[NetBehaviour] Breaking New Ground ii

[Alan Sondheim]

Breaking New Ground ii


all circumstances are extenuating.

"if you want to understand what they're about, perhaps these works
will open up the vast chasm of comprehension on the edge of falling
apart - I can't think of any better pieces in this regard, and, for
that matter, in the sheer beauty of fractured movement"

works based on choreia, return, withdrawal from broken edges (before
one is cut) (before the sound loses its grasp) (before one is cut
out (of the world) (of your acquaintance) (your grasp) (your body)
(of your body my own)).

how does one write or circumscribe the body of movement within
horizons defined by mappings of hyperbolic geometry in the circle?
the edge isn't just asymptotic; from the outside, it's a bad pill.
what looks like chance is a battlefield; what looks determined is
incandescent birth.

"the battlefield is your last chance of being-alive, just as your
birth is your first-chance of dying."

there are so many things these movements and sounds are not: listing
narrows sublimity: just look, it's almost drained away. think of
dance as a draining, symptom as style, medication-technique, how to
get out of the hospital.

don't follow or recognize avatars, don't follow or recognize symptoms.
they start with dim memories of body, with landscapes that accompany
us, we're hounded.

we're hounded by death, but we're also hounded by disease, troubles,
fevers, forgetfulness, wrath, rage, ecstasy, visions, poverty, money,
obligations, lovers, ennui, hallucinations, speed, crime, frustration,
cataclysm, heat, cold, hunger, thirst, nightmares, mutilations, panic,
neuroses, economies of attention, economies of the body, excretions,
garbage, wounds, scars, allergic reactions, insect bites, age, bad
eyesight, bad hearing, shudderings, shiverings, fear, belongings,
jealousy, loathing, disgust, addictions.

the playing-field of hounding, playing-field of the hounded.
one hounds, is hounded; the hounded hounds, hounding is hounded.

or like this: playing-field of haunting, of the haunted. one haunts,
is haunted; the haunted haunts, haunting is haunted. "these texts,
they are haunted."

if i write this sentence, thus; if i write this sentence beneath or
within the sign of fever, migraine, incipient diabetes, tumors
malign-benign. if i write this sentence beneath the symbolic of
medication, bandaging, radiation treatment, dialysis. if i write this
sentence gagged and splayed.

if i write this sentence to control you, if i write this sentence
under your control. the order to work: persevere.

to persevere, endure, maenad-dance of self-devouring, maenad-music of
self-control. how can that be, except to ensure that the beat is
periodic, that repetition hungers.

the maenad feeds, hungers for repetition, desecrates it (the repeat-
ing). they passed it on so far down the line that gender-sex and sex-
gender change. they passed it down farther.

Who were they? Who's haunting us?


involdance 1, 5, 6, 4

http://www.alansondheim.org/involdance1.mp4
  Foofwa d'Imobilite, dance/choreography, Alan Sondheim, yayli tanbur
http://www.alansondheim.org/involdance5.mov
  Foofwa d'Imobilite, dance/choreography, Azure Carter, solo voice
http://www.alansondheim.org/involdance6.mp4
  Foofwa d'Imobilite, dance/choreography, Alan Sondheim, cobza
http://www.alansondheim.org/involdance4.mp4
  Foofwa d'Imobilite, dance/choreography, Azure Carter, dance, Alan
  Sondheim, hegelung (listed again)