Juan Munoz at the Tate Modern

If you’re interested in ideas of self and the body go and see Juan Munoz’s show on at the Tate Modern at the moment.

There, I stood alongside an inanimate man, considering his supersize shadow, and screaming it seemed. And I considered my shadow supersized. Was it about projecting elements of the self, creating that shadow image so large and imposing? Or was he shouting at this shadow? – did he know it was his own or did he think it something scary and unknown even though he produced it? Did he see himself as the small compact figure of rage or desperation, or as the large two-dimensional shape of darkness?

I peered over the shoulder of another figure, which was in turn peering over the shoulder of a fellow human-shaped model, both looking at a mirror. They both wore cardboard masks through which they could see, but which disguised all of their faces – what did they see? What were they looking at? Was my self in the mirror as masked to me as the faces of these figures?

I walked through a room full of laughing, smiling clusters of small Asian-featured men. At first I wanted to laugh too – that kind of laugh that rolls up from your stomach in not quite a normal laughing place, that makes you feel a little crazy or nervous. And then I felt slightly panicked at being outside these happy groups.

I stood and wondered about body language, and about what the artist saw in backs, or mouths. And thought about the spaces we live in and interact with.

I won’t describe too much more less I ruin the surprise, but I found it very provoking and very moving. There is a lot that is very human in it. Expressions of different senses and parts of the body, places that humans occupy, self-image, components of our ideas of selfhood. There is a lot that I felt quite powerfully was reminding me of something, but I couldn’t work out quite what and I wanted to just sit there and think about it.

It’s very good. Do go.

Interesting site where you can see installation views, text and pictures - http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/munoz/project/title.html
Tate Modern info - http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/juanmunoz/default.shtm
Guardian obituary - http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/juanmunoz/default.shtm

Osteopathy, Silver lining

After I last wrote, I took myself and my injured neck off to an osteopath, where I was clicked and cracked and manipulated and massaged and given some exercises to carry on with at home. I emerged freed of pain and with fluid movement again; a wonderful feeling after the kind of pain that restricts everything you do and how you think, even if only for a few days.

It made me think that I would like to be working with people, knowing about joints and bones and muscles, and freeing up tense muscles or over-pressured joints. For a while I wondered about training to be an osteopath. I like the idea of working with a whole person and talking to them and being able to advise them what to do, and being able to help them with frozen up muscles, or sore joints. I liked that she also took into account my lifestyle and suggested different ways of sitting for example, practical things to help with the aches and niggles that come from that sedentary lifestyle we are always told is so bad for is.

In the end, I wasn’t sure it would suit me. I don’t like the fact they can’t explain what the ‘crack’ is that you hear – I want to have an explanation behind what I’m doing. I'm not sure, but I think my shoulders and neck 'crack' a lot more now, following the treatment, and I want to know why this is. I also think I'm more interested in the prevention than the cure - I don't want to be sending people away thinking they are cured then slipping back into bad habits; I think I'd like to spend more time helping them help themselves than cracking things into place or out of tension.

The main problem I suppose is that to justify all that training time and money, I’d have to be pretty sure about it being what I wanted to do. It is just aspects of it that appeal to me, not the whole shebang.

Still, it was very interesting to experience. I had been interested before, but in ignorance – having no idea what they would actually practically do, so now I have been enlightened. And anything where you get an hour with the focus on you is a real treat (I was reading recently an article about Drs referring patients to homeopathic clinics when they know that the actual remedies have no greater effect that placebos in trials, because the time the homeopath spends with a patient is what makes them feel better, and what GPs often can’t offer).

And that feeling of absence of pain when you have just been bound up in the pain is such elation. Every now and then if I have a localised pain in my body I try and concentrate on other parts of the body – ‘feel how light your head is without pain’, I think, ‘feel how smoothly your joints work’. And it does work to reduce the overall thoughts of ‘I am in pain’ to ‘I just have a small pain in a spot in my knee’ for example.

So there were a few silver linings to a minor injury I think. It made me go slower and not overwork myself before exams and it allowed me to find out more about osteopathy. I’m still going slowly with yoga having had a month off for being injured, and not going back into inversions until I feel fully painless in the neck region. I think it was probably a good reminder not to go too far until I am absolutely sure of my strong foundations.

General Osteopathic Council - http://www.osteopathy.org.uk/about_osteo/
Telegraph article on back pain and osteopathy - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2008/02/04/hback104.xml

Anatomy, injured

My bedside reading recently has been The Anatomy of Hatha Yoga by H. David Coulter. I was a little sceptical at first. I have a one and a half-year old yoga practice, I have a smattering of anatomical/physiological knowledge from university and I have some background of history of science.

What I wanted, what I was interested in, was a western modern medicine view of anatomy, related to yoga. I was worried there would be some spuriousness, some yoga philosophy weaved in that made me doubt it all.

Thankfully Coulter - a yogi and anatomist - leaves to one side all discussion of yoga philosophy and restricts his discussion strictly to anatomy and physiology, whilst applying it to yoga postures. It's written in technical but clear language; at a level nearer my uni anatomy textbooks than A-level biology, but written so beautifully smoothly and logically that if your anatomy is a little hazy (as mine is), it still makes sense and is easily absorbed.

Coulter demonstrates characteristics of, for example reflex reactions, by describing experiments you can carry out yourself, which are a superb complement to the written stuff. Illustrations are well placed, clear and detailed. The references to yoga and how the anatomical issues addressed apply are just the kind of thing I have been curious about. All in all, I am very impressed.

And excited, and astounded. The more I read about the tissues and fabrics of my body, their tricks and habits, the more I feel completely in awe of this body I live in. It's astonishing.

This cements in me a feeling that I would like to study more anatomy, and therapies that build on anatomical knowledge (massage, osteopathy).

Which would come in handy for myself now as it happens. I had my head wrongly placed to go up into headstand yesterday morning and as I started to walk feet towards head a bolt of pain flew down my neck and across my shoulder blades and upper back. I am in pain, with limited movement in my neck, and stiffness all over. I am resting; it's not so awful my body won't be able to fix itself, but it is another reminder how precious and important physical health and free movement is, and how important to be informed and knowledgeable to avoid injury so far as possible (but not to stop attempting headstands...)

The website of the book - http://www.bodyandbreath.com/Book.htm

Hofesh Shechter

I still haven't written about Hofesh Shechter! It was weeks ago I saw Uprising/In Your Rooms at Sadlers Wells. And I loved it. But somehow I've found it difficult to find the words for it.

Time has already eroded my impressions from the night, but what I remember standing out in particular was a looseness that I don't remember seeing in much other contemporary dance.

A repeated movement that was reminiscent of a chimpanzee running and a skanking kind of movement lodged themselves in my mind. Loose necks, heads, arms. A lovely organic rhythm. Echoes of other worlds.

And there was a real sense of integration and overall vision. Of creating something with the dancers, the lighting (which was beautiful) and the music (which was awesome - at the start it was viscerally heartbeat-esque).

And of effect - use of force and stillness and formations (I remember vividly all the dancers in a line pushing both arms in the air in time with the music. Simple and very powerful). A subtle kind of imagery so that although I hadn't seen the running order I knew from the dancing that the first piece must have been Uprising, because it gave me a feeling of uprising, without being blatant.

I liked it very much, and I look forward to more Hofesh in the future... Will his style lose its magic for me if I see more similar work, or will it grow and evolve in fabulous ways?

See Hofesh's homesite http://www.hofesh.co.uk/
I mentioned skanking. If you're not familiar see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlnHQ7Y6WA4
And http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1aWYHG7lho which, as the kids say, is not real skanking - it's like a slightly hip-hop variant. Pretty cool though.

Stillness and Antony Gormley

Sad to see the other day that the Antony Gormley man had disappeared from Waterloo bridge. The bronze casts of Gormley that stood and silently stared out from their perches all around the South Bank had been with us all summer. I'd heard about them before I encountered the one on Waterloo bridge, but it was something different to see it in the flesh, as it were.

I felt a kind of pulling. I felt as though if I stood as still as that 'man' was, I would feel stuck, and pulled. There's such an onwards rush in London. We people, like molecules, flow along as rivers, as streams (watch the suits emerge from London Bridge station in the morning - they pour over the bridge into the City - it's quite a sight). And to stand still amongst all that is just not done.

Yes, tourists dither, consult maps, take snapshots. And there are homeless people who are separate from the fray - hunched at the side of the streets. But who stands, just stands and is?

Just the little bronze men, so far as I know.

That was really powerful to me. It made me want to stop and stand and see everything rushing around me. And it served as a contrast, a quiet comment on our franticness.

Others have made much of the way the statues seemed to look after or over the people below then. How it wasn't clear whether they were surveying the landscape or contemplating a jump.

I just loved the stillness. The reminder to be still.

Pictures of the sculptures http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/gallery/2007/may/03/art?picture=329805762
Interview with Lalitaraja about stillness and meditation in dance http://www.dharmalife.com/issue26/stillness.html
Article about recent collaborative work between Antony Gormley, Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Nitin Sawnhey http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1526373,00.html

The Wellcome Collection

...is really rather good. Its very slick and stylish and modern. It's a real exemplar of novel ways to present information, and also of how to play with that information in the first place. The modern medicine room is cross-disciplinary in a really exciting way; science and art meshing together completely comfortably.

Short recorded lectures about malaria speak just to you as you sit in a chair. A gigantic plaster model of a distorted body, representing 'I can't help what I think' stands next to a graphical representation of heartbeats, a beautiful glass scuplture of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, a piece made of mosquito nets and little photos about AIDS in Africa. Glass cases hold exercise videos, diet books and other familiar artefacts of our modern obsession with size and health - emphasising the point that our own present culture can be put in a case and labelled and studied just the same as that foreignness of the past.

And the events... really innovative and interesting. See links below.

The staff are helpful, the cakes in the cafe look good, and the building - where I used to go and read and fall asleep back in my degree days - is lovely as ever. Can't wait to see the new sleep and dreaming exhibition coming soon.

The Wellcome Collection http://www.wellcomecollection.org/
Witness live heart surgery http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX041264.htm
Books to make you better http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX039485.htm
An experimental and experiential insight into the materiality of flesh http://www.wellcomecollection.org/exhibitionsandevents/events/WTX041288.htm

The way we walk

This is what I was wondering the other day as my mind gave up determinedly focusing and drifted away from the business finance it was supposed to be taking in: I was wondering about the ways people walk and why I like some gaits, find some gestures annoying, am irritated by some gesticulation or posture. Why I even notice it consciously at all.

I often find myself watching people and analysing their walks, the way they exit a room, drink a cup of tea, sit down, stand up. If I know them, I might match it to what I know of them; if I don't I might make spurious conjecture about them based on it. Or I might just follow the patterns, studying the peculiar way they curl their figures as they speak or the angle of their feet as they stand.

It made me think about the idea of dance as a language. You are building up your vocabulary, your dictionary, our choreography teacher used to tell us at Birkbeck, so that when you know enough of the technicalities of the language, you can say what you want to say in it.

I wondered whether my habit is in part because I am traditionally not a person particularly adept with spoken language. Articulacy is much easier for me on paper than straight from the brain into the air.

Maybe being quiet, being careful with words, means I am more likely to try and take more from the unvocalised language of movement?

Who knows. But what of the movement itself? The movement we all unthinkingly act out every day. The walk with which your close acquaintances can recognise you way before your face comes into focus, the way you sit in a chair, the little tics - pulling hems of shirts, playing with hair, nodding, gesturing, the rhythms to your being in space. How are they learned? How do we manipulate them? How much is physically limited, how much is driven by other factors and what are they? How aware are we of the style we move? What can we read into them? Do I see someone and match their swagger to the arrogance or defensively shielded vulnerability I have already detected in them, or do I imagine that characteristic subconsciously because of the swagger?....

I was in a training session the other week with a trainer whose hand movements were jerky and repetitive; whose spine curled over when he sat, whose head twitched from side to side as he listened to our comments. I wanted to attach some kind of movement sensors to his ears, his nose, his elbows and his fingertips. And then to film so that we could watch those movements without their body, to see people mapped out by their habitual positions and postures and unthought out shapes and motions and drawings in the air.