HOW TO FIND WORDS WITHIN YOUR BODY
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- Work in pairs.
- Choose a text and read it to each other aloud.
- Be attentive to the words that cause responses in
your body. - Write the words down on a paper.
- Keeping a dialogue throughout the process may help to avoid getting stuck in a mental process.
- Work within 1-min cyclic repetitive time frames:
One partner says the word out loud, the other one moves, trying to find the word within their own body. Do it slow: it takes a bit of time and breathing to find the word. Then, switch roles. Do this a couple of times. - At the end of each 1-min cycle, you will have gifted each other, one word and one movement.
They are the elements of the score. This is a process of repetition, adding, sharing and gifting. - Then, switch roles.
When we started Research Score #2, we wanted to break away from
rigid patterns and conventional processes within our research practices and the spaces we transit. This involved a deep work of mapping our desires and habits, which we call pushes and pulls. They modulate the contours of the intellectual territory in which we move. Some of the pushes and pulls are necessary and some of them feel more constraining.
One could imagine a body that feels stiff. How could that body loosen up in order to generously explore the space where thinking happens before arriving to any new conclusions? It would need to wiggle, stretch affirmatively, give permission to awkward movements, be light and agile and cherish exploring. We also think working in dialogue with others and without a goal helps to find new movements.
This is what the score does for us; it helps us struggle through pushes and pulls in order to move from a state of constraint to a ›state of permission‹. The score is not another knowledge. If anything, it is a tool that can bring oneself to another way of knowing.
Our scores are a way to bring more lightness into our respective research processes. The first score was realised in 2019 in the framework of a research residency at Grimmuseum, Berlin. There, we experimented with documenting experiences within collaborative research and translating them into a visual text. The second score, inspired by the work of Fernand Deligny, explores movement practice in relation to knowledge production. The third is dedicated to the life and work of the dancer Anna Halprin. The score is based on her artistic work and serves as an invitation to let her ideas enter our own research practice.
HOW TO READ THE SCORE
Our research score consists of two layers. Layer I contains both: the process of making a score and the resulting score. Layer II contains the reflections on scores that came out of the process of making the score.
You also see two styles. Text without serif typefaces is for documentation and with serif typefaces is for instructions. They are both necessary for a score. We understand instructions as the frame (something mobile which is communicated in abstract terms) and documentation for us is the act of filling in and changing that frame (the work of grounding and making it tangible). Documentation does not follow instructions, both are intertwined and react to one another.