it turns into a full moon and silence… and a phantasmagoric lunar surface. Witness to the stopping of time. What I write you is serious. It will turn into a hard, imperishable objct. What comes is unforeseen. To beuselessly sincere, I must now say that it’s six fifteen in the morning.” (LISPECTOR, p.34)
“Now is an instant. Do you feel it? I do.” (LISPECTOR, p. 35)

Today (06/04/2010) I awake up thinking about the discussions I had yesterday with Chueke. Thinking about the imaginary beings in the Borge's book (The Book of Imaginary Beings) that brings us, as legends, narratives that explores complex experiences of time and space by the self. I selected three: Two Metaphysical Animals p.15, The Double p.62, AnimaThat Lives in the Mirrors p.18, Thermal Beings 195, Spherical Animals p.20.
Tonight, a few hours ago, I went out with Chueke to have dinner at Mutley Plaine and was talking about this idea of using the imaginary beings to support/inspire the spatial-temporal interactive narratives/performances. He suggested I send him a brief description of the tales I mentioned and he will starts drawing HQ narratives inspired by each one as a start point to the process of creating the video performances.

Right now 01:15 a.m., reading again ‘Two Metaphysical Animals’, I think that to work with this single text is enough. The Borges description is fantastic, describing consciousness processes… really amazing. I remember me and Chueke walking and talking about the origin of the word metaphysics – the title one given to the books Aristotle wrote after the ones about Physics. And remember that tomorrow morning I wake up and started organizing my computer to backup the files and found the annotation I made when I was reading the funny book ‘Aristotle in 90 minuts’:

“It is to Andronicus that we owe the word ‘metaphysics’ – the title which he gave to a group of Aristotle’s works. These originally had no title, and merely came after those on physics – thus Andronicus simply labeled them ‘after physics’, which in anciet Greek is ‘metaphysics’. The works in this section consted of Aristotle’s treatises on ontology and the ultimate nature of things.” (Paul Strathern, Aristotle in 90 minutes, p. 45)

And now (1:40 a.m.), I found an excerpt of Clarice Lispector book, looking for fragments about space and time, in a completely random process , that I think dialogues in a very interesting way with the Borges tale ‘The Metaphysical Animals’:
“The risk – I’m risking the discovery of new territory. Where human feet have never trod. First, I have to pass through the perfumed vegetation. I was given a bridal wreath, which now sits on my terrace. I shall begin to make my own perfume: I’ll buy the right kind of alcohol and the essence of what has been dissolved, and above all the fixative, which has to have a purely animal origin. Heavy musk. That’s the last austere chord of the adagio. My number os 9. It’s 7. It’s 8. All behind thought. If all that exists, Then I am. But why this uneasiness? Because I’m not living the only way that there is for a person to live and I don’t even know what it is. Uncomfortable. I don’t feel weel. I don’t know what the matter is. But something’s wrong and it makes me anxious. Nevertheless, I’m being frank and my game is clean. I begin the game. Only I don’t tell the facts of my life: I’m secretive by nature. What is it, then? I only know that I don’t want deception. I refuse. I’ve looked into myself but I don’t believe in myself because my thought is inverted.” (LISPECTOR, p.34)

Approximately one an hour ago, via msn, Graziele Lautenschlaeger said she liked the idea, and I hope she will join us in this new artistic 'playgroud'. Here, the reference she mentioned:
Perfect Human //
Inspired by Joergen Leth's 1967 short film "The Perfect Human" and Lars von Trier's "The Five Obstructions" (2003). This performance intends to create a sixth obstruction of The Perfect Human, by introducing rules in order to complete the performance as a game.
http://www.kobakant.at/index.php?menu=2&work=5

references:
BORGES, J. L. 2005. The Book of Imaginary Beings. New York: Penguim Group.
LISPECTOR, C. 1995. The Stream of Life. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Translated by: Elizabeth Lowe and Earl Fitz.