Notes on OUIJA videos

*Apologies for abstraction*

CONTACT-
- Sense of communication between bodies lost when common (movement) language is known. Both are eager to express- neither listening, just looking for a stimulation to respond.
- Communication/ actual dialogue only begins to occur when both slow down- The sense of focus is shifted from the other to the self- Now a real listening happens, when one can listen to the other and ‘understand’ through an awareness of affect in one’s own body. The minute this awareness is lost and the process becomes mental- conversation is lost and monologue begins.
-Excitement builds at opportunity of ‘gesture’- The urge to respond, mimic, argue… This is not true desire to move, this is not where movement originates, this is “rajas” or quickening energy, response to stimulus not autonomous expression. This excitement impedes the ability to respond rationally or ‘honestly’ because there is not a real listening. It is necessary to find a “passive” stance in ego to listen “actively”- to allow oneself to hear, digest, reflect.

ENTRAINMENT (example with dancers and non-dancers around the table)
- Utterance and gesture- When does one give way to/ become the other? This was the cycle of the particular experiment:
Mental(Utterance)>Sensory/ Response(Gesture)>Embarrassment(Physical and Mental- Sense of shame)>Utterance(Mental)

-The people sit around the table responding to one another mentally. There is no ‘conversation’ (see above) there is complimentary monologue as each individual self-responds to his/ her anxiety and/or unsettled-ness. (I say these states of being not as negative states of being, but simply because if they were not present in the individual there would be no need to interact as one is “entrained” to do… “Conversation” as we are used to it consists of individual monologue stimulating the tangent of monologue in the “other”.)
-The dancers slowly begin to move in/on/around the table. Instead of using speech to respond they begin to respond with gesture. This is primal communication and still a mental process. Particularly for the non-dancers who are unsure of what is happening and mentally attempting to understand.
-The transition is subtle. When one ceases to rationalize through language and begins to respond through gesture… Without depending on a mental process or using language to understand the context, one ceases to “need” to rationalize and instead begins to both respond and express genuinely. The energetic stimulus can be completed within the individual immediately without becoming dispersed and abstracted through language.
-This energetic expression is oft forgotten for most of us. Usually when we are able to communicate in pure energetic/ gestured expression is in moments of intensity: grief, anger, sex, fear etc… All other interaction is ‘civilized’: i.e. mental and rational. If and when we are able to communicate through gesture/energy in a non-intense setting or without the opening of intense emotion- it follows that we may feel embarrassed and/or vulnerable afterwards because this kind of expression is reserved for us, for moments in which we “lack self-control”
- We can see in the transition of the group that there was a moment of ‘letting go’ in which everyone was able to express gesture without a mental editing. This moment feels like a moment of convergence and the audience knows that the group is acting as a whole. When this shifts it is felt from the audience when one or members of the group begin to laugh- this laughter is nervous and serves as a distancing between the person and the action as well as an outlet for unused energy. Once the energy is dispersed through laugher the mental rational conversation begins again.

DELAY
- An idea of repetition/energetic repetition as impetus for movement and cause of present action.
Habits, patterns, stuck energy or points of high energetic concentration. The image of the dancer is repeated and multiplied, the past continues to function as an autonomous entity, the dancer in the present responds to movements of the past.
-When does the delay shift from mirror to “other”- Can one challenge the “other” of the past in conversation? Can movement in the present change the context/interpretation of the movement of the past?
-The entity ‘in-between’. When do the impetus elements of the dancers, media, audience combine to become a separate entity?