"Landscape and explorer" is an exercise that I use in multiple situations.

I received this exercise from Dieter Heitkamp and I use it when I share information on perception.

This time we did it in pairs, one person takes a comfortable position on the floor. (teh landscape) The other (the explorer) is following in an respectful and serious research her/his interest along the landscape her partner is offering. The researcher stays true to her or his interest, no bodywork, not becoming automatic. We treat our partner as a protected area - but we allow curiosity to grow and follow it with interest. Touch, smell, mechanics of the body, sound, texture, taste, just to name a few things the research can be busy with. You can use all your senses and your physical abilities for the research. As soon as you loose interest, you cahnge what you do.

The landscape is perceiving and is allowed to change her or his position when ever needed.
 If something if not ok for the landscape she or he simply says it.

This time we did 12 min in the each role. At the end of the second round we had a brief exchange with our partner.

This exercise can also lead into a contact dance. The landscape is "allwoed" to be a bit more activ, River, earthquake wind ... The partners can constantly change and decide on if they want to be landscape or explorer. Also two landscapes or two exploreres can meet each other.

With this experience I asked everybody to choose an object and to construct in a very short time a collective object in space. -

• Take some minutes to look at the result, be aware of the perpective you choose to look at it, be aware that changing your point of view is changing your perception.
• Choose one perspective and take a photo.
• Everybody else is following the process of taking the picture.
• I upload the photos and we look at them together

You find the photos following this text with comments of the photographer.

I chose to follow up the sensation of fragility and image of "ribbon" that carried me along my journey of discovering the body: Playing with "rims", edges, and how they lead into something. I realize now that the totality of the image does not match with the sensation I had: A close-up could probably have given the sensation of fragility much more, f.e. if I had chosen a certain tissue or fabric ....to sum up:  I resonated with the image, instead of the sensation. Vice versa would have been better.

I became interested in the different shades of black and structures of black materials in the fore&background. Unfortunately,  the default settings of the camera did not go along with my wish, as the background blacks do not show- I would have had to have several try & error pics to get that due to the challenging  light situation for this intention.


I consciously decided for a calm background, focused close, took the camera further away to get a photograph that is out of focus and focuses on the overall form and colours. (not the different uses of focus :D)

When I was setting up the statue and also finding a place to take a photo, I prefered to extend it in space. The whole structure was a bit overwhelming for me, thefore I needed to take a distance. Besides I was interested in small details. So I took the nacho in the edge as my focus. However I wanted to have depth (in the front and in the back ground) to still refer to the bigger picture of the statue. 

The course of Andrea's exercise brought me into an intuitive and playful state. The developement of the exercise was a surprise for me.
After exploring my partners body as a landscape, the whole group was asked to create a collective object. We created it with the things we found in space.
For the foto I decided to make a snapshot moving around the object, -  as intuitively reacting with my whole body. (Triggered by the way I myself chose the things to bring to the object; triggered by the way I discovered the body of my partner in the first part if the exercise.) Further more decided NOT to look at the display of the fotoapparat.
I wanted to be surprised by the  medium (camera), as the other participants and the course of the exercise had surprised me.

My intention is to extend the perception and the concepts of the participants in order to encourage everybody to "take a risk" in making an unusual choice which could reflect in the second part of this exercise in choosing perspective. In the actual context of getting started REFLEX, a research project which is busy with artistic and reflexive documentation I will share some questions: 

A question to everybody who participated:

• What do you remember of the object you choose?
• Do you remember the picture you took?
• What do you remember of the sculpture you created together?
• What do you remember of the process, when you look now at the pictures?

As well to anyone who was not around:

• Are these documents (photos) helping to understand how the sculpture looked like?
• For what purpose could it be of importance how the sculpture looked like?
• What do you see and perceive when you look at the pictures?
• What kind of information do you need to involve yourself, get curious or create a sensory response?

These are some questions that appear in our discussions around documentation. When do we need a plain visual representation of what we created, taught, performed... When do we need other forms that offer a different approach to a work? When do we want to get inspiration for new artistic work and use those as documents?

Looking at the photos, can you recognize another interest than showing/ representing the original collective object ?