THE ANIMAL EXPERIENCE
In the animal project experience, I initially tried to find a different voice for each transition or level of personification of the animal. I had chosen a species of ape, which I never defined in its entirety but which did have associated behaviours, sounds, and movements. I also chose a text about plants and human animals: Estado Vegetal by Manuela Infante. I noticed a strong relationship between the animal (ape) and the poetic text in this case. However, the voice was in a situation concerning the “transformation” where I could not find the relationship between the body of sensations at the intuition level.
poetic voice && corporal voice
the body voice as the animal, our body in its entirety.
the poetic voice as an sublime vision, abstracting, agglutinating experience.
the poetic voice is all of us in the community of language and in a sublimated
orientation of our subjectivity about the whole.
how do we synchronize these voices?
In an initial situation of complete animal, I connected with a panting and slow cadence regarding the voice and body itself. By incorporating the voice, I had incorporated the cadence and the panting. There was no complete synchronicity or unity in the internal sensation. This was made difficult by varying the percentages. There was better when utterly human because of what I knew. On a corporal level, I could make various changes without involving the voice, but the voice issue stressed me out.
The resolution started when I changed the focus and brought my attention more to the voice of the text itself and how the body could accompany/embody it in its different variants. Embodying the poetic images with movement and symbolic actions. The accompaniment of the body itself imposed physical restrictions by varying the voice and causing creative modifications and improvisation on how to say something, what to say, and when to say something. Connecting with the space and with the public generates a unique time that creates tension and its own needs in this very relationship of the stage body with the space and the public.
Hence, the exercise ended in a symbiotic relationship of communication. Body, poetics, environment (stage + audience + space + time). Focusing on the poetics of the text and embodying that was the trigger that promoted development until reaching the final presentation.
Ideas that at the time induced unplanned body movements:
“I am an animal; my response to the world was to pull up.”
With the animal 100% in charge in a resting position, the image of pulling up involves pulling with both arms from the ground.
“Where you stay, I advance; where you settle, I invade.”
Bodily advancing and jumping, this physical action provoked a longer pause and a gasp, even fatigue in the voice caused by the jump. Something that flows well with the poetic text.
“That dying is something that happens to my chest while my back, on the other hand, is born”
Closing the chest, pointing forward, and walking backward in a 100% human state.
AN ADAPTATION TO POETIC PRACTICE
Exploring
how the body embodies a voice
and how a voice is embodied in the body.
This technique can be applied to any poem already finished or in progress. Putting the body to the letters, representations that can lead to a poetic textual edition of the written poem. Providing a new corporal vision of the poem. However, embodied the poem can also give a more expressive performance and presence (emotion, tone of voice, and corporal movement). I think in the idea of being fully present with all the body when reciting bringing the possibility of living your poetic. Returning corporality to poetry contrasts the many boring poetic encounters where poets’ bodies lie motionless, sitting and reading monotonously. The composition of movement could also provoke a feedback movement that translate into ideas influencing the textual poem (or creating one from scratch)
EXERCISE 1: FOR [ EXISTING | IN PROGRESS ] POEMS
(1) Choosing something (animal, object, thing, poetic character).
(2) Incorporating the subject in the body and existing in an environment (relation with the place, objects, people, time).
(3) Play with embodied variations from 100% of the subject and 100% of the self.
(4) Incorporate the poetic text into the body. (Fragment the text into images or verses that will be repeated for deep incorporation).
(5) Explore the relationship between body and poetics in each text variation.
REPEAT_UNTIL
(6) Presentation as a whole. {change?}
(7) Awareness the poem, {re/writing}.
In this other variant, there is no poetic text. Still, the incarnation of a “character” and its relationship with the environment is used to capture its poetic voice and generate a text. This is similar to the experiment in the previous work on body movement and poetic voices and images. Here, a thematic characterization guide is added, and the movement and poetic voice will be explored.
EXERCISE 2: FOR [ NON-EXISTING ] POEMS
(1) Choice of something (animal, object, thing, poetic character)
(2) Incorporate the subject into the body and exist in an environment (relation with the place, objects, people, time).
(3) Play with embodied variations from 100% of the subject and 100% of the self.
(4) Give a voice to the interaction.
(5) Explore the relationship between body, environment and poetic voice.
(6) Become aware of the poem. {writing}
AWARENESS
Something that helped me a lot to embody and connect with the text was separating it into phrases or sentences that I felt the rapport in the repetition from different places. Also, the instructions to act by looking for shelter and food gave me more options for approaching the emotional aspect of recreating this character (In the context of the animal) but you could add any imaginary situation to the object of personification. prompt for imaginary situation could be added to the phases of relation with the environment.
A representation that can be anything else, not exclusively an animal. Still, we can be applied to anything we want to work on in a poetics voices or images. A game about how we can symbiote the body (in terms of movements, symbols, voice and emotion) to a poetic expression. This practice leads to an awareness of poetics and the ability to be present when presenting oneself. Connection with the text. It led me to the possibility of embodying a text, of reading it with the body, and of living it in a presentation. You can also define those movements and learn them so that you have a base on which to act and improvise based on the composition of movements with text. In the relation between the body, the object of embodied, the text of embodied emerges the poetics expression we can use to write, rewrite or to deep feel the text and be able to read it with all the body and be fully present.
Exercise 2 - LA TOALLA
Sí, yo soy esta toalla
arrojada a la cama
con el hocico de lado
ya no tengo un esqueleto
que me sostenga
ni que sostenga me los pechos
apaxionada
arrugados por una minina
aproximación sanitaria
apaxionada
me gusta escuchar
te el rugido
cuando me
transfieres líquidos
te me frotas
te y me
dejas ahí tirada
la mayor parte del día
telarañada
tela
dañada
tela
arañada
te la
clavó
la misma raíz
y un porotito
de maíz nací
infectada
por material
bacterial
imperialisticas
del Deep state
of myself
the mission of the sanitarian world
con el detergente
me frotas la grasa
territorio
dérmico
engrasado
permite mas
fluida explora
ción
capilar y
olfativa del
lambetón
que nos damos
en espiral
te señalan
siempre
del espionaje
de allá
y es que te están
espiando
y debes cubrirte
aca
ez pian
ez pilar
ez quiar
ez quizofrené
ez quizofrenético
ez quiso el éctrico
ez quizo fernet
no me puedo mover
no no me puedo mover
no
no no
me puedo mover
y corre viento
esperando a que tu presencia
se marchite para volver
a hidratarme me quedo
esperándote a que te
acerques
sé cariñosa
conmigo trans
firamos fluidos
apesto a nosotros
apuesto a nuestra piel
apuesta que vive de los
intercambios
organísmicos
a veces siento
y
me hundo
en tu olor
hasta
que esto
y
del otro
lado
te me fuiste
y regresas
y te vas
y te vendrás
de nuevo
lo sé
que si yo tuviera
si tan solo tuviera
si tan solo
una red delicada
de telarañadas
estructurales
solo necesito dos milímetros y saldré volando por el aire
me distribuiré entre la distinta tierra que corre en cada
ecorregión
pero como no tengo
no tengo capacidad
de alcanzar diferentes distancias
contigo de reiteradas retiradas
que considero necesarias
para el contacto directo
e irremediable de tu piel
con la tela de mi piel
telarañada
artificial
costurada
extirpada
a los posibles
agentes del mal
y bacterianas que
llegan al nervio
y el auto inmune ahí parado
entre rejas hago música con
la inerte distancia misma
que nos separa.
Frente (de)Liberación Poética "Saturnino Parral Perales" 