HOLD EVERY BREATH
The Exercise was given me at the workshop. This day I went to a performance about breathing “Pust” by Liv Hanne Haugen. Inside a big buble I was given a cup with 11 corns in. For each time I breathed I should drop the corn in the cup and it made a sound. Counting the breath of me and the other audience. I got surprised by how long one breath takes.
This exercise is from a deck of about 60 cards made by the “Moderna Museet” and Magda Lipka Falck in Stockholm. It proposes different ways to observe art and the instructions on the card is as follow 1. Take a card. 2. Follow the instruction. 3. What happens?
This piece of art is actually a table board used by earlier art students and it has been standing in my work room for some time. The more I observe, the more it looks like art. The colours, the texture. I get relaxed by it.
The book “The Analysis of Performance Art. A Guide to its Theory and Practice” by Anthony Howell puts forward a method of teaching performance art as a discipline distinct from dance, drama, painting or sculpture. There are exercises in the book which are different ways of mixing the three primaries of action; stillness, repetition and inconsistency.
I did not do an exercise this day, but link to an exercise I did in 2009 when I was supposed to stand still for an hour in a shopping mall, but was thrown out before an hour had passed. http://exercise-of-freedom.blogspot.no/2009/02/stand-still-for-one-hour-in-lively.html
ORGANIZE
This one-word exercise was given to me at the workshop and without planning, it fitted the day of being mentored by Ray Langenbach and Charles Garoian. The idea of mapping the exercises like a rhizome opened up a new direction.
This exercise is from the book “Conceptual Blockbusting: A Guide to Better Ideas” by engineer James Adams. Employing unconventional exercises and other interactive elements, Adams shows individuals, teams, and organizations how to overcome these blocks, embrace alternative ways of thinking about complex problems, and celebrate the joy of creativity.
The exercise was introduced to me by professor of Art Education Charles Garoian at the workshop I organised “Performance Art, Exercises and Untamed Education” at the Art Academy, Tromsø.
If there is any “right” answer, to pee in it would solve the problem. To ask your mother is also a very good suggestion.
TRAUMA RELEASE EXERCISES
Google it – follow Youtube-video
This exercise was given to me at the workshop. Great to know about and to try out. And the instruction videos is an interesting study. To google youtube videos can also be a surprising exercise
“Ask someone else to create performance exercises for you.”
I had a workshop at the Hollo Symposium at the Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki “Imagining Exercises for the Performance Artist”. I asked the participants a task of creating exercises for me which I can perform during this year. I had printed a calendar with all the months of the year and they wrote exercises, based on my exercises and then place it on a chosen date.