... how many hours in a day

It is likely that wherever your travels take you, you will hear artists––especially those based in an European or a North American country––speak about the kind of exhaustion brought about the amount of administrative feats one is expected to accomplish on a daily basis. Many of the  conversations concerning documentation refer to documentation undertaken for administrative, not creative purpose.

I ask myself, if I imagine this constraint as systemic to the field of dancing and choreographing, what part of it is conditioned by the fact that the form itself is ephemeral––which is a paradox, surely, that of “a formless form”––and what part of it is conditioned not by the cultural prejudice towards the notion of ephemerality as such? Were the cultural west not as prejudiced towards the notion of ephemerality––as I’m sure you’ll agree it is––would we talk about the memory of dancing as of a document documenting dancing as readily as we talk about the video and text today? And would we, most importantly, relate to ephemeral activities, such is daydreaming, with more rigor and awe than we do today? Would we then give ephemeral practice more time in a day? Could we then give ephemeral practices more time than we do to such activities as documenting for administrative purposes?

All this comes from a note I took whilst being distracted at a staff meeting, in which I asked myself about the creative opportunities: how frequently do I get the opportunity to dream about my work? I noticed; I considered this opportunity as one I ought to be given, instead of creating for myself. And so I turned the question around and asked myself instead: how can I create the opportunity for dreaming? Most importantly, what holds me back from creating such opportunities right now?

This is when I noticed the fact that most of what I write, most of the traces I currently make are not, in fact, tracing dreams. Most traces I make are made in response to administrative requirements, often concerned with the work that has been done. I could easily say that this is so because I frequently run out of time for daydreaming before I manage to complete my daily administration. This is unfortunate, but it is not the only thing standing in the way of me taking my dreaming seriously. What else is in the way is that same cultural prejudice towards the ephemeral, internalised: I look down upon ephemeral activities.

In conclusion, I bring not a solution––for I have none––but a question, a question concerning the internalised prejudice. What can change in an artist’s process, if one is to recognise the internalised prejudice, the influence of the culture on how one thinks about their profession, about their form of preference? What choices can be made when one recognises that one’s beliefs are not necessarily one’s own, that at least some of one’s beliefs have been passed down generation after generation?

Perhaps the best question of all: What do you still believe in, once you’ve eliminated the beliefs that are not yours but of the culture that raised you? What dreams persist? And how do those manifest in your daily life? What impressions do those make? How do you remember them, value them, celebrate them, if not in conventional ways? How do they sneak their ways into your artistic practice?

Such stories I would like hear more artists tell, as I travel the world.

With love and devotion,
pavleheidler for Team IDOCDE
October 2018