It turns out that i finally managed to pronounce Zdar the following when I was talking to my new dance buddies about the last research site I had been to. Not on site. And even less on my way from France and traveling through Switzerland and Austria. No. I see this as a clear benefit to my relationship with time and learning. The will is dependent. So is concentration.
Participating in the incubator residence in Zdar was a Pebel on my way to the Belgrade student campus where I offered a research process based on my mixed taste for phenomenology and the field, entitled The Academy of Fireflies. This agenda was set because of my intuition that the material of Georg Didi’s work-Hubermann on the Pasolini article The loss of fireflies represents a significant experience able to drill the body and spirit of dancers nowadays.
I was lucky enough to find out that I was still unconscious before it started. Man of a few words and kind of clerk without statements, I usually refer to equanimity and serve the space around before plunging into the thus stimulated notation of a performance or text.
The few layers of reality of the castle and its inhabitants to which we had brief access did not in any way express a real motivation to establish a dialogue. A choice of variable scale or individual details then became an option.
For me, as everyday is a new gift to learn from a different master, i let objects and venues creating the constellation calling for my playfullness. It began with two dusty pieces founded in the cellar meanwhile visiting it with a candle. Their characteristics from weight to shape, size to texture introduced me into a first minimalist aim of transformation. I gradually cover them with wax from white candles. From this stage a mutual familiarity became conceivable. Also, i started to carry them untill they will fit somewhere else.
One was an oblong bended tube and the other one an annulus, you can easily figure a ring for giant creature. Furthermore the male/female interpretation of their presence (including when carrying them), it turn insanely exciting to use it to shift the quality of candle light in the darkness by combining them both. It was either a free flame, either a bathyscaph dot.
The place was found after many walks and considerations. It made my stay for many reasons. First of all, every time my senses were involved, it was inspiring. On the other hand, its specificity and its age to support the life cycle of fish showed more than a symbolic impression. I finally managed to achieve what this place expected of me. I liked cleaning it. Observe how my touch and look turned into a kind of collusion.
What was the potential of it? Feeded by the diverse introductory to the practice of other attenders, i felt like drawing a raw back to basics. How to re-initiate a glance at elements, to light above all, the many different kind of all, not just the main, solar one. I offered the crew to woke up and place a phosphorescent pebel next to the sunnyest wall of the castle before sunrise.
The following day - despite they all desappear - i included them on a woodstick, a straight one, as tall as i am. The elements for the trip were ready!
The invitation for the mysterious performance was done. it was just a matter of weather and timing to match. It finally happens.
Here is the text my accomplice played meanwhile.
[Alchemical recipe to reach the Arch of Fireflies
When and only when your hands hold the water stream. Press them enough like you press the earth when you stand on the battlefield. where each moment conquest itself upon the fear to be the last.
Then florish the stars from below.
As well as on the stick of the shepard from the Arch.
Softly join him and try to stick your few reflects of florishing stars on his dark silhouette.
Then nestling the safe frame of the Arch, you can animate the magic stick and give a try to match as many constellations as possible.
Start with one if it s your first time experiencing this ritual.
Further on you can leave or be gathered by other attenders following the same steps.
Only the shepard of the Arch appreciate when it s enough.]
In addition, it was a blessing to try to raise myself and the surrounding poetic souls to this level of perception. With minimal resources and a clear commitment.
It gave me a bench of feedbacks about working with the invisible. As fireflies were described as fleeting tumult by my own reader experience of Pasolini piece of theory, I would say I feel it as amniotic as any stolen moment of magic. Including the mesmerizing\\\'s one!
All this was demanding and cost me a terrible nightmare every night I slept there. Before leaving on the last day, I went to check the yard of the old watermill. And a synthetic idea arose. As if to regulate the history of the domain. Anchor it to the future. To balance the industrial slope of the spiritual side of the city. To try to honor the new generation that will invent the post-digital era humanly habitable!
Let me write it like it came to my mind. Instead of mentionning a possible beer brewery which is so fashion at the moment. In order to remind in the center of the needs of the community like when it was drill to fish and survive in the middle of the forrest. With implementation of chinese funds and knowledge. Why not come up with a process to collect whiz and promote the phosphore out of it? This physical element will soon diseapper an we cannot create an artificial one. The storytelling of it requirement for agriculture and preservation of our living on Earth will soon or later depend on it! That would be like a crown in the very middle of the Zdar castle. The diversity of it users, from firemen to visitors, from priests to schoolmates and relatives might spread very naturally this new horizon of common experience quite easily.
I bet! What about you?
Author: Adrien Gaumé
Celoroční činnost SE.S.TA je podporována Ministerstvem kultury ČR a celoročním grantem hl. m. Prahy ve výši 400 000 kč.