The BODYCARTOGRAPHY Project:investigating experience in the midst of deep play
by Samantha Beers, Olive Bieringa, Tracy Vogel
What I saw today with BodyCartography fried my potatoes and shucked my corn. Unveiling and preparing staples of beauty, sustainance, freedom, and joy, yes joy and deoderant commercials, dolphin backs and meter maid mayhem. What is possible? What is possible##**&&!!? THIS IS POSSIBLE. What it is to show God a good time### Wholeness full expression, neverending completion beautiful sunlight tree-swinging thriller-day crosswalk authority RESPECT compassion Hands to pavement, heart to sky My, oh my. Beauty in essence. Thank you. April 30, full moon, Beltane,,,,,,,,,,, -----contributed by participant Ivy Greene Olive Bieringa: Co-Director, Founder random to-do list -communion: with each other with the landscape with the witnessing public -image making as a spiritual daily practice -the color orange
Project History
1997 The name BodyCartography was spoken. Was it a new word for choregraphy or for internal anatomical mapping? It became the title of a "hands on" release based class that I taught in the fall at Danceground Keriac in San Francisco. The class became a collective of performers whose key score was inspired by the Tuning Score created by Image Lab. The group consisted of Tracy Vogel, Tanya Calamoneri, Krista Denio, Sarah Moore, Loren Olds and myself.
Turning the "word" BodyCartography inside out gave me the tool with which I could communicate the experience of internal bodymapping with the world. It supported a relationship between the micrososm of my bodily experience and the macrocosm of the world. Through this lens I look at how they effect and change one another. Bodycartography became a dialogue of the interconnectedness of our bodies to the environment.
1998 The first BodyCartography project took place in Wellington, New Zealand in February- March. The project was facilitated by myself with the production and performance support of Karen Daly, and Sumara Fraser.
The intention of the first project was to create an experiential map of the land, city, sea that is Wellington, through the creation of site specific research, performance and documentation. Two important aspects of the project were to share the idea of "art as an everyday practice" and to provide ways to present dance work outside of the market's desire for commodification. The project was devoted to the notion of art-making not art selling. All our events were free. Community building through the project was essential to its success.
Over the month long duration of the Wellington Fringe Festival, the project created twenty-three events, beginning with an opening benefit party and ending with a three hour closing performance installation. We were witnessed by as many as twenty-two hundred people. Television coverage occurred with NZ's TV1 Inside/Out series, and local cable channels. The entire event was internally documented in video, photography and writing. People were invited to participate on whatever level they could; as organizers, performers, photographers, drivers, tech crew, teachers, community resources or sponsors. Performers ages, physical ability, dancing and performing experience varied greatly. Three performers had significant physical disabilities.
I returned to the Bay area and in September I began conversation with Thomas Sepe around facilitating an SF/Bay Area version of the project. An endless fall of unsuccessful grant writing began. Where does this vision fit into the traditional world of funding and patronage? In Wellington we taught weekly contact classes, received a bit of local arts funding and community sponsorship to meet our costs.
Diary excerpt September 1998
I feel the bigness of this vision and the impending surrender. The focus to walk up, step up, shift things around...my fear is that everyone will disappear and I'll be left holding the baby. I am sensing an abundance of energy to create change in myself, in each other, the public/witnesses, the site/place, the energy of the planet. Consciousness. I need support, collaborators, funding. I need to hear yes and most of all I need to hear reflection, growth of what BodyCartography is and that people understand.
1999 Samantha Beers and Tracy Vogel joined us as facillitaors...the stability of four, the four directions, felt like there would be room to rest. However, the vision kept growing, stretching us all beyond our capacity. We began core group rehearsals, which quickly fed into our open labs once a week at CELL in SF. Performance events began in March (we lost Thomas) and ran through to June with a final performance installation at CELL.
"put your belly on my back, put your hand on my heart, put your feet on the earth, your dreams in the sky and keep your eyes on me." B.C. facillitator chant 1999
MAP
The Webster definition: a representation usually on a flat surface of the whole or a part of an area. To me, a two dimensional map is an abstract defined system of intepretation of, in this case, land. It is a gateway to our memories and histories connected with place.
Mapping
The Webter definition: the act of making a map. The body was once clearly a tool for measuring and then three feet became a yard. Colonization's mapping of the land literally flattened and excluded us from our experience. What place do our bodies hold in the cities we have built up around them? How does the body currently function as a tool for measuring? Mapping with our bodies utilizes all of our senses and associated memories to document our present moment, bringing us to a heightened state of awareness, presence and curiosity of place.
How detailed, site specific, delicate can my focus become reading the microcosm/ macrocosm of my landscape? What are the "social norms" of this street corner to me ? to you? to the public? Our scores are our structure for coming together, our common agreement.
Score I: the "mapping" score
The group begins together (dressed in a unifying color) to journey from point a to point b. Their task is to improvise from the physical of where they are and who they are with...to embody their "mapping" of the location. At least one third of the group has an additional task to act as a bridge for the public by physically involving them (they are part of the landscape) or sharing sensorial data via sound, word, text, touch etc. There is one person who is strictly a guide, to talk with people, give out promotional material and open up discussion around what we are doing. However, if there is no public this is no longer relevant. A tool box is carried so that at any point people wanting to leave or gather documentation in the wake of the "procession" or to utilize any other tools therein can do so.
the toolbox: an orange one from home depot contents: chalk, electrical tape different colors, tape measures, pens, paper, extra rolls of film, Hi8 film, rope, clothes pins, binoculars, flares, lighter, blindfolds, caution tape, documentation forms, walky talkies, bc cards, band aids, tiger balm, antiseptic cream, rubber gloves, alarm clock, pocket knife.Extra items:Video camera, photo camera, orange street cones.
Score II: the tuning score
The 'tuning' score from Image lab has become a foundation of language from which we continually source and build our own scores for particular events and environments. The tuning score gives us a language and structure in which to build a sense of group and to introduce new people to the working dynamic and aesthetic choice-making of that group. Over time we have developed our own interpretation to some of the existing calls and developed new ones of our own. The score also offers our audiences a bridge into the sometimes obtuse world of improvisational dance, demystifying how we, the dancers, are making the choices we do. It is an interactive score in which the public can be invited to call and participate physically. We have utilzed different versions in schools, theaters and in the street.
Score III: solo replay
A precursor score is 'Solo replay' originally devised by Lisa Nelson. This score is a great tool for opening up our vision to the possibilities of a particular site. Working with the score outside we would predefine our "performance/ investigation space" . Solos would be timed to 30 seconds or one minute. "End" would be called when the time is up. One or more participants may get up at the same time and replay the solo they had witnessed.
"Earth acupuncture. Community fengshui. Community tuning." Chris White, participant
Orange
The color orange has become our most unifying costume color for reasons and associations with/to safety, visibility, utilatarian functionalism, spiritual practice, 2nd chakra energy, and there's lots of it in thrift stores.
an anarchic Sunday afternoon in the Mission, May 18th Beginning at Walgreens on 16th and Mission, dressed in orange we decide to let the group facilitate itself....follow its desire. We leave chalk prints, poetry and arrows behind us on the pavement for anyone who wants to follow.
"You remind me of the county jail" -- public witness
We cross the street to dance with a rousing Jesus band. People laughing and looking on at these crazy white folk hanging off telephone poles and rolling over each other and the filthy ground. Playing in the crosswalk at 16th and Valencia. " Are you related to the blue people at Aquatic Park?" Into Sparrow Alley with a 'no hands to the ground' score. Cartographers quickly escaped the darkness, syringes and shit to be out in the sunshine of Valencia's newly painted traffic aisle. Bystanders joined in to dance screaming with delight. Car drivers stopped to interact. A cyclist stopped to pose for a photo. He too dressed in orange. More public participation on the scaffolding at 15th st." This is the real shit". The bare bones of a white man saying to a black man "trust me" as he offers his back surface as support for the man's scaffolding descent. Final stop, orange group photo on 16th st in front of a blue garage door. In writing this I remember witnessing a kid overdosing on this spot three years earlier. When we really allow ourselves to be present, the density of the imagery, history and energy of each place we visit can be overwhelming. Action and response get simple. The Bodycartography Project brings me great joy by changing my perceptual relationship to the cities I live and work in; Wellington, New Zealand, where I grew up and launched the project and the Bay Area, where I have been living since'97. Powerspots have developed for me where we have played/located ourselves. Making the time to absorb detail at each location only inspires more possibility and curioisty adding to my hunger for imagistic gratification and physical interaction. I find myself walking around framing the textures of a street corner, the way the light falls on a building, the sound and characters on a subway platform, the saltyness of the harbor lapping against a concrete breakwater. Seeking sets like I am shooting a movie, surfaces and things to play on....this is a playground, places inhabited by people to witness or be witnessed by, people to participate, to play off of, to heighten the charge of our investigations....to join us. Realizing I am not alone. And I am reminded: Life is not a solo mission.
Sam Beers, Co-Director
The project tackles the big questions. What is it we do as artists, as bodies, as dancers, as lovers in the world? Do we notice? Do we participate in the patterns which our very existence creates? Consciously?
Mapping with the body is a participation. It is determination to LIVE HERE, determination to participate in the world we create. It is about showing up for one's own commitments to social justice, to beauty, to spirit. It is about showing up for art and community. It is about showing up to one's own party, the riot of imagination, PLAY.
In mapping, we respond with a yes. We respond with touch. We respond, we hope, with compassion. We create invitation to ourselves and to all the others who our-selves might be.
We go to the places we love. We go in familiarity, to shake that familiarity and to deepen it. We go to the places whose bareness or history or sheer normalcy compels us. We go in bright matching colors or in "drag": suits and ties to match the general populace, a far stretch from the garb most of us usually sport.
We scavenge. We shop at the super bargain store where each piece of clothing is a dollar, or scrounge our orange and red and blue off the streets. We work with the fact that such bounty is easy to come by on the streets of San Francisco.
If there is any one overarching theme for me in my working on this project, it is the depth of the act itself, the joy and the difficulty of presence. In other words, the project exists for me (in body, mind and emotion) when I am involved in it. When I check out, get overwhelmed, get sick, get burned, it ceases to exist. What a life lesson! I have to keep remembering to learn it in tiny cycles of iterated epiphany. From this, all the details pour out.
A Day at the Edge.
Kickoff Event, March 28, 1999.
We go to Aquatic Park where the city meets the Bay. We go to this place where bustle and concrete lead into vista and wind and the soft crashing of waves. Here the Power Street Cable Car Line ends, tourists mingle with street musicians, runners, old Italian guys lawn bowling, Hispanic and Asian families fishing, Cubans drumming. This crescent of sand and concrete pier has forever been one of my favorite spots in San Francisco. My memories of this place include a fourth grade field trip to the Balclutha (a clipper ship docked here,), a melting, full-moon kiss at age seventeen and numerous afternoon pilgrimages to dance with water and sand before going to wait tables in white shirt and tie.
How do I (we) score this? Make it belong to the Cartographers, invite a deepening of perception and give it back to itself? I am inspired by the light here: blue and white, by the wind, by the meeting of textures and cultures. Many scores evolve. My favorite is Sea Anemone.
It is a simple score: the entire group makes and agreement to move as one animal for the duration of the score. One simple, aquatic, skin sensing creature. Our arms become tentacles. Our flesh becomes one flesh; we attach to no one. We hold center while moving through and together. We are collectively responsible for our cohesion and a spiraling sense of bound freedom. We locomote the entire length of the pier (some 500 yards), taking half an hour to cover a distance one can comfortably walk in five minutes. We alter distance and time in our moving. When we reach the apex of the pier, we are breathlessly filled with wind. It has breathed us. We run in streaming circles, breaking our silence with whoops and howls.
After a day of dancing and enacting scores at Aquatic Park, the place had changed for me. I have never seen it so down to the detail of cracks and wavelets and distances, nor have I shared it. The group has reached silence. We have witnessed the entire day pass and the light dim. I leave tired, with gratitude.
Labs
We have created labs as a place to BE. We recognize and encourage openness and fluidity in our extended community of collaborators. Everyone is invited to come to Lab. We rarely know in advance who will show up or how many people. Lab is our tool for making experiments, sharing language, creating a sense of community, safety and trust. It is free. It is a very open container. It works, more or less. The body knowledge of those who participate in labs resonates in larger working groups on site.
Thoughts on the Container
Our experiences with Labs and Events bring up larger questions. Should BC always have an open door policy? Can we always let anyone join at any time? What boundaries, ritual, temporal or spatial, need to be set fora thing to gel? When is it important or even necessary to close doors in order to foster intimacy and commitment and to deepen the working process? We want more participation and greater consistency. Fluidity caries stress. Can Olive, Tracy and I create our visions while working with a constantly shifting group of collaborators? It seems that on a fundamental level, the project works because people can participate in whatever way works for them. In what ways are our chosen freedoms also our limitations?
Tracy Vogel, Co-Director
35 people dressed in white. Some hold candles. On this cold San Francisco night I can only imagine that the dim flame is giving some amount of warmth to chilled hands. The fog is rolling through the Western Edition where the BodyCartographers have gathered for their last "Slow Motion Walk" at the end of their first year in the Bay Area. Standing on the three foot wide concrete divider in the middle of Divisadero Street outside of 848 Community Space I begin to take that first step into slow time and personal prayer that will last the next 50 minutes or so. Cars light us up from both sides as they cascade past. Some honk, some yell, some try to engage us with questions and some decide we are the newest religious cult to grace the San Francisco streets. Second story apartment lights come on and spectators gather on corners outside of the local cafe and corner liquor stores. One woman, who looking like she just emerged from the SOMAR goth scene, pulls out her disposable camera to gather a memory of her moment here in San Francisco. A group of young boys begin joking with each other, laughing at us and the scene we are creating before them -- "hey man, what the fuck?" "check this out --go over there man, go over there and check Œem out." On this walk, unlike usual, no one joins us. Maybe the small street divider is too risky as cars drive by in range of bodily contact. Maybe the cops that keep circling with their lights flashing make joiners fear arrest. I know it makes the hair on my arms rise as I review the rules of passive resistance and peaceful activism in my head. But we aren't here as activists and we are not resisting anything. We are a group of performers, dancers, office workers, singers, carpenters, walkers, nature lovers, organizers, friends and strangers who have come together to bring a bit more imagistic beauty into the Western Edition.
I am often struck by the still images we create in the world. Perhaps this is only my perception upon viewing a photograph, drawing, video or some other piece of visual documentation from our events. Imigistic beauty, it exists once and is remembered countless times.
Flash back to Fall of 98 in Jack London Square. Same scenario. Farmers Market a group of 16 dressed in red doing a slow motion walk through Oakland's Jack London Square. Exploring the abundance of life and commerce at 8am Sunday morning. Immediately upon starting I notice everything red in the environment. The paint on the ground directing traffic, the many individuals in red rain gear or warm winter jackets, the flags that grace the skyline, the red peppers and flowers being sold at the booths. Through the next hour we are joined by many. A group of boys poses one of their friends between us. Before he understands why they are telling him to stand still, he is surrounded by us. Losing his inhibitions he joins, walking slowly, a few steps, a few minutes, before embarrassment sinks in and he runs back to his friends. There is the woman in a long red rain coat who wants us to meet her in an hour at a downtown Oakland BART station so she can walk with us at a time more convenient to her day. There is a middle aged couple, one in a complementary red, who berates us by the minute for wasting so much time --yet stays with us for over a half hour making up scourging limericks. Then there is the stunning man from Ethiopia who for the entire length of our walk sets himself about six feet in front of us -- slowly raises his hands and face to the sky -- and waits for us to surround him. Unlike us, who move slowly, he doesn't move at all save his eyes closing as we overtake him. When we have completely past him he will walk around and in front of us to reassume his position and dance with us again and again.
Of all the many scores we have done this is my favorite. It has great impact and interaction through its pure simplicity. The score: 1 to 100+ participants of any age, size, and ability gather at a chosen destination in a chosen color (generally red, orange, blue, white, yellow or green) at a chosen time. Give away your verbal language. Look and visually explore the environment you are in. Feel your breath and base of support connected to the ground and begin to move forward as slowly as you can. Throughout the time of the score feel yourself independent and as a part of this group all sharing a different time nature than the surrounding environment.
This score has been performed at Dia de Los Muertos in SF, China Town SF, Mission District SF, Wester Edition SF, 12th St., Jack London Square Oakland. And at the writing of this article many of us are planning to join Tich Nat Han's slow motion walk in Oakland for world peace on September 18th.
A trio of women we have begun and hold what feels like a wide vision. Dedicating ourselves to playing with anyone and everyone who is open to the contact. We come from a "dance" background, modern post modern technical and performance based. We desire dance to be accessible to anyone, anytime at anyplace. We take it to the streets to fully engage with our environment, to make living in a concrete city with a million people, living at home. How do we work together? We are ever evolving, changing and exploring models and roles of leadership and facilitation that can meet our long term goals and the projects short lived group moments. Someone has to be a home to this vision. Fist Olive. Now only three of us, but the circle of people is growing. As more participants step forward to organize and test their own visions the container grows. And as we hoped it is not of us anymore it is truly of us all. Through a network of e-mail, voice mail and word of mouth events are organized and fulfilled. The KPFA protest, the War Protests, the Women in Prison public education event, our public transportation day, dancing in the headlands, performing at friends' salons, events, birthdays and more. You never know who will show up but within twenty minutes of the allotted time you will have a group as small as 5, as large as fifty and usually somewhere in between. The question always emerges -what if no one shows up? Will I do this myself? And your vision is always clarified: "Damn this score is really only effective with ten people. How am I going to do a counterbalancing human sculpture with just me?" Then you sidle up to a stranger, a lamp post, a tree and go from there. Another radical act of strangeness and beauty to accompany the landscape.
Our public performances remind me of the Happenings from the 60s and 70's. I think of all of the amazing artists and teachers I have read about, studied with and witnessed. Dancing on the market St Muni stop I remind myself that nothing is new, everything has been created before, and I dedicate this moment to all of those who made it possible for me to do this here, now, 1999 San Francisco.
UPINCOMING EVENTS 2000
| Ukiah, CA | February |
| Minneapolis, MI | May/June |
| Artship, Oakland, CA | June/July |
The BodyCartography Project is an ongoing performance research project based in the SF/Bay Area and performing where ever they travel. The touring structure is potentially a facillitated community project; collaboration with local artists in research, labs, site specific events and theater performance.
They can be reached by voice mail at 415-541-5644, website www.bodycartography.org, and by e-mail at olivebee@yahoo.com, tvogel@dnai.com, sambe@dnai.com.
Participants, donations, feedback, love and appreciation welcome. With special thanks to Image Lab, 848 Community Space, Bodywork Central, CELL space, Integrated Arts and all paticipants past and present.
This article converted from plain text (email) to HTML 21 Nov 1999 by Jim Davis apologies for errors introduced in the conversion process