AS SO ABOVE BELOW
Index 1 Erin Woodbrey & Lizzie Thomson
AS SO ABOVE BELOW
We acknowledge the Nauset and Wampanoag Peoples and the Wangal and Gadigal Peoples of the Eora Nation as the first and continuing custodians of the lands and waters on which our artistic collaboration has taken place. We pay respect to their Elders, past and present and extend our respect to all First Nations Peoples.
The following experimental text is derived from 20 months of email correspondence. It includes fragments of our thinking developed together across different times-zones and oceans. We think of this text as a non-alphabetical index. It is an indication of our process as we wandered and crawled through various fields of sensations, gardens and geological formations. In keeping with our inquiry into non-linear perceptions of time, this book need not be read from start to end. It can be picked up for a brief glance and put down again, opened at any page, read backwards or recycled into new forms.
Chapter I Finding the edges of things
Edge 1
Foreground
Middle Ground
Background
Edge 2
Finding the edges of things; being so close to the walls, contained, so close to things; {breath as architecture} time as fragments, disjointed, round, a spectrum rather than a line... Inside/Outside Outside/Inside; {repeated gathering}
highlighted text associated with time ideas of time
the formation of time
the formation of thought
the questioning of thought
where/how an idea is situated in time
experience
the formation of experience
excerpts, fragments are kept in the order of their chronology in conversation
in any format or scale
strange time
a slow researcher What's the rhythm with things?
everything jumped so quickly
into
I think there's a way that we can do it that can be low impact open, generative.
let it sit/incubate for a bit?
and we're bracing ourselves
we can land on a shared topic
I think there's probably about 14 hours time difference between us
travel between some states
Where does time go anyway?
“...bag full of knowledge…” decolonizing the sky night owl morning person
We'll be the same day,
just opposite ends of it
You and Erin Woodbrey appeared together on 275 messages between Nov 2018 and Oct 2021. There were 1 messages from last week and on average 3.1 messages per week for last year.
written for a solitary reader
women and feminisms a Rich Closet of Secrets
the plague and other minor ailments
"To restore lost speech: Lay a thin piece of raw beef to the forehead of them that have lost their voice, and let it lye one all night”1
draw us in to notice details that our eyes would usually just gloss over
to create a science fiction in the form of objects
things that are so spatial and supposed to be experienced,
the idea of writing in a closet being so close to the walls, contained, so close to things.
Did you see this?
in a way that doesn't simply follow a linearity progressive
chronological
They believed that thinking and consciousness were produced by the lungs rather than the brain, almost as if the mind was in the chest / lungs,
and that breath was the basis of thought and communication.
They believed that communication takes place when a person speaking places their words in the lungs of a person listening.
inside123
Did you still have time to crawl today?
There's a small window of no rain right now; to receive these strange presents of potential
~ an idea initiating a feeling ~
'Making ourselves anew',2
not by demolishing and rebuilding,
but just by simple shifts in seeing or perceiving...
I was trying to find words but I mainly feel it walking around with me
as 'finding the edges of things’
Knees Elbows Donkey Dog Days Seasons Weather Changes Rain Cold Summer Winter Warm A Soft Way of Traveling
Chapter II Day Crawling Inside the Night, Night Crawling Inside the Day
CELLS GO WALKING
The days are getting shorter and shorter. And some days, I don't see the Donkey at all… just a mottled, pixilated blur… I can imagine that if I were there more often for longer, I would see a lot more; Day Crawling inside the Night Crawling ~ Night Insects Troubling Time ~ Time inside Time
something that is in perpetual formation time as fragments, disjointed, round, a spectrum rather than a line
in the context of sound, the voice, disembodiment,
and a notion of being haunted
blurring narrative structures of time as well as
the edges between fact, fiction, recollection and retelling of histories
our co-interest.
non-linear perceptions of time.
And I can pass on whatever gets discussed during it.
out of the way and out in the world
"...the past is all around us in changed form”
3
Hands are so useful, aren't they. physics and imagination and memory going ahead an hour for summer I know the maths to decipher the time zone differences
'all things time and being’4
I keep getting confused over what year we are in and the one that is ahead.
If capitalism has been a spectacular attempt to conquer death, then this mourningas-dancing practice is a humble attempt to accept death.
'language has so much movement, causality, remembering, forgetting, improvising, repeating, transforming’.
some material or shared language
month feels like many months packed into 30-31 days time is now 16 hours ahead
I’m about to go to bed (Horizontality) And see you tomorrow! (Or your tonight?)
and
then the diagram kind of expanded that to something outside of my body,
outside of walking, outside of space, something plural
time-confused
Hand Donkey Book I was thinking about our movement/exercises/ tangible experiments especially the Crawling and thought exploring Knees somehow could be interesting... exploring our knees (like friends of our elbows); they are kind of like elbows in a way that they are also corners and maybe in being joints, hinges as well.
Books. Knee Plays.
“This book celebrates the fragility and persistence of the minor gesture, perceiving in it more potential than in the self-directed "I" that stands outside experience and speaks the major languages of brands of individualism and humanism that frame neurotypicality as the centre of being.”5
"The grand is given the status it has not because it is where the transformative power lies, but because it is easier to identify major shifts than to catalogue the
these rhythms are narrated as secondary, or even as negligible.” nuanced rhythms of the minor. As a result,
6
their heads buried very deeply in the sand
at the same time
as so above below
"...to catalogue the nuanced rhythms of the minor:” 7
I have noticed a lot of people stopping by to see the horses and the donkey across the street. I imagined what they
(the donkey and horses)
sense/hear of the cars that drive by fast and the ones that slow down. I also started to write about the donkey,
and my anticipation of seeing them and how seeing them is "cued" by, comes along with, and operates along with so many other things about the day and this place.
Sometimes it feels like it is part of a rhythm
but then sometimes that regularity shifts due to season, circumstance, weather, etc., and sometimes it is totally random.
And some days, I don't see the donkey at all,
but I can hear them,
and I know they can hear me and Jan the dog barking....
…like it encompasses life in one film, but I could be misremembering that as well.
Complementarianism, how these parallel ideologies or ways of understanding the world can all co-exist.
After a few postponements and some uncertainty
walking as being a way of seeing
Every time
How long will you be there for? The donkey needs to find us maybe? In relation to questioning knowledge Making ourselves anew And even some kind of future
I will be there tomorrow (your today)
Bed Sand Memory Rhythms Being Imagination Time Zone Physics Language Life Spectrum Today Time as Fragments
A Rich Closet of Physical Secrets, Printed by Gartrude Dawsen, London, 1653. Kriti Sharma, ‘Make Ourselves Anew: Towards A Radical Biology’, Science for the People, vol. 23, no. 3, Bio-Politics, Winter 2020. 3 Michelle M. Wright, ‘On Epiphenomenal Temporality: Black German Identities and Qantum Physics in African Diaspora’, ICI Berlin, Lecture 26 February, 2018, https://www.ici-berlin.org/events/michelle-m-wright/ 4 Karen Barad, ‘Troubling time/s and ecologies of nothingness: re-turning, remembering, and facing the incalculable’, New Formations, vol. 92, no. 1, 2018, pp.56-86. 5 Erin Manning, The Minor Gesture, Duke University Press, Durham, 2016, p.7. 6 Erin Manning, The Minor Gesture, Duke University Press, Durham, 2016, p.1. 7 Erin Manning, The Minor Gesture, Duke University Press, Durham, 2016, p.1. 1 2
Published on the occasion of Sister City II, Praxis Gallery, Adelaide, 2022, curated by Andrea Przygonski.