Collapsing time for fish ... and others

Today's post is a sketch for what I'm thinking about presenting PM 7: Monday evening at Gasser Grunert Gallery http://gassergrunert.net/test/. The event, "Trigger Points after the storm," is "contained" by another artist, Alyce Santoro http://www.alycesantoro.com/, who has an installation in the gallery and invited me to present as part of a series of talks and events intended to generate productive discussion. The invitation happened to have come in the midst of a series of other events claiming my attention.

When I was young and first lived full-time in NYC, it was the sixties. I went to the Art Students League and NYU during the day, Cooper Union night school in the evening, topped off the night at the jazz spot, Slug's or dancing at the Electric Circus, went to shows, worked with Joseph Pilates, performed with the Bread and Puppet Theatre, participated in demonstrations, joined E.A.T. and felt like being in that whirl at that time opened me to the whole universe, was good for my work and would lead me to "answers" to the burning questions of that time. And I suppose somewhat it was and did but it was also a very hectic way to live and I think there were invisible casualties.

Since 2007, James White and I have spoken about a different kind of whirl, what I call a collapse of time, the effects on the world of a confluence of climate change, species loss, over-human populations and so on. Biogeographical events are unfolding at a dizzying speed with both invisible and visible casualties. It's easy for most people, however, to ignore those collapses and casualties and simply stay focused on the known. Of course, for many, it is not possible to take that option. It is not possible for coastal communities, farmers in drought stricken or fire-prone areas, island nations, urban areas, such as Delhi, India, whose aquifer is dwindling... or fish.  Fish are particularly helpless to adapt to these rapidly changing conditions. They can't travel to safety where the water stops, when it stops. They are among the invisible and visible casualties of collapse. And that is why they are the focus of Fish Story.

My life still seems replete with multi-tasking on too many days, and that seems to be increasing, to my discomfort. Certainly, this week that is true. It doesn't seem as much fun as it was in the sixties. The stakes seem higher. I have less stamina to weather the shifts. I am getting a dose of time collapse. I wonder even for those of us privileged to live in prosperous areas, such as NYC, whether one unknown is how to cope with a world where many things are happening at the same time, all of which seem to be demanding our attention with equal urgency, a world where our time is collapsing with few obvious answers to the problems we glimpse in passing? Monday evening in the gallery, I intend to try to set up a situation which simulates some aspects of that time collapse simultaneity in rapid succession and see what insights might emerge from the discussion afterwards.


On FB last night I wrote:

Preparing for my Trigger Point event Monday, I've been thinking about how to define the "collapse of time," of the anthropocene, the phenomena of too many changes happening faster than any species can assimilate. I feel like I've been experiencing it all day. Today I did singing practice, wrote fundraising cover letters for Fish Story in Memphis, worked on GIS, my dissertation, an article, co-ordinated art pick up, organized my bills, did some filing, vacuumed, responded to a family issue, contacted or switched appointments with about 20 people and trimmed my eyebrows.

Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Joseph Pilates and negotiating the space of trigger point theory as aesthetic activism

"Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism" is the title of my dissertation with the Zurich Node (Z-Node) of the Planetary Collegium at the University of Plymouth, UK. In a series of five chapters, I describe a holistic approach to understanding the space of environmental degradation and resilient restoration with an original theory I've written briefly about elsewhere. My plan is to develop this into a book as soon as I can put the PhD behind me. Meanwhile, from time to time, scraps of my past remind me where my ideas came from, as Steve Paxton's recent appearance at MOMA:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/arts/dance/steve-paxtons-satisfyin-lover-and-state-at-moma.html?nl=nyregion&emc=edit_ur_20121019

I first met Steve Paxton in person, in 1970 in a workshop he did at Ace Galley in LA with Alex Hay. Steve & I were close that summer and I loved his work, esp when I saw it for the first time in 1966 in the Armory "9 Evenings," as part of EAT. Steve Paxton brought a deliberate appreciation of athleticism into the dance world.because he had once taught gym classes in high school. He was part of developing contact improv movement, no doubt inspired by football and basketball, which Simone Forti then sought to develop even further, as what she once described during rehearsal at UCSD I was part of, as a virtuosity of that technique. In Simone's approach, she was recapitulating the historical trajectory of how ballet developed from fencing in the seventeenth century. These two approaches were mirrored in what Joseph Pilates called, "controlology," based on watching animals and doing yoga.

The New Dance movement at Judson Church in the sixties, fostered by the late Rev. William Moody was not just a series of performances, it was an expression of a zeitgeist of those times as much as Fluxus and Happenings. As individuals, Judson was a group I began to know personally just before leaving NYC for California in 1968 and then early in my career in So Calif: including Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, Steve Paxton, Alex Hay, Simone Forti, briefly Rauschenberg, etc.

"Joe," as he was known to his many students, was not at all interested in what has popularly evolved as a set of calisthenics. He was interested in creating a system of movement, highly sensitized to the environment of movement, which therapeutically reshaped the body's learned distortions, as from conventional sports training and ballet.

Photography by Payson Stevens, 1967 shortly after the death of Joseph Pilates, illustrating how the body naturally moves in the environment, with spatial awareness, when all aspects are equally developed by his training.

What I've spoken about briefly to colleagues and occasional interviewers at various times, is how some of my performance ideas for how to understand the space of a potential restoration site that has been degraded, are grounded in movement studies. I trained in ballet and did dressage from childhood before beginning work with Joe.

Observing animals and doing dressage opened me to Joe's ideas during the years of work with him when he was alive. It also gave me a unique perspective on Jill Johnston's brilliant writing for the Village Voice, which I devoured every week for her expression of the relationship between dance and experience of the city as a Happening in those years. I was lucky to experience all that simultaneously.  New Dance was very connected to  Joseph Pilates' thru the sixties, as part of the zeitgeist in the air, even tho few of the New Dancers even knew of his work. What I gleaned from those years was later realized for me in my performance group, the American Ritual Theatre (1969-1971) and those ideas became integrated into my practice.

It was around that time that I also also met & became close to Allan Kaprow and many of the other Fluxus folks, as, Peter Van Riper and Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, etc. I would TA for Allan Kaprow @ Cal Arts in the early seventies and went thru many years of intense discussion with him as I hashed out where the ideas of movement and Fluxus artists began and ended in my thinking. What I absorbed from these great innovators, took seed, has stuck with me and grown over all these years, was  a relaxed but highly sensitized relationship to space in the broadest possible sense. I think this is the same quality of awareness we might bring to environmental resilience in the anthropocene.

To my regret, I didn't hear about Steve presenting his work @MOMA until yesterday, because I fly out tonight to present at the Restore Americas Estuaries National conference:

https://www.estuaries.org/conference/

I will also miss Steve's video this evening but highly recommend it to any of my readers.

So if anyone else out there can get to MOMA tonight, enjoy for me too!

Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Joseph Pilates and trigger point theory

Me in a tree, on the right in a skirt: the early California years.
Photography by Fred Lonidier at Pauline Oliveros' wedding.

"Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism" is the title of my dissertation with the Zurich Node (Z-Node) of the Planetary Collegium at the University of Plymouth, UK. In a series of five chapters, I describe a holistic approach to understanding the space of environmental degradation and resilient restoration with an original theory I've written briefly about elsewhere. Understanding how to embody an experience of space is an integral to that theory as systems theory or Geographic Information Systems science (GISc). I plan is to develop that thesis into a book as soon as I can put the PhD behind me. Meanwhile, from time to time, scraps of my past remind me where my ideas came from, as Steve Paxton's recent appearance at MOMA:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/arts/dance/steve-paxtons-satisfyin-lover-and-state-at-moma.html?nl=nyregion&emc=edit_ur_20121019

I first met Steve Paxton in person, in 1970 in a workshop he did at Ace Galley in LA with Alex Hay. Steve & I were close that summer and I loved his work, esp when I saw it for the first time in 1966 in the Armory "9 Evenings," as part of EAT. Steve Paxton brought a deliberate appreciation of athleticism into the dance world.because he had once taught gym classes in high school. He was part of developing contact improv movement, no doubt inspired by football and basketball, which Simone Forti then sought to develop even further, as what she once described during rehearsal at UCSD I was part of, as a virtuosity of that technique. In Simone's approach, she was recapitulating the historical trajectory of how ballet developed from fencing in the seventeenth century. These two approaches were mirrored in what Joseph Pilates called, "controlology," based on watching animals and doing yoga. 

The New Dance movement at Judson Church in the sixties, fostered by the late Rev. William Moody was not just a series of performances, it was an expression of a zeitgeist of those times as much as Fluxus and Happenings. As individuals, Judson was a group I began to know personally just before leaving NYC for California in 1968 and then early in my career in So Calif: including Yvonne Rainer, Carolee Schneemann, Steve Paxton, Alex Hay, Simone Forti, briefly Rauschenberg, etc. 

"Joe," as he was known to his many students, was not at all interested in what has popularly evolved as a set of calisthenics. He was interested in creating a system of movement, highly sensitized to the environment of movement, which therapeutically reshaped the body's learned distortions, as from conventional sports training and ballet.

What I've spoken about briefly to colleagues and occasional interviewers at various times, is how some of my performance ideas for how to understand the space of a site that has been degraded, are grounded in dance. I trained in ballet and did dressage from childhood. 

My own experiences observing animals and doing dressage opened me to Joe's ideas during my six years of work with him when he was alive. It also gave me a unique perspective on Jill Johnston's brilliant writing for the Village Voice, which I devoured every week for her expression of the relationship between dance and experience of the city as a Happening in those years. I was lucky to experience all that simultaneously.  New Dance was very connected to  Joseph Pilates' thru the sixties, and what I gleaned was later realized for me in my performance group, the American Ritual Theatre (1969-1971). Those ideas are still integrated into my practice.

It was around that time that I also also met & became close to Allan Kaprow and many of the other Fluxus folks, as, Peter Van Riper and Alison Knowles, Dick Higgins, etc. I would TA for Allan Kaprow @ Cal Arts in the early seventies and went thru many years of arguments as I hashed out where their ideas began and ended in my thinking. But what I absorbed, has stuck with me and grown over all these years, has been a relaxed but highly sensitized relationship to space in the broadest possible sense. 

To my regret, I didn't hear about Steve presenting his work @MOMA until yesterday and because I fly out tonight to present at the Restore Americas Estuaries National conference:

https://www.estuaries.org/conference/

I will also miss Steve's video this evening but highly recommend it to any of my readers. 

So if anyone else out there can get to MOMA tonight, enjoy for me too!