Einstein said.

“There’s no challenge without a crisis. It’s in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead. Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it.”
ALBERT EINSTEIN 

Gracefully Entangled in a Whirlpool of Exchange / 28th Nov.- 2nd Dec. News From Last Week

Dear visible & invisible audience,

the week was filled with extended dreaming sessions entangled with guests (Bram & Roman) and all of the objects some of you have offered us, traveling through various locations inside Ruilen.

Our last dreaming session was prolonged to 2 hours and attempted to include everything there was,
our guests, passers-by visitors, all locations, our collection of objects and the objects that are found in the exhibition, within a dream.

We feel that this dream, that we still don't know to whom does it belong - perhaps to the soul of the frozen white walls inside the empty warehouse - might be a dream of ghosts, exploring the mysterious sensuality that can be found in the absence of social interaction.

We fell in love with the objects you brought us, out of the desire to still feel connected to you, perhaps.
Imagination can offer a short-term replacement of actual human contact.

We endlessly dreamed on the wedding dress, got married, killed, abused, healed and re-harmonized. We become children that found their dolls' hair shaved and cried over some beans. We prayed for the right to dream, while a conference takes place. We hid ourselves in silence and secret, twisted declarations of love.

We sensed each others fragility through a channel where words do not enter and watched our ears open for a voice unknown and not heard before that said: 'Take a walk around the block before deciding to forget your common sense and stay deep inside your own, private, endless ocean'.

Time for Barbie...

On Sunday 2nd Dec. we decided to swap our identities inspired by the 'Barbies for Food' exchange.
We went back to the surface and the easy-going, short encounters with visitors that don't know us.
We felt that the situation had to be re-checked from a new to us perspective. Barbie...

The Barbies-for-Food event was occurring simultaneously with the Art-For-Art exchange, yet the two events, as well as their guests, showed no interest in another. The Barbies were at the entrance and the art at the complete other side of the exhibition while the vast space in-between stayed, in our view, cold and empty.

We spontaneously decided to do nothing else but dress up as Barbies, visit the Art-For-Art, talk to the people there and keep walking back and forth from the Barbie stand to the Art area till something happens. We received some funny looks & smiles, posed for some photos and made two 2 new acquaintances:
Mania or Amy's Whitehouse sister - a painter who offers her paintings in exchange for 2 hours of computer and i-pad help. (Her painting and phone number are left unofficially close to our pink garden.)
and Johannes, a guest of the Art-for-Art exchange, who happened to be hungry and found no food around. Together with Johannes we came up with the idea to suggest a different bargain to the the Barbie owner : offer ourselves as live-size barbies in exchange for some of his food.
Although this action was a little more adventurous than what we thought, we in the end managed to get a  5 degrees (room) temperature Garnalensoep met cocosmelk, that we hope Johannes appreciated.

Next to that, we have as well acquired some new books after exchanging stuff at Ruilen, following the impulses of our new Barbie identity.

We are at the moment preparing for our final week of stay.
We have had lots of conversations and spent time re-evaluating our activity with people involved or not in the exhibition. We would like to thank everyone that spent time with us, offering us their perspective.

We are happy to see that through this project we get a chance to know you and ourselves better.

p.s.
We would like to welcome the cat made of paper, donated by Roman and the torn black fabric with the remains of fluorescent chalk and it's falling pocket attached with a white tape, as well as the cardboard box where it was lying inside and sincerely thank its unknown donor.

* image by Gordon Wilding
(http://www.lewub.com/images.php?id=27)

Gracefully Entangled in a Whirlpool of Exchange / Report of the week 21st - 25th Nov.

Items:

We would like to welcome 5 new items that joined OBUO(Orphanage of Beautiful Unwanted Objects)at XU. 

1. a little duck that somebody left under the chimney

2. a wedding dress 

3. a coat with black fake fur

4. snail hair oil

5. a tampon

Many sincere thanks to all the donors we met, as well as the one's who wished to remain unknown. We are very inspired to find objects in secret places! 

Dealing with circumstances:

A huge scaffold placed in front of our house and construction work taking place on the ceiling above, gave us the opportunity to go for day-trips, little adventures and pick-nicks with our objects in different locations inside Ruilen.

We would like to thank the section of lonely socks, the swing, the check-in & check-out desks, as well as the art section for their kind hospitality. 

Sharing with guests: 

Guests that came to visit us and XU freshened up our stay there and made us ask ourselves new questions concerning our way of communicating.

The sessions we set make most of our guests feel a little lost in the beginning, yet, after a while, when the lostness dances with the willingness to stay present, what is created is a fertile morphing field where the ambiguous seeds of our exchange are planted, waiting for the right moment to blossom.

We would like to thank the new and old, shorter and longer terms guests, Roman, Andrea, Sandrina, Alex, Ida, Joseph & Bram for creating, through their particular way of being present, the possibility of a world of shared dreams.

We are grateful to you for making our dreams change!

   

Diary of meetings

Wednesday: Dreaming Under the Lonely Socks (with Andrea)

Our exchange involved updating Andrea about how we developed her dream idea during the previous week and brainstorming on how to continue the work together. The 3 of us decided to to do a 30 min dreaming session Under the Lonely Socks

using all of our objects.

During this set we played with 2 roles: 

a. dreamer, letting her dream move her 

b. being moved by the dreamer, moving the dream.

We exchanged roles after 15 min

Andrea was making an illustration on paper, viewing the situation as her dream.

Her draft illustrations can be found inside XU.

Thursday: Swinging the dream (with Roman & Andrea)

Our session started with a 20 min unusually energetic duet dancing that took place around the entrance of Ruilen. The dance emerged spontaneously from Roman's idea to film us from the swinging swing while we are lying on the floor with all our objects. 

We continued with a 1h 20min dreaming session with Roman filming and Andrea occasionally making little drawings from inside the small glass house at the entrance. During this set we played with the same 2 roles as on Wednesday and were exchanging roles once every 20 min.

We played together with all our objects. The brown beans gradually became the main characters.

Friday: Dreaming with new guests (with Alex, Sandrina and Roman(filming))

Sayaka left to Spain and Alex and Sandrina came to visit me in Xu. 

Both of them were there during the opening night and apart from offering us a very beautiful and mysterious object - a woolen ball that has soap inside - they were interested in coming back and getting somehow involved in our project. 

Already then, Alex had proposed to us the idea to make a very detailed archive of all our objects, listing their special qualities and organizing them according to categories. 

Our meeting started with a very long talk inside Xu - it was the first time we tried fitting 4 people (Alex, Sandrina, Roman, Maria) inside a tiny space, and realized it's actually possible. We spend more than 1 hour in there, drinking coffee and tea, catching up, informing them on how things went since the opening and exchanging ideas on how to continue working. We had lots of fun imagining possible things to do and both of them had many, very intelligent ideas that could be developed in a long term project. 

After the talk we did a 45 min dreaming session (the same construction as on Sunday 18th Nov) with 3 roles that are exchanged every 15 min : 1. dreamer, let your dream move you 2. being moved by the dreamer, moving the dream 3. undefined role. 

Sandrina offered an additional idea on top of this construction and contributed more objects. She gave each dreamer one of her exchange cards. The dreamer had to go and pick up his/her object from the exhibition shelves and start dreaming in relation to this object.
Our session travelled everywhere in the space while Techno music was playing loudly from the Seed's Exchange shelves, causing some unexpected wild dance around the swing and under the scaffold. 

We continued with more talk at the Roest next door. More ideas and images kept coming. I felt that after this day I could have written 3 new project proposals. 

I became aware than within the conditions I could only make direct use of 0,1% of what was proposed, yet I felt grateful for the brain's shake up.

Saturday: Back to the basics - Getting to know home (with Sandrina)

Sandrina and me did and 1h 20min dreaming session with 2 roles that are exchanged every 20min:

One person inside XU, dreaming, letting her dream move her and the other outside Xu, being moved by the dreamer, moving the dream.

We talked about the feeling of being protected when being inside XU and the feeling of being supported in dreaming by the person outside. After this session it became clear that this is not something we can easily explain or find the right words for, yet it is clearly felt. 

We would like to understand better this relation to another and to XU, as we see that it helps us flow in uninterrupted creativity and feeling of connection to another for a longer time. 

Sunday: Spontaneous acts (with Sandrina, Ida, Joseph and Roman(filming))

Upon entering the exhibition I found two choreography students from the SNDO, Ida & Joseph, that happened to visit. 

We spontaneously decided to do short movement solos with objects in different locations inside the exhibition.

We worked with the following construction:

Each person picks an object from our collection, walks around the exhibition for 15 min and picks a location.

After 15 min the 4 of us meet and go for a journey all together. Each time we stop for one person to do a 3 min solo with his/her object in the location he/she chose before while the other's watch. 

We did two rounds in total. The locations in the 2nd round were found spontaneously.

Watching those solos was a refreshing and fun experience and gave me new inspiration for using the space and objects.

After Joseph and Ida left we continued with a 30 min session together with Sandrina at the art section behind the glass house.

We started by making two trails with beans starting from XU and took two different paths around the glass house. We agreed to start our session at the point where we would meet. 

The session consisted of short solos - one person moving and the other observing, exchanging role every 2-3 min. Sandrina proposed to take tourist photos with flash at the end of each solo, so we did that too :)

Gracefully Entangled in a Whirlpool of Exchange / Concerning the use of objects

Our response to the objects that the visitors bring is not anymore short and immediate like the first day.

The object is triggering our imagination and becomes part of our world - melts together with what has been there before.

Our performance does not necessarily make direct use of the object. You might or might not see us balancing on your candle holder or doing pirouettes spraying your axe deodorant on the space around.

Your objects become part of our dreaming. We are moved by their colour, their texture, the associations they bring, their particular relation to another object, their way of standing in the whole exhibition space and stay in constant dialog with them all.

Still no object is taken apart or destroyed. You can still find your objects in one piece - the way you brought them.

We aim to create a better circulation, find ways how the objects communicate with each other, the room, the other visitors and the world outside Ruilen.

If you wish to see what the object you brought causes keep checking our blog or visit us at Mediamatic.

Gracefully Entangled in a Whirlpool of Exchange / Report of the week 14th-18th Nov and some thoughts

Before going to the space our plan was to keep exchanging objects -for-performances created on the spot inside our house and spontaneously approach visitors for conversation, dancing etc. Stick to the idea of this-for-that exchange and play social in our interactions with public.

Our week was marked by several significant events that slightly changed our way of thinking.

1. A beautiful misunderstanding of the idea of Andrea to go on collecting dreams in our house for long term inspired us to write down our own dreams for her. Just before handing them to her we found out she didn't mean to continue with her dream project, so we spontaneously decided to go on playing with the idea of dreams until visitors come.

Loosely playing with this idea led us to dance our own dreams and then use the visitors dreams that were left on a piece of paper inside the house since Museumnacht as an inspiration for a dance, as well as use the dream idea to play with the objects that we collected during the opening night. i.e. view the objects as if they were inside a dream, create our dream with the objects...

The absence of visitors for the first 2 hours contributed in making our loose playing last longer.

2. An occupation of our house by two young kids, Marcello & Michael, who once they entered, didn't let us get in anymore... They kept screaming to us 'Go away, we are trying to sleep!" They were wonderful to watch in there, lying comfortably, casually using the objects, sometimes brushing each other's hair with the little pink broom, simply playing with each other and with what the cardboard box offers as possibilities - not trying to be 'creative'.

We became observers and they the performers.

3. Visit of Bram, a friend, with objects that triggered our imagination and were impossible to do something with immediately. His objects and his sensible presence, inspired us to invite him for a 4 hour session in the next day and play together instead of doing something for him on the spot.

The idea of dancing our dreams seemed to be fitting with Bram and what the objects he brought triggered, so we continued developing in this direction including Bram as additional performer - not a visitor.

4. Visit of our house by a woman called Xu. She gave a ring and our house acquired the name Xu after her. Xu means 'embrace you'

5. Hutspot cooking taking place in front of Xu (our house) on Sunday.

The dinner tables have been so close to us for the week before, we felt like people were eating in our garden. We also felt that the cook was perfectly fitting to our house.

We secretly included the dinner gathering in our dancing dream session.

We decided to remove all the signs about exchange hanging on our walls and focus on creating a warm atmosphere around our house and garden, simply acknowledging the presence of people without asking for more social interaction, playing in between dancing and moving casually through the exhibition, engaging in activities related to our dreams, making installations with beans, receiving vibrations with a big spoon, samurai fighting with a plastic shovel, eating hutspot with mysterious smiles.

What seemed to be important for us during 14th -18th Nov. is:

- use of leftovers - (anything that is left inside or around our house becomes part of our world)

- inclusion of everything that occurs in the moment, nothing is considered irrelevant to our work

- dreaming

Gracefully Entangled in a Whirlpool of Exchange / 14th - 18th November

During this week we will be performing around our box/house every day from 14.00 to 18.00.

Throughout the 4 hours we will: 

- Swap performances for objects

Visitors can give us an object and we give them a short performance in return.

These performances take place inside the box and can be seen through the peep-holes.

- Engage in spontaneous actions (inside or outside the box) in relation to 

   - How do we move on?

   - What to do with all this stuff?

Bring us your objects for exchange and feel invited to join our brain/moving storm.

We might approach you for a conversation, ask for your advise or invite you for a dance.

So far our collection consists of:

1. yellow skirt

2. candle holder

3. childrens' red boots

4. colourful broom and shovel

5. lighter

6. cigarette

7. flower seeds

8. plastic straw

9. plastic coin for drink

10. warrior / small toy

11. axe deodorant

12. a card with tiger image

13. woolen ball with soap inside

14. loose piece of plastic stick

15. tiger balm

16. bag of peas (lost during dance)

17. carrot (rotten by now)

...as well as a collection of visitor's dreams - an idea of Andrea, who spent some hours inside our box during Museumnacht.

We will be happy to share with you moments of instant creativity!