idocde » Editorial
BIG UPDATE! a NEW Symposium and more…
reflections on the 2022 IDOCDE symposium
The April Issue – symposium description is here
The March Issue
The February Issue
The November Issue
making place for making place
Nancy Stark Smith
The May Issue: Onwards with IDOCDE!
IDOCDE Virtual Meetings starting soon!
The December Issue
The September Issue
on symposium scheduling and languaging against the odds
on beaver dams and the 7th IDOCDE symposium
in lieu of transparency, approaching the 2019 IDOCDE symposium
Tracing Forwards –––––– the question of (human) nature
New Year, New Symposium, New Story
Tradition, Evolution and Diversity – Share Your Legacy
updates, updates, updates
... how many hours in a day
The Cassiopeia score and other matters; power, pedagogy, and the imparting of knowledge
revelations, reflections, confessions; post-symposium update
Months Bleed into New Months
Martin's Alphabet
You are here – I am here
Something New
Ashes to Ashes, Water to Words
Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui ... [1]
a fictional season
on beauty: an unexpected debate
What I Did Not Miss This Summer
I Can Not Not Move. Can You?
IN THE SPACE OF STUDY – notes on The Legacy Project and the 2017 IDOCDE Symposium
Scores for Rest
Everlasting Words
what you give will remain yours forever
the limit of the limitless
ATTENDANCE
What can dance bring to culture?
Documentation and Identity – New lives of memories...
Solo thinking does not exist
The Importance of Being [Un]Necessary
Hot Stones Notwithstanding
Documenting what is in a flux
Symposium Preparations Under Way
Moving images are often read as “the truth”...
The Technology Coordinator
Potential for Relationship, Subversion and Emergence
A quantum LEAP to REFLEX
Abundance of Exchange – no me but for you!
Teaching Form[less]?
Questioning it all?
After a few months of ephemerality…
Failing Successfully!
Her sweet boredom…
teaching dance, flying airplanes and surgery procedures
re-creation – by the writing dance teacher
Revisiting Our Reality
The End
Roll the bones!
And now?
Treasure Hunt
News from the Arsenal
Body time & Politics
Morning training opening at K3
Symposium 2013 Vienna
Time is ticking...
"If tomatoes are a fruit, isn't ketchup...
Symposium 2013: Call for proposals
Teaching at ImPulsTanz: Call for applications
idocde meeting Stolzenhagen August 13-17, 2012
More videos please!
Hello… What are you doing here?

... how many hours in a day

It is likely that wherever your travels take you, you will hear artists––especially those based in an European or a North American country––speak about the kind of exhaustion brought about the amount of administrative feats one is expected to accomplish on a daily basis. Many of the  conversations concerning documentation refer to documentation undertaken for administrative, not creative purpose.

I ask myself, if I imagine this constraint as systemic to the field of dancing and choreographing, what part of it is conditioned by the fact that the form itself is ephemeral––which is a paradox, surely, that of “a formless form”––and what part of it is conditioned not by the cultural prejudice towards the notion of ephemerality as such? Were the cultural west not as prejudiced towards the notion of ephemerality––as I’m sure you’ll agree it is––would we talk about the memory of dancing as of a document documenting dancing as readily as we talk about the video and text today? And would we, most importantly, relate to ephemeral activities, such is daydreaming, with more rigor and awe than we do today? Would we then give ephemeral practice more time in a day? Could we then give ephemeral practices more time than we do to such activities as documenting for administrative purposes?

All this comes from a note I took whilst being distracted at a staff meeting, in which I asked myself about the creative opportunities: how frequently do I get the opportunity to dream about my work? I noticed; I considered this opportunity as one I ought to be given, instead of creating for myself. And so I turned the question around and asked myself instead: how can I create the opportunity for dreaming? Most importantly, what holds me back from creating such opportunities right now?

This is when I noticed the fact that most of what I write, most of the traces I currently make are not, in fact, tracing dreams. Most traces I make are made in response to administrative requirements, often concerned with the work that has been done. I could easily say that this is so because I frequently run out of time for daydreaming before I manage to complete my daily administration. This is unfortunate, but it is not the only thing standing in the way of me taking my dreaming seriously. What else is in the way is that same cultural prejudice towards the ephemeral, internalised: I look down upon ephemeral activities.

In conclusion, I bring not a solution––for I have none––but a question, a question concerning the internalised prejudice. What can change in an artist’s process, if one is to recognise the internalised prejudice, the influence of the culture on how one thinks about their profession, about their form of preference? What choices can be made when one recognises that one’s beliefs are not necessarily one’s own, that at least some of one’s beliefs have been passed down generation after generation?

Perhaps the best question of all: What do you still believe in, once you’ve eliminated the beliefs that are not yours but of the culture that raised you? What dreams persist? And how do those manifest in your daily life? What impressions do those make? How do you remember them, value them, celebrate them, if not in conventional ways? How do they sneak their ways into your artistic practice?

Such stories I would like hear more artists tell, as I travel the world.



With love and devotion,
pavleheidler for Team IDOCDE
October 2018