One Hand Moments: We Often Make Love with Wor(l)ds (2016)
8-hour Durational Performance with newborn, S. Chatzilias-Olszanowski (4 months old), Words & [ ] — a Durational Conference of Art & Thought, Fonderie Darling, Montreal, QC.
I re-created my newborn’s room and our daily activities for 8 hours, asking people to touch me as I touch my infant.
I re-created my newborn’s room and our daily activities for 8 hours, asking people to touch me as I touch my infant.
“Making love is not just becoming as one, or even two, but becoming as a hundred thousand … we always make love with worlds.”
—Deleuze & Guattari, Anti-Oedipus (1972)
The initial move a baby makes that indicates they are alive is a breath followed by a cry. Crying is an attempt at wording what is yet un-worded; at what is being discovered. It demarcates the distance between m/other bodies. What does the distance from my tongue to my son’s form? To [ forget a mother tongue ] assumes a knowledge of it. How do we come to know it? Primary language at its basest is that of a newborn—their cries.
No.
Not simply verbal.
Gestural.
For example, tongue smacking is the first cue of hunger. Crying is the last. A need to survive via not/words. Knotted words.
How is a wor[ ]d made?
The [ performance ] explores various modes of linguistic un/making via the collective exhaustion of motherhood. How can the banality and frustration of the repetitive actions of mothering (ones that have led to my postpartum depression) become spaces for new potentialities to emerge when on display? when taken out of their domestic context? What is the boundary between our wor(l)ds and a newborn’s wor(l)ds? One possible answer is to be guided by a newborn’s orientation toward and discovery of a mother tongue.
Conference participants passing by my area are asked to sit/stand/lay for the entire duration of whatever is happening during my performance at the time. There will be basic instructions. We are only finished the moment when Solon is. In this way we are always of each other’s wor(l)ds. For example, when I change him, I hope for the participants to imagine being cleaned; letting go of everything, or cleaning some part of their body, slowly, methodically. The participants are asked to write any thoughts after the duration of said activity and give it to us. I will read them to Solon when he is awake. At the time of the performance he will be 3 ½ months old—at an age of distinguishing the importance of simple monosyllable words. A time when he is most prone to listening.
I will hold Solon during the entire duration of the piece, like this proposal, which is written with one hand.
The performance will be audio-recorded in four-hour intervals (approximate newborn cycle of sleep) and sped up at a rate to become white noise. Babies need white noise. White noise reflects the wor(l)d of the womb.
Duration
Eeach activity can take anywhere from five minutes to four hours. S— will ultimately guide the piece. It is an extended durational work because motherhood is a extended durational performance of making love with wor(l)ds.
Equipment
Portable crib, a 2’ x 3’ rug, changing pad, plugs for speaker and computer, noise machine, toys, diapers, change of clothes, room with dimmed lights at some points.