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>Simone Forti (excerpts)
>Summary w/ A Chronological History by CharlesDocument
>Something like a discussion
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>Felix Guattari, "Molecular Revolution" (excerpts)
>Begins with English Summary by Charles
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>Delacroix's Journals (excerpts)
>Begins with English Summary by CharlesDocument
>Simone Forti (Excerpts)
Transcript
>Session 3, CharlesTranscript
>Session 1, All members
Simone Forti
Handbook in Motion
An account of an ongoing personal discourse and its manifestations in dance.The handbook is autobiographic; it traces the evolution in her infuences and her work in function of her diverse preoccupations. It was published in 1974
The text starts with her experience in Woodstock festival in 1969, comes back to the beginning of her interests in dance in 1955, traces her evolution leading to this Woodstock period, and finishes with her leaving Woodstock in 1970.
Her perception and understanding of the world through movement, is expressed in very essential manner in the first pages of her text, thru a couple of brief phases. She described this relation to the world in an other text:
" I am a dancer, not because I move well, but because I am capable of Reading movement. It is in terms of movement that I understand things, and it's what enables me to be a good dancer."" End of summer in the Sierra Nevada, in an almost imperceptible manner, a giant pine tree moves in spiralas around its axe."
"I saw a man in pyjamas walk up to a tree, stop, look at it, and change the way he stood."
Here are some of the quotes from the period during which she worked with Ann Halprin, Trisha Brown...
"Our basic work consisted in improvising following the flux of our consciousness,. We worked on the idea of attaining a state of receptivity in which the flux of our consciousness could be elevated in total freedom"
"Having opinions on the way movements should be in relation the one to the other does not interest us, but observing the links that already existed in behaviour of things did."
In 59, after moving to New York and feeling very depressed, "I started paying attentions to my own gravity and mass, as a kind of prayer", because they hadn't changed.
After working with Bob Whitman, and using the different constitutive elements of the room she was performing in, " I realised that most of my actions were executed not for the movement to be seen, but for a precise work to be done."
In 1961, at the request of la Monte Young, presented "5 dance consstructions and some other things", among others the huddle, which are described here in detail.
In the period after Woodstock, she started doubting her way of practicing, which she shared with many artists (creating a relation of need to a tout, a manifestation, a new house, a new structure of relations to these things).
"I perceived technological a common vision of the world between an aesthetic research coming from New York and the foreign policy, which came from Washington". This is the only time foreign policy is explicitly cited in her text.
She speaks of various influences, tai chi, her work with Charlemagne, the observation of animals...
The next extracts are taken from her article "full moves", reflections on the dance behaviour.
"I am a dancer, no because I move well, but because I am capable of Reading movement. It is in terms of movement that I understand things, and it's what enables me to be a good dancer."
"The central point of my vision is maybe that dance is an active behaviour having a real effect on the interior and exterior ecology of the dancer which is a living organism."
A Chronological History, 1960 - 70
Often these facts are the result of or will result in struggles on a large level, inbetween states, inside and in between societies (...) or more subtle expressions of a society in motion. These small cuts into "reality", although no way exhaustive, give us a glimpse at events that effected a large number of people, and are sufficent for the images of our collective memory to emerge, as well as those of the evolutions we are facing now, whether they are directly linked to events that took place in the 60s or they are simply events we are confronted with today, that we must choose to deal with or not, and how, in the same way simone, any other artist, any human being confronted with global information, adn interrelation.
A couple of quotes of events taken from this chronological history that seemed important, representative of the power relations at the time.
1960
Independence of Cameroon, a first experimental atomic explosion takes place in the Tanezrouf desert, making France the 4th atomic power in the world, the Fed approves the pill as a contraceptive method, indepence of the 2 Kongos, Chad, Gabon, Dahomey, Niger, beginning of the liberation front of Vietnam1961
Assasination of Lumumba, Indepence of Sierra Leone, Algeria1962
The US imposes boycott of all Cuban products, the army overthrows the parliament in Syria, the US satellite "Telstar" relays its first TV images, indepence of Algeria, Rwanda, the Cuban missle crisis.1963
M.Luther King pronounces his speech "I have a dream", establishment of the red phone in between Moscow and Washington, independence of Zanzibar.1964
The G.I. Joe doll is reated, the water taken in the north from the lake of Tiberiade, arrives in the Negev desert, despite the Arab opposition, South Africa is banned from the O.J. for its politics of apartheid, M.Luther King recieves the Nobel Prize, indepence of Malawi, Zambia, Breshnev becomes 1st Secretary of the Communist Party of Russia.1965
Assassination of Malcolm X, the US admits to having used chemical weapons against the Vietcong1966
Gandhi becomes Prime Minister of India, first artificial heart transplant in Houston1967
the 6-Day war, the execution of Che Guevara in Bolivia1968
Riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King in Memphis, in France demonstrations against the reform of education, Lyndon Johnson commands the bombings on Vietnam to stop1969
Yasser Arafat becomes president of the PLO1970
the war in Biafra stops with a toll of 2 million dead, a demonstration against the war in Vietnam of 100,000 people around the White House.