Click to play the interview with Shahar

We decided to try something new in the performance. We avoided the somewhat obvious use of live-stills. We decided that I would spend the first part of the performance collecting images and then taking the time to edit the images and constructing them into a SweetClarity-like presentation – all created live. A first attempt. As I was shooting I felt distant from the space. As I was editing I felt torn from the space, I wanted to watch it instead of the screen. I wasn’t happy with the images on the screen. I felt pressure. I surrendered to it and threw out all the images I instinctively did not want to show. I was left with a short collection – and that was what went back into the performance space. As I write these first words in this post I still have not spent time with the images (which I intend to do before it is published). It was an experiment that I do not wish to repeat again (at least not in a performance space).

The performance was a first of three visits we made to the center area of Israel from the distant north where we live. This is way more then the usual visit once in two or three months. I expected it to be a taxing month and it was. The combination of being away from home, traveling, spending time at my parents home and in a city landscape, irregular food, inconsistent (almost lack) of practice … all left me quiet and edgy. I feel a friction between myself and my own skin, from the inside… like an itch that can’t be scratched. I spend my days trying to let time pass in peace… letting my energy reconsolidate itself and looking forward to looking forward to getting on the practice mat again.

The backdrop for all this is a life defined mostly by unknowns. The unknows feel more menacing when my skin is itching from the inside. The unknowns are more angering when the itching is stronger. It is also spring, a time of change, windy. My breath is constricted, I barely play the Shakuhachi.

In this setting comes another invitation from Shahar to partake in the next performance. I don’t know. It is what I want most to do and what I fear most of doing. It will fill me with a sense of purpose and expectation from the second I say yes through to the end of the performance itself. But the present is weighing down on me, immobilizing me. I don’t feel well … I am not scared. I know this will pass, I know I will find my way through it, I know my practice will find me once again, I know… All that does not change the present moment – a heavy, agitated, sticky, annoying, itchy, sad moment. My practices have all trained me to be in the present – and so I am. Not waiting for it to pass or fade or change. In it, it in me.

I don’t know what a future time holds in store for me – neither in life nor on stage. I don’t know. This present moment is just about all I can take – it consumes me. The other day, Andreea spoke to me about moving to Romania, later that day my energy sank and eventually crashed leaving me with a headache for the remainder of the day. The present has me and there is very little space for anything else.

I wrote most of this post yesterday. Today I intended to visit the images. I just turned on the computer with the image processing tools on it, and now I know without a doubt I do not yet want to bring the images from the previous performance into my consciousness. They carry with them a mass from the past and a hint of a future. This post will remain written and spoken and unseen.

i wasn’t really happy about this location. i am not a big fan of shopping malls, especially big and busy ones like this one. we gathered on one of the top floors and i recall shahar inviting us to look out and down at the space. at first I saw the noise i expected to see, but then, rather quickly, i felt as if all of my senses were softening and  coming slightly out of focus – and the noise became peaceful. the place became a single living & sensible organism – and i was inside it, no longer an outside observer. my body became soft & relaxed and my anxiety and opposition faded.

shahar spoke about a place having its own resonance and how we can relate to this resonance. we can resonate with the place and become a part of it and we can resonate in another frequency and stand out – we can appear and disappear at will. it sounds magical and it is. the group split into smaller groups of two or three people and went to explore and work in the space. i traveled the vast space – sometimes visiting shortly with a group and other times joining and working for a longer period of time with others. on numerous occasions i recall looking around and wondering how can people ignore some of the weird and crazy stuff that we were doing. people were walking past us as if we weren’t there. magic.

for me the main event took place around these stairs. ilay and yael were grazing the space and tamar was tagging along with them. i spotted ilay walking on these stairs from a distance and i ran to a vantage point on the opposite side just in time to meet this image.

then an amazing story began to unfold with tamar. i am not inclined yet to write about it – i still feel it is a very intimate story, more hers then mine. maybe i’ll ask her permission to write about it. this image of fear, yearning, craving, surrender and friendship is a beginning of that story – at the end of which tamar commanded the attention of people as far as two floors above us.

In one of the sessions Shahar suggested that I choose a body part to focus my attention and work. I chose to work with the upper part of the torso – the shoulders and neck. Then Shahar suggested I introduce a change by choosing another body part. Some minutes later I started focusing on hands. Tal & Eran seemed to acknowledge my choice (though I did not say anything about this to anyone else) and their dance became a dance of hands.

Some time later, when I got around to browsing the images from the session I came across this pair of sequential images. They were taken a few minutes before I made the conscious choice to change focus from shoulders to hands (in the sequence, they appear amongst the shoulder images).  To this day I wonder about the nature of “my choice”.

As this edition of Glimpses was moving within me, I recalled a question I have engaged numerous times over the past years – how can I express my presence, photographically, in a physical space of movement?

• Initially I searched for “technical variations” such as photographic exposure settings.
• Then I explored “mechanical variations” such as replacing zoom lenses with fixed focal length lenses (which caused me to travel the space with my legs instead of my wrist), manual focus, etc.
• During the last Orchard Labs projects I learned to experience, appreciate and work with a new perspective on composition. One that is based on my position in the space (and it’s affect on  the composition of the space) in addition to what is framed in the camera (classic composition).
• I am now realizing that I can move on a more subtle level – small shifts of my intentions and interests (magic!) can cause a shift in many other aspects of my work and interaction with others in the space.

Thinking back to the unconscious transition from shoulders to hand now takes me to a new experience. What if it is not me that made that choice to change? What if that same choice manifested itself in the dancers as it did through me? I now recall with a deeper understanding a phrase Shahar introduced that describes an intricate dance that takes place in our work: “Conscious intent and Unconscious motivations”. Indeed!

a while ago i spoke to shahar about two experiences i had in a studio environment – both times i felt, after the events had occured, uncomfortable with my actions. i felt that i chose violence as a form of expression. i felt i was confessing this to shahar who, like he has many times, wrapped me in his attentive embrace and gently shifted my perspective and shed a new light on … well my perception.

though i don’t remember now both occasions of violence – one does stand out in my memory. it was during the second day of my visit to the gottingern impro-festival.  the first days were designated a teachers meeting – with the intension of giving the teachers and facilitators time to meet and give the festival a focus and flavor. during the evenings we were trying out an open space – where arts and artist could meet and explore together. the event i am referring to is the first open space experiment where i felt like nobody knew quite what to do. the word that comes to my mind and sticks there relentlessly is weird. though this was not the first time i experienced weird in improvisation work – this time is was intense and different. the space felt heavy and lost – and as if to cope with that the participants, me included, seemed to be aggressive and searching.

as i was searching for a door into this tense space – i approached david – who was sitting on the outskirts of the space with his notebooks and pencils. at first i approached him with the camera taking a few images – then i engaged him in an interaction – the nature of which was to disturb him. as i write these words – i feel as if i was picking on him, in a way hoping he would react and express his discomfort with my interruption. violence – is the best word to describe what i felt then and afterward. i cannot recall what actually happened and what was his reaction. i do remember going up to him and apologizing when the session ended.

i also recall, towards the end of the session, seeing shahar sitting with the guitar next to a wall. he arrived a few hours earlier and we had a wonderful and playful session together with judit, orly and shai. i don’t recall him participating in the session itself. i do remember seeing him there – like an island of sanity within the mess that was left behind in the physical space and beyond.

some months later i brought up this experience of violence in a conversation with shahar. he then said to me that in physical contact with another person there are two ways to apply physical force – pushing to create distance and pulling to create proximity. though many words can be used to describe these actions – their essence & nature do not change – they describe a physical interaction. my interpretation of my interaction with the space embodied additional contexts (social, moral…) that are simply not relevant in a creative space of physical contact and motion. pushing and pulling  are expected and agreed. if there was any violence involved it occurred in my mind and was turned against me and not against others.

This next image is of Ilay. We got together for some improvisation play in the Raanana (where I was living at the time) city park. This image was one of the last taken. We had been playing for about 4 hours. We were both tired. Before this chapter of our game began we were already packing to go home, but we stayed some more. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was already setting – the light was low. Ilay was very active – running around a lot. I was trying to keep up and to do so I had to ‘surrender photographically’. The camera was set to a manual light measurement to accommodate a combination of the natural low-light that was left and the flash on the camera. I was running with Ilay holding the camera out at arms length – far away from my eye – and I was shooting blindly. I was completely running on faith. I was completely immersed in our game.

When I got home this image came off the flash-card as you see it. It is not a digital manipulation. When I look at this image and think back of how it occurred I think of disintegration. I feel that in my mind Ilay was free from his role as a “mover/imrpoviser” and I was free from my role as a “photographer”. We were together, we were completely engaged in what we were doing. We were engaged on a physical level (we were both tired yet very active) and on a personal level – we were having a great time. My mind was not interfering (technically I was free from making any camera settings other then releasing the shutter) and I think Ilay completely lost it a while back. I believe that we created a space for creatvity (god?) to appear – and to this day I believe that is where all of my good images come from.

This third image was taken at the end of the same session. Though the image claims differently, I am convinced that Ilay did not notice my shadow. This is another way.

These days when I am spending most of my time, energy and attention on SweetClarity I feel that I am again facing a similar challenge. Doing what I need to do while having faith in something that is beyond me or my control. I am trying to create the conditions for something good to happen. With SweetClarity this is a real challenge – I am definitely working on my faith facility!

This Glimpses is evolving – it is becoming easier to write and less important – both are good signs. I like it when something that seems important becomes just another something. It becomes more accessible and less dramatic. It’s true nature can shine through when dramatics are removed. I have recently made some changes on StillCreation. I made a space for more words (not only those that can be called “Glimpses”) and within that space I can also share more images that previously could not find a clear space in the structured galleries (which are still there and have also been modified). StillCreation offers me more freedom of expression and sharing – which is what it’s really about.

I will no longer be actively sending Glimpses as a newsletter. If you want to keep getting notified when new content is published on StillCreation (including Glimpses) then please visit the keep in touch page and submit your email address. This will also let me know that you really out there and taking an interest which I really need once in a while and for which I am grateful : )

]]> http://www.iamronen.com/2008/08/glimpses05/feed/ 0 http://www.iamronen.com/2008/04/glimpses04/ http://www.iamronen.com/2008/04/glimpses04/#comments Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:58:30 +0000 iamronen_sc http://www.stillcreation.com/?p=106 “sweet” came to an abrupt end – i think this was the first time i learned from shahar about clear decisions. though the work was very promising, the energy was not cohesive in the group and so this magical beginning came to an end. a few months later i was with shahar again – this time in the studio – partaking in shahar’s year long training program called “hunch”. again i had no idea what was going to happen, the invitation to join was very clear yet neither of us knew where it would go.

the starting point for my participation was to document my perspective of the studio (we have traveled a looooong journey from that starting point). i recall that in the beginning i was nervous (as were the other people in the group in response to my presence with a camera).

the studio was very different from anything i had known before or imagined a studio could be. it is a meeting of intense commitment and endless patience. on the surface it appears to be unstructured. but as i gained experience and perspective i realized that the structure is hidden because it is so delicate and personal – as i have seen  it applied to myself. for me it is about making a transition of attention from the opposing outside forces to the supportive inside movements.

just last week I listened to shahar talking to a group of young dancers: improvisation has a bad reputation as simply doing whatever you want. a trap lies in the word “simple” – there is nothing simple about really doing what you want. when a performer goes on stage she is consciously entering a field of forces and agreements that define roles and expectations. mastery of improvisation is about being able to consciously enter and contain this field and still stay true to what you really want to do. ‘simply’ has nothing to do with it! the studio is a playground for really truly honestly asking what you want and then encountering these forces and exploring the relationship we all have with them.

work in the studio takes time… and though we didn’t have all the time we planned (car trouble on the way) the session evolved and intensified. when this image was taken tal and i were both in the space.

i remember feeling confused – i was having a hard time reaching a composition where the light was working for me. i even commented outloud to shahar that i need to explain to tal my “light needs”. i don’t remember what shahar replied to me, i do remember that he bluntly rejected the distraction and  directed me back into the work.

this time i learned to surrender. when i surrendered my aspiration to get what i want (a good image, better lighting, more consideration…) this image (and a few others) were born.

this experience of surrender is a recurring lesson for me. it generates a sense of ease (due to the acceptance that i don’t control the settings) and i relax, enjoy myself and experience grazing.

I believe that the most wonderful images emerge when i am completely present – and for me the key is not doing – surrender to what is – there lies the magic.

shahar is a very powerful facilitator. his presence and clear artistic direction are a clear calling. the studio quickly became a feeding frenzy of energy. i was bouncing back and forth between the joy of being there and the complete mystery (and confusion) about what was going on. we all knew we touched something special.

after the session we sat down to talk and share our experience of the session. tal, lying on the floor in the foreground of the image, said to me that if i had merely moved away from where I was, her emotional state would have shifted – that i was affecting her presence and altering the balance of her intense duet energy with eran (standing in the background).

this new insight was the beginning of a new understanding for me. my photography is not about my technical skills or the technical equipment. it is about my presence. this was a huge relief. suddenly there seemed to be space in the world for me!

that evening i felt restless at home and wanted to go out to the beach with a camera in hand. andreea wanted to attend a food festival that was organized at the tel-aviv harbor for residents of the north who, because of the war, could not sell their produce – so we headed out there. when we stepped out of the food festival this image appeared before me. two people were dancing contact improvisation in complete silhouette. despite the business of the harbor (its a very public place) the space around them remained clear.

i took a few images and we continued our stroll down the deck. less then a minute later a person came up to me and asked about the pictures. he said he was one the dancers (i did not recognize him because of the back-light). that was my first meeting with shahar. shahar had come out to the deck at tel-aviv harbor to start a spontaneous jam. he invited me to work together and a week later we were in a dance studio. only now, from a state of complete creative immersion with shahar, i can begin to appreciate the vast space that lay before me on that summer day.

to be continued…