Brokeness and fearlessness


I cannot not know this anymore.
Pina Bausch has broken me.
Even with her eyes closed, with my eyes closed, I can't stop looking, searching, stumbling.

I'm grateful that I hadnt seen Cafe Muller before I did this experimental piece. I may have felt less lost had I known of Pina beforehand, and being lost was the most necessary and exciting part about doing this performance. In it I am remembering a drawing whilst re-drawing it onto the ground using sticks, with my eyes closed. My contribution to this performance isn't that 'good' or resolved, but it is a beginning, a sketch perhaps for walking into somewhere else. I see it as an extension of my drawing practice, in which I draw without looking at the page. But unlike the majority of my drawings, which I make as a way of looking and thinking, which are actions that need to be made before the 'real' work can be made and which shamefully pile up in the studio, this experimental performance is getting closer to bridging the gap between my privae studio drawings and the public ephermal installations and performances . As with most of my creative shuffling, it looks pretty straight forward, but behind the scenes where long conversations in which Nuno prodded me, gentle coaxed me, unsuccessfully persuaded me, belligerent nudged me, challenged me and encouraged me until just a few hours before the performance I surrendered, and walked all the way out there, into this...