January 8th, 2020
V. Hard Drives, Choreography, the Bible, and Being an Artist
Renata Pereira Lima < renpl662@gmail.com >
to me __ >> Tue, Dec 15, 2020 12:26 AM _____________________________________________________________________
New Recording.m4a
[Transcript of audio file)
—and I’m like, alright bitch, you’re gonna explain to me right now how to fucking copy all of my hard drive into my new external hard drive and I'm going to know where everything is and no mames Addison osea, que drama. Literal, que drama, fue como, osea— perdóname universo, porque le traté al man con una actitud un poco impaciente y un poco malcriada—no sé, malcriada, pero—güey—Ooof anyways, I'm backing up my computer right now. And I'm becoming a woman—instead of like, a bag lady, I'm like an external hard drive lady: two boobs and five external hard drives...two girls one cup. Okay, so the last thing I'm going to say, because I'm getting quite tired, and I've spoken an exaggerative amount. I'm so sorry.
So right now I am working on the Samuel Beckett thing. I've just hired three other dancers and a videographer. And I'm feeling like the more that I talk about it out loud to people, the less interesting it becomes to me. Or the less interesting it is. I think this is because rhythm and choreography is so not being seen the way it should be seen. I'm saying this because I had a breakthrough when I was in Sonora. I took like a six hour bus ride twice. And I was thinking about how I really want to do a studio visit. And I'm like, How does a choreographer do a studio visit? What does that look like?
I started to think about how William Forsyth did this incredible show and it was titled choreographic objects where he exhibited what this meant for him, I guess you could say. And it was really like versatile, the show, there were these really expensive opulent pieces. And then there were very simple pieces. And I of course resonated and gravitated more to the simple pieces. And one that really caught my eye was the feather duster. So he had a feather duster on exhibition and it said please pick me up and a feather duster, you know, no matter how still you hold it, it'll continue to move because of the air. And this fascinated me because I feel like I am so much more corporally connected, maybe even more than like cerebrally or verbally. And it's just so evident to me the nuances that exist and that live in circumstances or gestures or actions. And these can be from the most complex things to the most mundane things to the most innate or like, wistful gestures. But take for instance, like, breath, like—well no—breathing is actually not. But like, blinking or yawning, you know? And so this is interesting to me, like William Forsyth terming choreographic objects. And I think I do this in my video editing where like, I take these really small moments and show the rhythm and the repetition.
I want to go buy a Bible and I want to take this Bible and with my left hand with my handycam, I'll videotape it. Because I want it to be like, I don't want it to be propped up, I want the camera to be an extension of my body. And with my right hand I'll rip out every single page of the Bible. And if you think about that, you know this gesture is so simple. It's so—people wouldn't even bat an eye to the gesture of ripping, ripping a page, let alone ripping a page out of a Bible, a Bible that is so bloated. Like, it's so fucking loaded, bro. And I like this. I like to start with this by the complexity of its gesture where I'm going to be dedicating an hour to my life to ripping out a page, ripping out a page, ripping out a page, no sé, no sé. I feel like there's 18,000 pages in the Bible and I'll take maybe, I don't know, more than a week if I dedicate an hour to do this everyday. But then what that means conceptually is also pretty fantastic, no? Because I like how Carl Jung talks about time in a nonlinear sense. We're like, Past and Present and Future. It's all the same. The future is the present, the past is the present. And that's what we have. And that is beautiful and like, that's the essence of understanding evolution: nothing is linear. Osea like, also how I'm just ripping time...Ripping time ripping time...what this piece means for me is like so loaded and elegant and juicy and I love this. And like these are the things that jump out to me. This is what jumps out to me in life. These things. I like how choreography can just continuously be investigated upon like, I don't know, I like how choreography is ephemeral and what is ephemerality? Ephemerality is, in a choreographic sense, a score that measures something, and at the same time, never repeats to exist. Again, it happens and then it stops happening and it measures a beginning, a climax and an end. And that, to me, is also quite graphic.
To be honest, being an artist is rigorous. It's rigorous because you have to—oh man I think I'm gonna get my period because I almost just cried right there. Being an artist is so hard, because it's like, güey osea, it consumes you. And, como, me alimenta tanto pero al mismo tiempo, it invigorates me in a way that is so overwhelming a veces, because you can’t stop once you’ve chosen to do this, to live by making art and deciding to need it, then very soon you cannot go back; you lose the possibility of choosing another life. You need to do it. And it’s so fucking unpredictable, it’s so unstable. But at the same time, I feel rich in the head and heart and soul and I swear, I feel full, you know? That I can live my life honest to the things I love to do without compromising anything, I’m just, so grateful for my life. I'm thinking about these things because they're worthy enough to investigate. And I'm going to do it and I'm going to go there because that is what interests me the most in my life right now. As Renata, as this 26 year old girl on a Monday night at 11:25 in CDMX.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
EST 2020
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© THE QUARTERLESS REVIEW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
EST 2020
︎
© THE QUARTERLESS REVIEW ALL RIGHTS RESERVED