Unbecoming docile bodies
It was on the fifth of February 2022 that, somewhere in the attic of an old storage building, a legally ambiguous set of concerts was held. One of the bands playing was Docile Bodies, containing fellow 20s.depression member and dear friend Tadzio, which is where I’d gotten air of the whereabouts of the gathering. The bands playing were all making music that consisted out of dark and grimy noise, transforming the space into one where the intentional movement was slowly replaced by that of the instinctual movement. After about four hours the entire space had transformed into one of deconstruction. Everybody had slowly stopped moving in ways that were gendered; power relations had evacuated the bodies. The dancefloor had essentially transformed into a space where people had stopped existing outside of movement, all identity had been foregone. It was just one big moving mass.
The ideas that some of us had gotten that night resulted in our video project “movement” which explored the deconstruction of the digital self through movement. It was also in part responsible the creation of 20s.depression, and it later featured in some of the writings produced during traveling. One of which is featured on the right. The dancer mentioned is also the dancer that ended up working with us on our video project Movement.
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Movement and spaces
Prague, fairytale city, though perhaps best suited for those willing to live in one. Physicality is this weeks question, though it has lead to covering physical spaces and the physical world. A postpunk art-collective was created, 20s depression. In an attempt to capture the frustration with the constructed world as our captor, determining our paths. One result: 20s depression is a physical space. Worries about future lives that are yet to be led are seldom productive, although the fata morgana’s they produce, they themselves call them solutions, give ease at night and when given time to think. So 20s depression is a physical space. It is a physical space because that is exactly what is required to solidify the mental, intangible and fleeting into the shared realm. We need spaces that lend themselves to our desire to express, to create and to communicate. The architecture of these spaces creates the rulebook for our lives, in order to, at least somewhat, escape a predeterministic matrix, one must create their own space. Hence, 20s depression being a space. Then there is movement. The importance of movement was communicated to me by a dancer friend who explained to me she lived through her body, not her mind. Physicality. Now the mind body problem is a false distinction, a fake dichotomy, but I’ve always been instinctively moving from my ‘mind’. Not taking into account the physical dimension which my body has and which grants me my existence. -It must be said that this is not entirely the case, a couple years ago I read Anton Chekov’s on the technique of acting which is a quaint little book consisting of a theoretical framework on teaching and learning action. It is filled with these exercises which also heavily partake to the body. From this came the idea of daily movement as a very strict and boring set of rules which could easily be broken. Using fragility or smoothness in your movement can be very interesting.- So I’ll be further thinking about and exploring physical movement and its relation to the rest of being in these coming weeks.