Unexperiences at Matter of Art Prague Biennale
Notes from inside Unexperiences (in booklet at the biennale):
2022
June 30, Gesundbrunnen train station Berlin
I'm very alert. I scan everything with maximum attention. The trains that are arriving and departing, the announcements. Especially the faces of people get my attention. I'm looking, scanning the weeds between the tracks. I check the people again, mostly out of the corners of my eyes. I am slowly turning around looking with suspicion at everything. There is suspicion and worry on my face. Now my body feels like hiding in plain sight. My face is intense, frowning, I'm looking intensely at things. Now my gaze is quickly pulled by different items. Mostly people's faces. People that are sometimes puzzled by this. Now I look at the floor and my own body with suspicion. Like something does not makes sense, like I have to figure out what is going on with them. I am walking and I feel my legs as walking by themselves, I see them as not mine, with a combination of fascination, worry and suspicion on my face. Now this extends towards my entire body. Especially my hands that are writing this. I keep walking like this, fascinated by my legs and my body, and suspicious about this phenomenon. From time to time I throw quick investigative glances around, with the feeling that things and people want to deceive me, and I want to catch them at it. And I come back to looking to my autonomous strangely moving body.
June 18, old city, Faro
It feels like the things and beings around have something extra, excessive, scary a little bit. My body enters in protective postures and movements. My eyes are scanning the environment, or actually different things capture their attention, move them, pull them. Trees, people, cars, buildings, the space between the cubicles. I'm going slowly, carefully, very close to this wall in a bent, protective posture looking scared around me. Some people seem intrigued, some are keeping distance going out of the sidewalk into the street for a couple of steps. I stopped and I'm very triggered by noises, like a rabbit or a cat. All the stimuli are at the edge of too much, and they can aggress me. I went in a tense protective bend, in a state similar to when someone is about to hit you. My gaze is very much narrowed and blurry. Sometimes it gets a little clearer and I can write. I started to walk in this very protective state, very close to the wall. Now I am walking slowly, very attentive, appearing more neutral as posture, very careful to not trigger the attention of people and things. People notice me though. Probably because of the tension in my body. My body appears quiet but it's very alert, like ready to flight or fight, rather flight. To reduce unnecessary movements just my eyes move, I look with the corners of my eyes, and throw glances around to evaluate the situation. My body started to react strongly to the shadows, I see darkness more intensely and also in things that usually I don't notice. Sometimes I feel the darkness on my back or on the side of the body, and I turn around and see a strange darkness that triggers me. My body started to respond fast to all kinds of shadows, it's affected, the posture changed, I'm turned faster and faster around by different dark spots. I calmed down, sometimes light fears pass my body like a shiver. It feels like this fear it's on the verge of opening something in my body or in my word, it feels like anything can happen.
June 8, Praia de Cacela Velha
I have this diffuse rage. It jumps from object to object. From a cloud to a plant, to a person, to the sea, to a tree, to a house, to myself. It's like a way to connect with everything. My face gets contorted, there is tension in my body, but somehow it's also all abstract. My body still looks for something, someone to discharge its abstract anger. It entered these repetitive rapid gestures, and my head, from time to time goes into a scream towards the sky. It's a quiet scream, in the entire body. And then my body curves into itself and stays in this tense balance. While writing, some anger is oriented towards this keyboard, this screen. I'm impatient with all this. Now I'm walking, and there are some small obstacles, like I have to go between bushes and cactus, and all sorts of stuff, like spikes and twigs and shells in the sand. My rage has concrete objects now. Now I'm on the beach at sunset. It is supposed to be a calm experience, but I feel these waves of rage coming from an apparently calm sea. My body started to advance menacingly towards the sea, but it stopped. Now the anger is inside myself, the sea is calm again. It's like I'm boiling, like I contain a sea of rage inside me. My body does these contorted, tense gestures. Sometimes my hands seem to want to hurt the body. They stop, or just gently do it. For the people it can look like a kind of a weird butoh. Suddenly the calm of the sea and of the landscape got to me. It's a huge contrast, I'm slowly emptied. Now the rage is like a tension contained inside that slowly resides.
May 11, Uferstraße Berlin
I just slowly turn around and everything that I see is nothing short of amazing. The street is under construction, excavators and all kinds of tools, trees, people walking and biking close to me because of the reduced sidewalk. And my body, it's amazing how my legs know how to step on the pavement. People stare at me a little puzzled by my awe. It's so strange to walk under the sky, it's a miracle, the sky, and the trees too, the garbage on the street, the destroyed couches one on top of the other, dismantled clothes and everything is like a perfect composition. The mountains of excavated earth beyond these red-white fences are quite beautiful. I hope they feel protected. I'm feeling protected and enchanted by this superb world around myself. I'm continuing to turn slowly around, taking in this amazing stuff. I think the birds speak to me, I hope they're not upset, they seem calm though, too bad that I don't speak their language, but it might be that this beauty is their language.
2020
October 25, park in Sofia
I got a bit confused, I don't know why I'm writing this text, or why I'm writing it now, 15:00 in the corner of the screen, being in this place here, in a park in Sofia, I think. I don't know why I'm exactly in this place, in this posture, I stay on some grass here, they are the unlucky ones, pressed under my feet. I don't know what this is, the things, the people around, the dogs, the pigeon, the plants are all strangely composed around this place, although they seem to be exactly in their place. It's like something is going on here, and I cannot figure out what all this means. I don't know how I'm supposed to apply myself to this reality. I don't even know how to keep my hands, where to look, what posture to have in this environment. It feels like I'm strangely inserted here, not ok. If only I can figure out the right attitude, the right feeling for all this. I move a bit to the left, maybe it feels better. No, it's still not my place. The only anchor to all this are my thumbs moving on this keyboard. The meta cognitive functions seem to work, the first attention and cognition that is supposed to blend me smoothly into the world seems to have some difficulties. Anyway I'm grateful that I'm allowed to take part (partially) in this environment, even if I don't know what it could all be about. I move my body, I make it to walk a little, but it's so strange to not find a reason for it, it feels so random, I can also go backwards and it's the same, I go backwards now and it's the same. Now I go sideways and this seems a little better, like in a strange way it is appropriate for this moment here, now, me, the others, including those that are looking with suspicion at me. I stopped in a better spot, I feel more attuned with this situation now, in this place.
October 15, Aether Sofia
I'm in this gallery, it's cold, dark, there is a bad smell coming from the basement, but everything seems perfect, it's exactly what I need at this moment. Also my position in the space, my posture, me staying close to this white wall and writing on this phone, I like how I keep my arms and my hands in relation with my body and my phone. Even if I slowly started to move everything is still quite perfect, any position anything that I see is all good now. I also like the text that I produce and I'm sure that you must be in a good place when this text reaches you. In fact I think that this is one of the best texts that I wrote, and one of the best that were ever written. Maybe you doubt this but you shouldn't, trust me, this is good stuff, it's exactly what you are supposed to read at this moment, I feel so expanded, I just know things. I feel lighter and higher somehow and at the same time very connected with the ground. I imagine that I can seem intimidating but this is how I am in my body and in the world now. Like now, there is no effort whatsoever in writing this, things just arrange on the screen in front of my eyes, and yours now… Things just work by themselves when you operate at this level of flow, isn't this amazing? The strange thing is that I feel that my actions and simple gestures and movements are so strong that they affect aspects of reality.
Unexperiences are activated by performers who shift their attitudes and moods, embodying and slightly distorting suspicion, awe, confusion, pensiveness, sadness, boredom, joy, alienation, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, hypersensitivity... Sometimes their hyper-embodied and, at the same time, abstract reactions seem to be related to the space, other people, objects, or to shared expectations and conventions. Unexperiences are inserted in "inappropriate" contexts where something else is already happening, adding an extra layer to their ordinary function (art spaces, supermarkets, airports…). Meetings are produced between two types of audiences, attentions, situations, performers.
In art contexts we're supposed to be moved, yet at the same time, the convention is to behave contained and composed. In our increasingly programmed environments the embodied affectivity is avoided, we mostly experience images of emotions, disembodied clichés. Unexperiences are deviations from the pre-packaged affectivity. States and emotions shouldn't be just interior – Unexperiences are a way of relating with environments, and at the same time, because they are contagious, a way of creating environments. Artworks are usually visual, sound or conceptual, Unexperiences is affect based. Unexperiences can appear uninvited at some venues – Unofficial Unworks.
Performers Eliza Trefas, Martina Piazzi, Florin Flueras.