Response 45 - Tripped up by documentation
Dear Alan,
Thanks for Task 45 – Carnival Geography. I decided to name my response to this task tripped up by documentation, because this was my underlying feeling while resolving the task. I was excited with your idea for the score, using the map-drawing made by Erin Pickles as a score. I also liked the parameters and koans around the ‘doing’ of the task and how it framed the temporal and spatial approach to the exploration. Had my task finished here I think I believe I would have felt ‘happily creative’ and free to explore on my own terms. In the end there was a mismatch between my intentions and the end result, tripped up by documentation. Below I will account for this discrepancy.
What I intended to do
I imagined using Erin’s drawing as a guide for internal movement rather than trying to think of it as directions to move around the space. Internalising the map this way seemed an exciting opportunity to explore the internal space of my body in relation to the external space I was moving through. I would allow my physical capacity to decide how I moved and for how long. I set out to do three interpretations of the score, covering three areas of our home that seemed affective/non-affective or both. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen area so that was my first choice of ‘territory’. The bedroom was my second area as our bed is currently an important space, not purely for sleep and rest, but also as a workspace where I can recline while tapping away on my laptop. Finally, this weekend we had planned our yearly visit to the small island of Fur and this seemed like a fun occasion to think of the summerhouse and familiar surroundings that we return to, as an extension of what home feels like.
What I ended up doing
What tripped me up in the end, was your request to graph this experience based on the ruminations of Drucker, as you explain in the task. The making of a somatic-affective diagram was very interesting but shifted my focus away from the physical exploration. How could I be present in my body and carry out the documentation while calibrating my energy levels and time? For the sake of efficiency I did the dance and the graphing simultaneously. I used my Notes Plus App for sketching and composing the map as it allowed me to trace my path by taking photos that I could manipulate in size and position according to the affective charge of where I was located. I did this while I moved through the various ‘territories’. It was enjoyable, but making sure that I had a response to hand back to you and some material to show, overshadowed my bodily investigation. In fact I never really did the movement exploration in the end and it felt like an unsatisfying process as I had bypassed my body. I had missed out on the dance.
Nevertheless, here is the documentation in the format you asked.
