[-empyre-] nature's reserved camouflage

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all

just wanting to thank Jo Simalaya for his patient and graceful replies to my skeptical questions.
The comment on the ritual performance respect you show your plant actors impressed me, and of course
I later had a lot more irreverent questions about the interactive scenarios you set up and the sonifications (of "voices"
and incantations related to cultural memory or trauma) you program, but the week went by so fast, and I
am now feeling quite dis/tracted to think about Alana's camouflage performances and “un-camouflagings”. 
Amazing stuff we hear about here. 

In your last post, Alana, you raise so many issues that I find very provocative to think about (first you describe your
experience of the mimicry or the being in the camouflage make up; interestingly you echo the "extraterrestrial" idea
that Murat brought up last week and which I didn't quite get; but you actually say  you "appear to be a plant/human hybrid, 
an otherworldly monster but I am still very much human and of this world"  --

why would you bring up the notion of the monstrous?  how does this relate to the gender assumptions about the military camouflage, and how does the
military association fade when  you perform?   
who do you perform to?  with?  (the environment?)  
do you have someone follow you and "document" the work?  how closely?  is there a theatrical impetus in what you stage? 

Near the end you change the subject a little; and having worked in abandoned industrial area that was on the one hand
transformed (by capital; reinvestment and infrastructural modification), on the other hand left to itself (rewilding, there actually
is now an "Urwald" near the old coal-mine where I held my summer laboratory for ten years, and that "Urwald" has now become a attraction to many
(humans; performance artists), I am interested in this matter of the industrial reserve; and what it's reserved for.

so when you speak of research into, and interventions into, public space, and then when I reflect on the
questions your work might raise, I could not help it but be reminded of some of the insights and provocations offered by
Shannon Jackson's book, "Social Work: performing art, supporting publics" (New York: Routledge, 2011) -- 
well, yes, perhaps would you like to comment on the notion of "social work" in your work?  (the striking example that
Jackson discusses so well in her last chapter is Paul Chan's collaboration with New Orleans communities after Katrina flooding
of the city, when Chan began to "see" Beckett's not growing tree, and the waiting for Godot not coming, and the collapse of
help systems, supports, the racialized disaster, the perverse DIY strategies cooked up, etc....

Do we notice when trees aren’t there?   
Oh yes, we do.


with regards
Johannes Birringer
 




[Alana schreibt]

.... I will try to speak to some of my experiences in the suit…

When I began the “un-camouflagings”, there was an immediate shift in the speed of my movements. I felt a need to slow down, which allowed me to feel my body and recognize the various ways in which I experience my surroundings through all of my senses. With limited vision (my face is completely covered), I quickly become attuned to the sounds and smells of the environment. It was sometimes awkward to move into various spaces as the suit began to pick up sticks, burrs and other organic matter. Making my way through the brush, I would soon find a spot to ‘settle’. By allowing myself to be still and just “be” among grasses, plants and trees, I became attuned to the shifts in temperature and light, the smell of the air. The suit/my body became a landscape within a landscape, as I began to notice the movement of insects within and on top of my “second skin”: a spider taking a hurried tour of my arm or a small beetle clumsily navigating its way through a web of threads at the base of my foot.

There is a sense of play and mischief as I find my way in and out of the green. All the while, the non-human life I encounter seems to move on and over me, oblivious to my presence. At times, I try not to disturb my surroundings but it is impossible as the outside shapes my form and I shape it in return.

In the suit, I see myself as an imposter, still separated from the life around me, attempting to learn its mystery through a kind of mimicry. I do not feel “reunited” with plants in these experiences because from a young age, I was taught that plants were something to be kept and maintained outside. In the suit, I appear to be a plant/human hybrid, an otherworldly monster but I am still very much human and of this world. Throughout my adult life, I began to garden, hike, camp and rock climb and all of these experiences allowed me to learn about plants and the environment. I still have a lot to learn.

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