Exulting Vulnerability in Cooperation

Exulting Vulnerability in Cooperation

Amy Kรถnigbauer

April 2015

Lead-Follow-Switch! By Syniva Whitney

Exulting Vulnerability in Cooperation Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement. Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.

- Brené Brown, Daring Greatly 1

The exultation of vulnerability comes with the understanding that being vulnerable is beneficial to you. That it is something to embrace and invite into both yourself and your relationships. In a cooperative creative partnership, this could look like engaging together with an unknown outcome. What makes you vulnerable is subjective, and your willingness to engage in creating work with another person requires that each of you give up the possibility of having control over the final outcome. You cannot say it’s done until the person you are working with agrees. You cannot begin until they have decided to show up and engage with you.

All of this is about not allowing yourself to be in control.

Your ability to work then puts you in a vulnerable state. You cannot write or make your work alone. You cannot begin, end, start, or complete this work without it being effected by a cooperative partner or an audience. You have to let go. You naturally want to control many of the variables that are present in this work. Your previous work was careful. There were no creases in the paper, you told the viewer how and when your work was done. You said, “you can see it now.” Part of exulting vulnerability for you, is allowing other people to complete the work. Allowing the form of the final piece to transform frees up some of the restrictions and structures that have been previously set in place. Simultaneously, you hope to honor theories and structures by adapting them to the form that best suits the work.

Still, you cannot be both the test and the answers. You cannot employ relationships from a dual vantage point. There is too much yolked to your belief in yourself. What about the part where you are not even aware that you are changing? This is the product of the relationship.

Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. New York, NY: Gotham, 2012. Print.

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[. . . ] one can always question the supposed unity or identity of the world, not only between animal and human, but already from one living being to another. No one will ever be able to demonstrate, what is called demonstrate in all rigor, that two human beings, you and I for example, inhabit the same world, that the world is one and the same thing for both of us.

- Jacques Derrida, The Text and the Living 2

The relationship cannot know itself fully, only its outcomes perceived by the societal and personal audiences of the community and yourself. You cannot know that your experience is the same as another’s experience. You only know what you are giving to the exchange. You perceive what they are giving back. Sometimes you feel it. You are engaging people in ways that you have not before. You see yourself twice in these relationships, as participant and as systems thinker. Acting as the fulcrum in this exchange, balance is constantly shifting. You enjoy that aspect of the work. You are attempting to dismantle barriers in cooperative relationships using vulnerability, improvisation and participation.

Is comfort the enemy of change? Is ease the thing you paint black and call “progress”?

You see yourself as artist and teacher and these roles support each other, but do they become a closed loop?

You are looking to see what this work is truly about. You say it is about relationships, you see it is about you. You see it is moving without your hand and with your hand. You see that the fluency of exchange is partially controlled by how vulnerable you are willing to be.

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Oxford Literary Review. Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 1-3, ISSN 0305-1498, Available Online July 2013.

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Artistic collaboration is a special and obvious case of the manipulation of the figure of the artist, for at the very least collaboration involves deliberately chosen alteration of artistic identity from individual to composite subjectivity. One expects new understandings of artistic authorship to appear in artistic collaborations, understandings that may or may not be consistent with the artists’ solo projections before they take up collaborative projects.

— Charles Green, The Third Hand3

In sharing ideas, materials or concepts, your collaborative work has focused on the process and production. While the definitions of collaborative and cooperative are similar, you prefer to use the word cooperative when referring to this project. As defined the difference between these two words is subtle but that subtlety is important.

Cooperation has a focus on the performance of acting jointly, which honors the experience over the product.

The New Oxford America Dictionary supplies these definitions: collaborate |kəˈlabəˌrāt| verb: work jointly on an activity, especially to produce or create something cooperate |kōˈäpəˌrāt| verb: act jointly; work toward the same end

Richard Sennett uses a definition with a slight twist in his book Together. “Cooperation can be defined, drily, as an exchange in which the participants benefit from the encounter.”4 You chose to work with other people because the rewards tend to outweigh the challenges. Working cooperatively allowed you to set up the systems that allow you to explore what being vulnerable does to a relationship, to experiment with improvisation and to understand how to balance informality and structure. (See Appendix A.) It’s what led you to the understanding that lack of tension will result in more sustainable systems of exchange.

Sennett goes deeper into his description:

Cooperative exchanges take many forms… Cooperation can be informal as well as formal; people who hang out at a street corner or drink together in a bar exchange gossip and keep talk flowing without self-consciously thinking, ‘I am cooperating.’ The act of doing so is wrapped in the experience of mutual pleasure. 5

In the experience of acting jointly together on a project, it is clear when it’s working and when it is not. You wanted to understand more about what is actually happening there,

Green, Charles. The Third Hand: Collaboration in Art from Conceptualism to Postmodernism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2001.

Print.

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Sennett, Richard. Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2012. Print.

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Ibid.

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in that moment of ‘working’ or ‘not working’. There are intuitive signs we experience all the time without thinking, “I understand the fluidity of our exchange.”

‘Working’ is declared by the parties involved. It can take many forms and there are many modes of exchange. To get deeper into this theory of exchange, you started to investigate this interactions with physics in mind. What is happening in the energetic exchange between two people?

Now you consider harmonic motion. You began studying the relationships that you have with your cooperative partners consciously addresses energy exchange. This relationship feels like it’s working, this one does not. What is the difference energetically? What kinds of structures support sustainable exchange? And then, how can vulnerability be related to all of this?

On March 14th, 2015 you spoke with your close friend, cj. You began the discussion thinking about Brené Brown’s research regarding the power of vulnerability. cj:

Vulnerability really feels like the key to everything. It feels like the undercurrent of how we access the fullness of our lives. And when you talk about it, it sounds easy, but it’s not. It has to be a practice; it has to be intentional.

you:

umhumm, it’s amazing.

cj:

Amazing. So how did the physics side come in? I know you always love to play with science and art.

you:

So, thinking about exchange between people, my project in a nutshell and my work in general is about relationships. I am thinking about the exchange, in these cooperative, one-on-one relationships. And then I started actually feeling this happen. Where the exchange, with some people, stopped being a back and forth, I give you information, you give me information, this very rigid back and forth movement. So, bow the arrows out, and let the exchange become a cycle, or run circularly, and then I started thinking about centripetal force and researching it. Then I started thinking about the sustainability of an energetic exchange and that moving more fluidly and being able to be sustained over time by not having these stopping points. But rather being able to cycle.

cj:

umhumm.

you:

Everything is becoming circles. This Restorative Practice training, which is all about circles and vulnerability and placing yourself in a circle with other people without any barriers in between you. A lot of things kept tying together.

Looking up harmonics, and how sound moves, and then thinking about the movement of energy, I guess, in that aspect. But then I look at that diagram that I sent you [and I know it’s important] but I have no idea what this means.

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cj:

This is the beautiful thing about the physics principle of simple harmonic motion. It’s rare that you see it by itself, right, because so often you have outside forces. When I say outside forces I mean, literal physics forces that apply to a body. [here cj describes forces on the body when you are at rest...]

Simple harmonic motion is a study without outside forces. If you think of a spring, you learn about that motion without worrying about the tensile strength, etc. You take all outside forces out.

you:

umhumm.

cj:

Which I think is beautiful, even outside of that picture you gave me, from a principle theoretical standpoint, it’s a beautiful study related to what you’re doing.

Because to me, if you think about vulnerability, to reach a truly vulnerable state, it means you have to remove all this other crap. You have to remove preconceived ideas about what this relationship should be, preconceived expectations that you have for yourself and that moment or this other person.You have to remove all the outside forces on your mind, on your heart, on the other person that you’re interacting with, before you can reach vulnerability, right?

you:

Right.

cj:

And so, even though simple harmonic motion is mostly theoretical. It’s not always, there are moments when simple harmonic motion exists. From a principle standpoint which how we usually use it in physics it still closely resembles this vulnerability exchange.

This picture, that you sent, which I love because it seems almost playful, when I look at it from your perspective, now. Not a physics perspective, it’s like, this point, right here!

you:

laugh

cj:

What this means is that all other forces are being canceled out. So, it’s not that there isn’t outside forces. It’s that they’ve all canceled out to the point that simple harmonic motion happens.

you:

ok. ^ sent to cj on March 12th, 2015

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cj:

Which is beautiful because simple harmonic motion really is a beautiful thing.

Because you can think of it as a circle, you can think about it, so let me back up for a second. So a circle on one plot is a sine or a cosine wave on another plot, you know that, right.

you:

yes.

cj:

Ok, so in 3-D, I like to think about the sine wave because that gives you another dimension which could be time. Which adds that, sort of, restorative force that you’re talking about. Harmonic motion takes the physics principle that there is a finite set of energy. And there’s two kinds. There’s potential energy, so that something is gonna happen but it’s not happening yet, and then there’s kinetic energy, which is the action of something happening. And that big bowl of energy is divided between these two and you never exceed that bowl. [cj, finds something to swing and uses a cat toy to demonstrate the movement of a pendulum, and describes when energy is 100% potential vs. when it’s 100% kinetic] If there is no outside force acting on that energy, then that energy will continue to flux back and forth. [...] If you don’t have some sort of outside resistance then it just keeps pulling itself into this cycle.

And over time, it certainly could be said, that process just reinforces itself, that centrifuge idea that you were talking about.

you:

umhumm

cj:

There you can make the leap between the physical and the emotional… if you don’t apply tension to this system and you just let the system work itself out, that this energy exchange this vulnerability exchange will just reinforce the exchange. And that it will take something else to stop it… and that time, that other dimension, is actually the reinforcer of the principle.

you:

That’s great. What is actually pulling you in and back and forth together is the fluid, lack of tension. What we pay attention to normally, are all the things that cause tension between us. Mindfulness might get us to the point of recognizing the fluidity rather than the tension.6

6 Giovingo, Cj. "Connecting Physics and Aesthetis." Online interview. 14 Mar. 2015.

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Pendulum

2014

The Pendulum score was drawn by Amy Kรถnigbauer on October 27, 2014 during a sound conversation rehearsal with Steven Lichti.

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Moments of Cooperation You can approach any exchange between people as a direct transference of ideas, emotions or feelings. Back and forth.

When the intention of that transfer becomes cyclical, the force of the energy moving between you becomes more sustainable. When this force is an energetic exchange between two people, the cooperative exchange can cycle through many forms and emerge more unified over time. Power dynamics dissolve if both parties honor that they have melted into the centrifuge. Rather than separating from the force of this movement, the energies become harmonious.

back & forth

sustainable (cycle)

disengaged

modes of exchange

In the past year, you’ve been working with three different cooperative partners.

Steven: 38 years old and works by day making bread. Other times of day, he makes noise, sometimes with instruments and sometimes with paint. He's more likely to tell you that he is an anarchist than an artist but in your mind he is both. He actively decomposes and composes. He is bipolar. You’re working with him for the first time, making sound collage and conversation, you’ve been friends for five years, but prior to now, never very close. Your energy exchange with him is sustainable (cycle).

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Knayte: A 29 year old that will tell you that he just bought a record store, that he’s in a punk band and that his friends are very important. He will tell anyone that you are the love of his life but he will rarely tell anyone that he is a poet. You met him six years ago and in 2011 found him as a creative partner, in the studio, but also deep in your heart. In July of that year you started a private blog where we developed a written and visual correspondence. Since then, your creative output together has taken a backseat to your love life, but poetry has remained an important source of connection between the two of you. Your exchange with him in this creative project is disengaged.

Maddie: A 16 year old high school student that was in your class last year. She approached you, asking if you could be her mentor for a project that focused on light and installation. Instead of being a mentor, you suggested that you work together; she was in. Maddie has an identical twin sister and her father, Jonathan, is on the School Board. She presented the most informative and creative research project about Lee Friedlander that you've ever seen in your Intro to Photography class. She knows much more about stage lighting than you ever will. Your work with her this year has been focused on making installations that mix your work with hers. Your energy exchange is back & forth.

Similarities of these three cooperative relationships: time (in history), and you.

Differences are multifaceted and include: prior engagement, mode of production, frequency of meetings, materials used, time (spent together), and space occupied.

You begin to notice energetic exchange in all relationships. You start to really feel how energy moves between you and another person based on the cooperation ‘working’ or ‘not working’. You start to observe this exchange between people eating together in restaurants, at a performance by Tribulation (a Swedish metal band whose use of sustainable (cycle) exchange was profound), between you and your co-workers, your students, at dance parties, etcetera. (see Appendix B.) After eight months working on these three projects and making these observations, each partnership emerged as an example of a different mode of exchange. Back & forth, sustainable (cycle), and disengaged.

The back & forth exchange is most commonly observed and experienced. It is most common in daily interaction between people. Back & forth exchange can be very pleasant and exist as examples of successful cooperation. When you bow the arrows out until the exchange becomes a circle, the energy moves more fluidly. This sustainable (cycle) momentum is what you strive for in some relationships. It is not easy to come by, but like a genuine friendship, you are able to achieve this type of exchange.

You step back from the project and look at these exchanges objectively. Operating in the relationship, it feels like failure, that each of these exchanges did not become a sustainable (cycle). Looking objectively allows you to see each one for what it is, without judgement of what it could be. These modes of exchange fluctuate over time.

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Considering the effects of friction on the system, you look to understand what happens when cooperation loses energy.

You consider that friction does not always have to produce tension. In a cooperative relationship that has velocity, there is friction. Allowing for creative friction is to have vulnerability in the cooperative process. You take risks and make suggestions. You learn how to disagree without shutting down the exchange. How you choose to process friction will decrease the effects of damping. This is one way to make your exchange more sustainable over time. (see Appendix C.) damping |ˈdampiNG| noun: a decrease in the amplitude of an oscillation as a result of energy being drained from the system to overcome frictional or other resistive forces

Resistance in a cooperative exchange stems from fear, poor communication and lack of understanding. If fear prevents you from being vulnerable then you loose a shot at being connected in that exchange. What if you make a wrong move? What if they don’t like it? What if it’s too difficult? While you can’t eliminate resistance or tension in any relationship, you can commit to processing it in a way that keeps you open. You commit to being vulnerable in each exchange, knowing that taking risks together garners connectivity. This doesn’t always work. Brené Brown discusses disengagement in chapter two of Daring Greatly:

If I had to choose the form of betrayal that emerged most frequently from my research and that was most dangerous in terms of corroding the trust connection, I would say disengagement. When people we love or with whom we have a deep connection stop caring, stop paying attention, stop investing, and stop fighting for the relationship, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in. Disengagement triggers shame and our greatest fears –– the fear of being abandoned, unworthy and unloveable.7

What kind of restoring force needs to exist in order for friction to not overwhelm the system? With too much tension or with disengagement, the exchange collapses.

You realize the benefits of letting the disengaged exchange collapse. (see Appendix E).

Aware that exchange is a constant, you notice that you are looking at these modes of exchange with a macroscopic lens. They are inherent in all human interactions. But looking at it this way, has it made you a better cooperative partner? You now are more aware of where you should pour your energy; continuing to enter into a disengaged cooperation and trying to make it work is exhausting. You make sure you’re engaging in exchanges where the energy is reciprocated, whenever possible. Understanding your place in the cooperative system has granted access to more developed modes of working together.

7 Brown, Brené. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. New

York, NY: Gotham, 2012. Print.

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The production of the work in this project has been a rehearsal for the performance of a relationship. Within each performance, it is crucial to consider what you know, or perceive to know, about the person you’re working with. What has happened prior to this new engagement informs what can happen.

A lover has expectations, history and varying levels of vulnerability outside of the creative cooperative exchange to consider. The power dynamics inherent to a studentteacher relationship takes conscious dismantling. Friends with some mutual interests have less to unfold before the exchange can begin to develop in a new way. Your greatest failure in the project is not recognizing this earlier. You didn’t do the work needed to dismantle and rebuild all of these relationships so that they could all function more fluidly, perhaps as sustainable (cycle) exchanges.

Throughout this project, you struggled to define your role. A cooperative partner? A conductor, as well as a passenger, on a train? The seed and the fruit? You were uncomfortable being the one to have the vision because you were also a participant. In speaking with cj about harmonic motion, you recalled a list of three things that Steven suggested you think about: thermo dynamics, systems thinking and entropy. You mention this list to cj and your conversation continued for another twenty-five minutes. cj:

I am a systems engineer.

you: Right! cj:

My actual job title is systems engineer, that is what I want to do for a living is to be a systems engineer, specifically.

you: umhumm. cj:

I think about all the people in my life, who are really close to me and every single one of them, yourself included, is a systems engineer, in some way. You don’t have to build a rocket ship. [cj’s current project is working on the flight system, the rover that will go to Mars in 2020…]

When I took my first systems engineering class I not only was, like, ‘oh my god this is what I want to do for a living, it was also, oh my god, this is who I am.’

you: umhumm. cj:

Because systems thinking is about... it’s not just big picture. But it is intimately understanding all the components that fit within something, and the roles that they play and the contributions that they have. And so there is that linear way of thinking, of understanding how things fit and work. And you can apply that to anything, you can apply that to art, you can apply that to politics, you can apply that to anything.

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The really interesting part about being a system engineer, what really makes you a great systems engineer is the ability to manipulate, negotiate, lead… that dialogue. To be a good systems engineer you have to be good with the relationships. Sometimes you are the bridge of understanding between people and other things, sub systems. You are that glue in many ways. [...] I really mean that you can apply this to a n y t h i n g. […] It’s a way you enter the world.

you: Right, yeah. To understand how the parts affect each other, right. And so that is

the relationship between things or people or events… cj:

Well, this kind of gets to that second paragraph of your statement, the questioning. What am I in this art process? When you’re not talking about the primary relationship that the art is studying, when you’re talking about yourself as artist, as presenter of this work, that’s systems thinking. Because you are navigating the audience, the work you want to display, you’re navigating the artifacts themselves and letting these artifacts speak to you and speak to the relationship and speak to the audience.

And you are the one that had the bigger vision, you are the one that is enabling it to happen. That is where the systems role really comes into play.

you:

umhumm

cj:

And interesting, you can lay vulnerability on top of that, right? How does vulnerability in that role change the work? How does that change your role, what you allow in, what control you feel like you need to have? That’s another layer.

you:

Right. Because a lot of this work is about relinquishing control, actually. Most of the time in an artist’s work, they say, "I’m making this, I’m in control of this object. I say when it begins, I say when it’s done, I say when you can see it and when you can’t." […] I’m trying to simultaneously relinquish control and be the one that knows everything.

cj:

Right, well there has to be a vision, right? It’s too easy to step back and say, I can’t have any control, because vulnerability is not no control. You have to be a director in some ways. And so, it’s finding where letting each of the pieces do their thing, meets your still maintaining a vision and a leadership and a responsibility. There is some trust in that process. If you are not the system level, if you are the audience, if you are the participator you are trusting that you don’t have to be the leader, you are trusting that you don’t need to know where this is going. So that’s their vulnerability.

you: Right... yes! Right!8 8

Giovingo, cj. "Connecting Physics and Aesthetis." Online interview. 14 Mar. 2015.

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scoring Cooperation To balance the cooperative act: make sure each party feels that their role is clearly defined. The mode of ending and beginning is declared.

How do you begin and end a cooperative act? It must begin with an invitation, an intention to meet. Whether improvised through a chance meeting of ideas in a conversation or delineated by space the two partners occupy together, the invitation, once accepted, initiates the exchange. Once the exchange between two people begins, it doesn’t end. The energy that exists in exchange stays with you, the energetic ties are long-lasting.9 The work may climax at some point and at times, certain elements may consciously disappear. Recognizing these moments and learning to say, “finished,” to end the moment gracefully or on cue, is your goal.

Following a score gives the performance a form, loosely or highly structured. Those involved in performing the score know when to begin and when to finish. The piece may end in failure or with a satisfactory product or experience. If you allow yourself to be vulnerable in this exchange, the failure will be less tense. You will simply use the experience of failure to build your future success. Engagement in these exchanges is essential for them to be productive examples of cooperation.

As Claire Bishop suggests, there can be no failed works of participatory art, but rather than not failing, it may be that failure becomes an acceptable outcome. Move forward from there. Admit failure and be vulnerable in that exchange. Fail more often.

But the urgency of this social task has led to a situation in which socially collaborative practices are all perceived to be equally important artistic gestures of resistance: there can be no failed, unsuccessful, unresolved, or boring works of participatory art, because all are equally essential to the task of repairing the social bond.10

In these exchanges, you have failed. You left a meeting with a page of notes inscribed with the words, a strangulation of the creative act. (see Appendix D.) You cooperatively wrote poems that aren’t worth reading, you made sounds not worth listening to, you left spaces empty when you wanted them to be filled.

In these exchanges you have also found success. Often, the use of a score, transcribed or implied, has aided in that success. Using written scores creates a beginning and an end. The following scores have been written to give structure to exchange in a relationship.

9 You

make this declaration boldly after experiencing sound healing with Eileen Day McKusick for past five years. Her research on energy and the effect of sound on the human biofield is explained in her book Tuning the Human Biofield: Healing with Vibrational Sound Therapy which was published by Healing Arts Press in 2014. In her description of the anatomy of the human biofield, Eileen asserts that we have age rings emanating from us - similar to tree rings. The record of our early years moves outward, away from the body, as we age. Eileen has developed this healing practice since 1996 and has made many scientific discoveries through her practice-led research.

10

Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso, 2012. Print.

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One Take the day off: wake up, drink tea, wash your face, look into the mirror until you’re no longer there.

2014

The Group Make a plan. Let a group of people enter and fuck with your plan.

Make it to the end of the plan without crying or giving up.

2014

A co-worker Censor half of the words you’d like to say. Get your work done.

Distract yourself for half the hours. Get your work done.

Engage in progressive conversations by ignoring the rules. Get your work done.

2014

Teachers Find someone that knows something that you want to know. Find ten or more people that would like to learn the same thing. After a number of weeks of engaging with this topic, continue and refrain from making an arbitrary judgement that claims success or failure of each person.

2014

Retail Clerks in December Ask people if you can help them find what they are looking for. Smash your head against the wall.

2014

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Circle

Two people sit in the same room and react to the same visual prompt.

One person uses sound and the other uses written language.

Record the words and sounds created.

Edit the sound piece and the written piece so that they each form a loop.

Back and Forth. Forth and Back.

Manipulate or distort as desired.

2015

This score was performed in March 2015, by Steven Lichti and yourself:

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Exquisite Fold a piece of paper accordion style Place a number in each section of the paper, along the side in the margin Write a phrase at the top of the page, use the number to guide how many syllables are in that phrase Don’t reveal what’s been written Fold the paper and pass it to another person, write and fold, write and fold, write and fold Repeat until all sections are full Unfold the paper Read the words aloud.

2011-2015

With Lilacs As the old current broke between us evolving, legs growing in tadpole style, we walk One hand, a mallet, the other a timpani drum I won't restrict myself with time or numbers but merely write them on the page, then Fall asleep on thunderheads and wake in soaked gardens with lilacs upon us.

With Lilacs was written in September 2011 by Amy Königbauer and K. Lowell Lander using the Exquisite score

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5 Minute Miracle Two people take turns writing, 5 minutes each time.

Continue this exchange until you agree the work is complete.

Read the words to each other.

Read only the words you haven’t written.

Edit the written piece.

Keep deconstructing the words.

Change the layout.

Do this until all authorship has dissolved.

2015

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Optimism, Terror, Patterns & Mystery was written from September 2014-March 2015 by Amy Kรถnigbauer and K. Lowell Lander using the 5 Minute Miracle score. This piece is unfinished but will remain so because Amy Kรถnigbauer and K. Lowell Lander are no longer working together on this project.

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...No “writing” is either first or final. That is because behind every writing are other writings... Every writing is a power struggle. Even simple binaries such as “day/night”, “white/black”, “man/woman” inscribe power. In Western languages, by reading the term on the left first we perform its authority over the term on the right. To reverse terms is to perform a new power relation: “black/white” is different than “white/black”. From this perspective, history is not a story of “what happened” but an ongoing struggle to “write” or claim ownership, over historical narratives. Yet every narrative, no matter how elegant or seemingly total, is full of holes, what Derrida calls “aporia” –– open spaces, absences, and contradictions. Nothing can be totally erased.

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– Richard Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction11

Schechner, Richard. Performance Studies: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.

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Endings

The experience is the “thing,” experiencing the “object”.

All art is experience, yet all experience is not art. The artist chooses from experience that which [s]he defines out as art, possibly because it has not yet been experienced enough, or because it needs to be experienced more.

All art-world distinctions are meaningless.

- Lawrence Weschler, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees 12

The thing you most desire is for the “object” of your work to produce a trace of “the real”. You cannot make work that is the relationship, you can only represent pieces of the experience. You see the effects of this work in every interaction as you have a deeper understanding of your role in creating the experience that exists between you and another person. You know that there is much more to discover. You will continue.

(See Appendix F). These exchanges will repeat, begin again and end. Be it a conscious thought or not, every interaction bears with it an exchange of energy. Each conversation is an improvisation, each ending a wish for grace.

Corporeal bodies amid real objects: realistic theater employs properties which reproduce the effects of the real. These props index the failure of representation to reproduce the real. The real inhabits the space that representation cannot reproduce –– and in this failure theatre relies on repetition and mimesis to produce substitutes for the real. Behind the effects of the real is a desire to experience first cause, an origin, an authentic beginning which can only fail because the desire is experienced and understood from and through repetition.

- Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance13

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Notes that Robert Irwin made regarding the collaboration between himself, Jim Turrell and Ed Wortz published in Report on the Art and Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art 1967-1971 Weschler, Lawrence. Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin. Berkeley: U of California, 2008.

Print. page 131 13

Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge, 1993. Print.

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Appendix A. Other examples of Cooperation In Richard Sennett’s first chapter of Together he investigates ‘The Social Question’ (La Question Sociale) a term used by exhibitors in 1900 in Paris to describe the rooms their work inhabited at The Paris Universal Exposition. The main fair, in the shadows of the Eiffel Tower, highlighted industrial progression over the social experience. Organizers dubbed the side-show to this experience museé social. Documents on labour unions, social policy, race and class lined those walls. They asked, “how should society be made different?”14 America’s mid-west at the beginning of the twentieth century saw Chicago’s neighborhoods divided into immigrant ghettos. Community organizing and cooperation were a challenge when people “literally could not speak to one another.”

Hull House, a settlement house lead by Jane Addams, was a space that was created to support the community and teach people how to live together in the melting pot. Like the museé social organizers, Addams focused on every day experience as a way to unite communities divided by difference and lack of participation. “Hull House emphasized loose rather that ridged exchanges, and made a virtue of informality.”15 “Cooperation most shaped the ways that the Hull House taught English.” Their method was to lock everyone into the same struggle, no bilingual education. Just a mixture of people in the same room, working toward the same end. The key to this informal approach is a relaxed structure with a common endpoint.

To enable participation, the organizer may establish tacit ground rules, the conventions and rituals of exchange, as in the Hull House English classes, but must then leave people free to interact [...] assist, don’t direct. [...] The results of bonding had lead to somewhere; action needs a structure, it has to become sustainable. The smallest exhibition at the museé social addressed this concern. It envisioned a mixture of formal and informal cooperation which would be pointed and lifelong. 16

This is another step for you to take: engage in an exchange with another person, learn something new together. Provide tacit ground rules by writing a score. Leave yourself free to interact with the person and material you’re working with. Remember, that action needs a structure and it can become sustainable (cycle). Engaging in too many sustainable (cycle) relationships has the same exhausting effect as working in disengaged relationships. Back & forth is the standard, bow the arrows when possible and finish disengaged exchanges and move forward.

14

Sennett, Richard. Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2012. Print.

15

Ibid

16

Ibid 27

Appendix B. Charlie O’s World Famous bar has been open in Montpelier, Vermont since 1968. On February 26th 2015 you saw Tribulation play a show there, in what was probably the smallest venue they have played in America. This Swedish metal band has been playing together for ten years.

Their vulnerability was immediately evident to you in their performance. You have been studying the relationship of performer to audience at metal shows for the past few years. Metalheads (you are not one, which makes you better at observation) have a paticular commonality among them. You observe black studded clothing, head banging, and power vests filled with patches. But you see that the performance is both on stage and off. Looking closer, you see that the feeling created in these moments of revelry is almost spiritual.

The energetic exchange observed between these four musicians changed the course of this project.

Their live performance was a routine, however, the effect was profound. After each song the four musicians would pause and face each other, standing in a circle. They would tune their insturments, but they would also reconnect with each other. After the show, you spoke with the guitar player of the band Jonathan. As you chatted on their tour bus, you told him about your observations. He understood immediatly and recognized their reconnection as important part of their performance.

He said that they had come about it quite naturally, after playing together in Sweeden since he was sixteen years old. He appreicated that you saw this in their performance.

This event illuminated an important shift from back & forth exchange to sustainable (cycle) exchange. You began to recognize a relationship to the physical world in this work, related especially to the movement of energy between people. You were drawn to the term "simple harmonic motion" as a concept, but you needed a physicist to explain it.

That's when you reached out to cj.

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Appendix C. Knowing the balance between informality and structure is important to all modes of exchange. Each set of cooperative partners has it’s own needs and each individual has their best way of working.

Working with Steven, has produced very little tension, with Knayte the tension has been very high, and with Maddie the exchange has remained neutral. Patterns were established prior to this project with Maddie and Knayte. Working with Steven, we began the work together, with fewer expectations and less structure. Three things need to be asked when engaging in a new long-term cooperative act:

What preconceived notions do we have about each other and do they need to be dismantled in order for this exchange to succeed?

How much structure do you require and how much structure do we require together?

How do your interests intersect with mine?

You know this now. You wish you knew this when this project began. This might be the most important lesson you’ve learned. Establish a solid foundation.

Photograph that Knayte sent to Amy on August 3rd, 2014 while she was in Berlin, Germany, away from home.

Steven in the practice space on Sept 8th, 2014

Maddie, pictured on the right, interacting with Noah at Variance of Tension, an installation by Maddie and Amy on January 9th, 2015.

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Appendix D. Examples of failure

This is what it looks like when it isn't working... notes from a meeting with Knayte on March 4th. It was left on the floor. Our cat, Kissit, tore it up apart in the middle of the night.Â

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Appendix E. 05 MAR 15 Dear Knayte: You have within you, a thing that I really admire. It's something that was, no doubt, what attracted me to you from the start. The care and attention that you put into the things that matter to you is so admirable. I love the way you appreciate things and I love watching you be good a what you do.

I love being a part of that too, but only when it's appropriate.

Creating work with you has a really important place in my heart. When we started sharing our words with each other, a huge part of me changed. I know you saw this happen. And yes, I blame you for this creative unfurling. The way our energy crashed together and intertwined changed the course of my creative life. You know that it effected the rest of my life as well.

Years later, I am left not knowing what role our creative connection has in our relationship. I enjoy when it is an active part of our lives... because I like making things and I enjoy being with you. I enjoy spending time with you in this way, among many. Things change over time and I want this part of our relationship to be good for both of us, if we should put energy into it at all.

I was really happy when you said you wanted to work with me on this writing project. It seemed like a good way to get back to a place where we could reveal parts of ourselves to each other though this work.

But it's not working. It feels like it's important to you because it is important to me. We need to move away from actions that are done only to make the other person happy. While this seems like a romantic idea, it's not beneficial to either of us in long run.

It's hard to want something and to care, and to pour energy into something with little return. I know you understand what I'm talking about because you have told me about experiencing the same thing with people you collaborate with.You make time for everything that you care about, this just isn't it. You know what... that's totally ok.

Maybe that force that lead to unfurling was something to pull us together, but not to sustain us.

I believe that we both want to be in a relationship and be present in it. Not living in what has been, and not pretending to know what will be. We get to define and redefine that together. We get to be as good to each other as we can be.

The entanglement of a working and romantic relationship has extra concerns.

In terms of this creative work... I will say it again... I have a great desire to work with you. Come with me if you want to. I am also happy to move forward without you, and I will appreciate your support when you can offer it. That may be what is best. It doesn't mean we've failed, it does mean that this approach is not right, right now. Tell me if I am wrong. Tell me what's best for you.

I love you... always. thank you for reading this.

With love, understanding and respect,

Amy

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Appendix F. Abstract Sonata for Suspension Bridge Composed by Steven L. Lichti. This piece will be used to create Envelopes full of... of full Envelopes, a participatory performance scheduled for August 1st, 2015.

PLAN FOR ENVELOPES FULL OF… OF FULL ENVELOPES INSTALLATION. In the space, Steven’s Abstract Sonata for Suspension Bridge will be playing.

Accompanying text for his piece will be written using the score. You will write the words while listening and then layout the text on each page in relation to the way the score is visually composed. Fortyone 12”x15” envelopes will be hanging on the wall. The aforementioned text will be transcribed and then deconstructed on paper inside of envelopes, which are placed inside of envelopes, full of other envelopes that will contain further deconstructions of the writing.

Two interpreters will take envelopes off the wall and hand them to a viewer and recite the instruction: Open an envelope Open a smaller envelope Read the text aloud Open a smaller envelope Open a smaller envelope Read the text aloud Open an envelope

If possible, another improv musician Vicent, will be playing at the beginning of the performance of this work, responding to the movement of the viewers and the sound of the score.

You still have to ask him to particiapte. This work continues.

Cooperate Listen to Abstract Sonata for Suspension Bridge.

Respond.

Deconstruct.

Respond.

2015

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Tremendous amounts of gratitude for all of those that have been and will continue to be involved in this project. - aek

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