Zones of Sensitivities premiered the Transart Triennale 2016 in Berlin with a three-day event featuring exhibitions, performance series, food and movement labs, music, dance, film and video series and a symposium on the theme “The Imperceptible Self.”
One afternoon. Five writers. Five readers.
A program consisting of live readings of original texts exploring the theme of the “The Imperceptible Self”.
Texts by: Zeerak Ahmed. Christopher Danowski. Margaret Hart. Michele Manzini. Konjit Seyoum
Curation and arrangement by Ladan Yalzadeh
The Process: Writers were invited to submit original texts of up to three thousand words responding to the theme of the Imperceptible Self. From these submissions, five texts emerged in dialogue with each other addressing this theme. With the approval of the writers, excerpts from the full texts were chosen and merged together to devise the text for Zones of Sensitivity.
The Live Reading: The Readers were seated on chairs in the center of the room on five back to back chairs in a circle, facing out. The Receivers were seated in the round five meters away, facing the Readers.
Voices of: Zeerak Ahmed. Abi Tariq. Margaret Hart. Bill Ratner. Konjit Seyoum
In tandem with the performative text, writers at large were invited to collaborate online over 12 days around the theme of Imperceptible Self using an exquisite corpse method.
THE “I” THAT THINKS
The “I” that thinks is the first of the three-episode collaborative writing project associated with Zones of Sensitivity for the Transart Triennale 2016. The idea is that we dissolve the singularity of authorship, in keeping with the TT16 theme of The Imperceptible Self.
Authors were invited to add a sentence to a text that we wrote together in the span of twelve days between June 3 & June 15 in response to the following text:
She/He travels feverishly, constantly and inevitably between the "I think" concept and the "it thinks" of the body. So fast she/he moves between the two, that she/he can not gather all of her/him Self before leaving for the other shore. And so it is that she/he dissolves. Yet something remains. What is it?
Episode 1: the "I" that thinks
People go to the Lake to smoke. I have never joined them, but today I take off my shoes (as I’ve watched them do) and pick over the rocks barefooted, making little mock gasps of pain (as I’ve heard them do). And then I realize, I will do what I want. I pick up a rock, slightly larger than a ball, run my thumb over its one uneven ridge. I draw back my arm and with a half turn release the rock into the air. There it stopped; as if no force was affecting anymore its existence and have become free. I stood there, looked at the stone. It appeared as if it had held some childhood memory of mine. I could not put my finger on it, but it had me mesmerized and I could not move for some minutes. I layed on my back waiting for the stone to fall down; a stone will break the water. As time dilates, I dissolve. As I dissolve, memories of mine are connecting with the surroundings transforming into something greater. I become the lake, the trajectory of the rock, the crackle of the red leaves under the children’s bare feet, the worm in the raven’s beak, the shadow of the pines.
When did all of these happen; can one understand an event that cannot be measured, and if not, how could one build a relation with that event. In my memory, the rock is still traveling, never hitting the water, as if this ungraspable fragment of event kept on being rewinded. I heard them say that in those tiny holes I will perceive when putting my eyes just in front of its dark and rough surface, deep inside the stone, just in there they have enough space to live. I couldn’t stop myself of being somewhere else. That somewhere matters.
My brain was over stimulated and I was feeling useless in the face of data; the speed of its multiple flows was making impossible to fully understand what was happening.
The noise is really high. Every inch of skin rejects the sound of my surroundings until the craving stops. I ‘come to my senses’, abandon myself to the present, to a state of non-memory, observing the raucous behavior of all the impish ‘I’s within me. I drowned. Now I can see the lake sitting on the sofa in my living room.
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Contributors in alphabetical order:
Alma Gačanin. Anne Lesley Selcer. Cătălina Gubandru. Dan Allon. Francesca da Rimini. Giulia Crispiani. Ladan Yalzadeh. Luanda Casella. Marie Dann. Monica McFawn. Robyn Thomas. Sarah Bushra. Silvia Amancei. Bogdan Armanu.
Episode 2: the "I" that "feels"
That feverish moment, when I perceive anything being exaggerated. I watch her carefully while she begins to peel off her clothing. A ripping sound tickles my inner ear. Words of the future invade my body announcing to me that all that I know will change. Suddenly I am aware that we are not alone. The eyes of many surround us and eagerly survey the lusciousness of the moment. There is no escape; I feel trapped. My eye touches a sight line that hardens a liquified air. I am confronted with the realization of my utter helplessness and finally release my fervid need for understanding.
Is it the wine, or is it the moon, or did I wake up in someone else’s dream again? I am here by the lake’s edge and embrace the breeze, life, movement and all the complexities in the now. The eyes are still present but scattered, fuzzy as stars, and veiled in layers of dark blue air.
And her? Naked, she has become the night, her arms a horizon cut into by winter bare mountains. The grass there is still wet and green I can feel it under my skin everywhere I go there is no end and dreams become trees.
Have you ever felt light?
No.
Have I ever felt alive?
Recognize the complexity, the texture produced when I search for solitude in the awakened we. Am I more than us? To see, we gave. I feel ecstasy when I come down to bury my head along your chocolate side.
How heavy have you ever felt? Can you try and remember what was weighing you down?
I am not sure if I had more weight on my mind or hugging my body. It for sure made me die a little bit every day. That little bit of death creating standing in for reality at times, but also creating a bubble where I could see with utter clarity.
My hands are getting longer than you can see. My heart is disappearing; I inch my way deeper into my flesh and be only there.
Alive, she said finally, how would I know?
She scooched down her bikini bottoms, twirled them around her toe and then flung them into the brush. The dappled shadows fell from her body like a dropped kimono as she stepped into the sun.
///////////////////////////////////// .
I feel you scuttle on my tongue. You left without a leg and a hair in my teeth.
I dream I feel like dreaming.
While mingling my feelings with your syllables an explosion between two dreams occurred and my tongue sheltered your lips. And I said to you, never will we be apart, my love. My heart. My head. My all. Never will we be apart for never were we separated at the start. This line in the middle is full of dots.
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Contributors in alphabetical order:
Abinadi Meza. Amy Königbauer. Anne Labovitz. Catalina Gubandru. Chris Danowski. Dan Allon. Francesca da Rimini. Giulia Crispiani. Margaret Hart. Marie Dann. Green Flux. Monica McFawn. Monika K. Sarah Bushra. Silvia Amancei. Bogdan Armanu. Terry Kurgan
Final Episode: the Imperceptible "I"
She saw known waterfalls of unknown rivers. So it was that she was at once here and there. Just in the moment he approached her, a mighty goldfish leaped out of the river hunting an earthfly during its first flight after leaving the chrysalis. By the time his eye returned to her, she had already changed into ribbons of rivergrass, swirling around his submerged ankles. Melting between the blades he touched her green with his tongue and asked her: Will you ever arrive and when you do, will it be you or some other? Swirling around him again she replied: I will arrive as the other if you are waiting for me but will always be myself if you are the other longing for me.
That night it began to rain and it did not stop until the river rose to meet the waterfall. And the goldfish enjoyed the rising of the river, hunting the raindrops of his dreams. And without noticing it, the fish was drawn by the river to the waterfall and sucked over the edge - winging his unknown dream.
There was a lulllllll. That night. Eyelids are flickering phone cases in hands. White feet in sandals. Shifting clocks and side eyeing every possible thing. We are what we eat so I guess we are starving. The thirst knows no curfew.
Indicative of passion, reads the label. She ate it heartily. Ice cream stains are a common thing these days. The heart wants what it wants, and she wants data. Not caring for information, like any other data junkie, she reads anything, be it the phone directory of Karachi or the list of ingredients on a package of milk. Transgressing the reach of the mirror she enters a dream full of flowers and glowing eyebulbs, just to realise that she fell into a waterfall. She asked itself a Question : “How can we swim if our bodies are made from crystallized air?”, while crying in a darkened pillow that she found at the dusty corner in her grandmother’s attic.
Slowly, as she inhaled the attic dust, it swelled, revealing that body has always been herself, her thinking was the other, it had always been this way, she had misunderstood, and drowsily, she felt it. Her physical being was solid and present, but her soul, her spirit, floated out amongst the others mingling with the weight of knowledge not yet shared.
Within the barren shelter, situated in that cold wasteland where no woman or man ever speak, or open their eyes, or sit up or walk or eat: a light-bulb has fused. This releases a wave of sadness, even though the light it spat was unknown to most. It lived as it died... In secrecy and obscurity. Within minutes the panoramic horizon is divided into four, by tiny black dots. Then, Lines. And finally, as they approach the shelter, their footfall is heavy yet unsounding. They are cloaked, shrouded in void.
The detectives enter the shelter and speak, begin to acknowledge their presence in pastoral prose.
Recognition arose. They had abandoned their activity, returned to the water, for this light was the fruit of their labour and their purpose remained fulfilled until now.
Old, decrepit, miserable, still in a hypnagogic trance they emerged from the chilly ocean of shadow surrounding. They knew that it was time, and seeing each other after the thirty-three-thousandth torus their thoughts talked too and spoke only of tick, tock, tick, tock. Their hoods are lowered. They point their eyes at this flower, and weep. And they sing. They sing for the rhizomatic spirit of the Flipside, to manifest itself here in the dark, as they did once in an ancient nightmare. The quartz grows around the quartet, their resonance destroys what it created mere moments ago, undoes its own doing, but faster, and sharper each time. The Circle is coerced into a Spiral, a u-cord is tied tight around the core of the shelter, the colours and points are reintroduced, and the fused bulb is no more. In its place is a bud, a sapling. They nod to each other, covering their heads once more, drawing their blades in unison.
North stabs East as East stabs South and South stabs West as West completes the cycle.
There their dead bodies lie, until the Tidy Labourer arrives to take their cloaks away into the dark, carefully stepping around the faint glow of the bulb. Underneath each cloak is a silver egg. The bulb begins to hum and resonate, nursing the eggs, and from them hatch four cardinals. The birds roll about in crystal dust and thin broken glass, and sing once more, and weep no more. They look upon the glorious light of their child-parent for a fleeting moment before flying off toward their shadows. The vibrant red color of their coats spreads a hue of rose colored light over the entire land, into the heart of every being.
I could swear a figure passed by when my eyes were closed. It was a mothlight glimpse near the window that disappeared when I opened. I felt her faraway lands, but sadness did not endure as each cell in her carried the writing and coding of all she had experienced, opened up with one drop of water on her skin as if reading a book.
Swallowing her drop his life immediately died of thirst for the unknown river. We are so deeply connected. “Full of mysterious smoke and ancient fire offerings.” It’s just that sometimes, the smoke gets into our eyes and it burns like hell. But we forget that we are mostly made of water.
K’uei : Fire over Lake - Opposition - Misunderstanding truth creates opposition.
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Contributors in alphabetical order:
Ana MacArthur. Anne Labovitz. Dieter K. Elias Krisper. Friedrich Lance. Jean Marie Casbarian John Alias. Ladan Yalzadeh. Lisa Osborn. Margaret Hart. Maya Krisper. Patrick Schabus. Peko Mutan.