Movimento IV

What is a sign ? A sign is an action that is born from the inner sources of a human being. When these sources are activated every movement becomes lightness and no matter what the body does, it dances; then grace appears , the unknown and it must be left alone and not turned into something known. The body finds again its organicity, like a wild and proud animal it does not need to be tamed. The body thinks by itself, the mind
learns how to move apart. The body does not bounce into the mind, and the delay on the present time disappears: the body enters the flowing of life.

No tight form is necessary then, just little by little structure is built around organicity without taming the reborn proud animal; slowly organicity is associated to awareness which prevents it from becoming pure instinct but allows it to develop subtle perception and touch thinner levels.

You must look at the world as San Francesco d'Assisi did.......with the same eyes . If you ever can, by chance, go to Assisi in the church named after San Francesco, and standing surrounded by Giotto's frescoes, look at the cloak of the monk; it is preserved there...look at San Francesco's cloak. There is all you need to know bout how to be in the world and with the world in that cloak. To be continued (…)

Creative Process, MOVIMENTO III

There are a lot of intelligent and talented people, but, as far as we are concerned about creativity, this have a relative value. Very few individuals have perceived something; the existence of a perception is the beginning. A perception creates the possibility to communicate

Once this condition appears, every gesture is either creative (maintains the flow), either destructive (brakes the flow)

A good start : set yourself free from polemic = do not answer immediately and automatically
Remain silent, allow yourself to be confused (do not re-act suddenly)

Using the creative process as a vehicle means to try and change level; establishing a higher connection to achieve a conscience not bound to language but to “presence” .

Bringing the heavy and primitive organic energies to the thinner level, then the thinner level into a more ordinary reality, related to the density of the body.
It is a vertical line , climbing ,transforming, then re-descending.

Working first on the body and its sensitivity;
First research: working on ancient ritual songs to bring back organicity to the body and make it able to articulate signs.

)find some ritual songs, one of your own cultural tradition and some belonging to other cultures.
)work on one of them at a time.
)try and catch the melody of each song in its precision
)try and find a time-rhythm with all the fluctuations inside the melody and mostly “something” which is the “right sound”, the vibratory qualities which are the inner meaning of the song.
)it’s not necessary to understand the words, it’s important to catch the vibratory qualities of the song

inner meaning of the song = body impulses sound & impulses = inner meaning

)discover the difference between the melody and the vibratory qualities

Now, the traditional song, and the impulses related to it, are a “living being”, often a person, but also an action. How to discover this ? Throughout the work

Some ancient songs are “women”, others are “men”, others are “adolescents” or “kids”, others are “old persons” ; the number of possibilities is incredibly large. An authentic traditional song is a living organism: there is the body-song (ex. Caribbean songs), the animal-song ( from animal movements or sounds) , the force-song (from an action).

The song is always associated to the impulses of life that flow through the body;
the posture of the body, and the manipulation of breathing are not in discussion anymore, it’s only about this living current that carries the song.

Impulse = In – pulse = pushing from inside.
Something that pushes inside the body and spreads out toward the external something very subtle bon inside the body, but not only belonging to the sphere of the body

Impulses proceed physical actions, always. It’s like the physical action, still invisible from outside, was already born in the body.

Impulse = morpheme of expression and of action = a tiny piece of something = elementary piece

The best way to work on physical actions, to be able to have them rooted in our nature, is to work with the impulses. Remaining at the impulse level, the action, almost born, but still retained, creates an in-tune condition for the body to react.

To the impulses is connected a “right tension” ; if we in – tend to do something, a correct tension exists inside, directed outside.

In – tension = Intention

There is no intention without a specific muscular activity.

It is not a psychological state, it is something that passes through the body at a muscular level and which is connected to an objective outside ourselves.

Organicity = the potential , in the human body, of a current almost biological of impulses that come from the internal and are directed toward the accomplishment of a precise action.

Try and seize the impulses and work on them using the traditional songs..................to be continued

By Alessandro Rolandi. Beijing

Creative process, movimento ii

“the mediator between brain and muscle must be the heart”
Thea Von Harbou
(introduction to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, from the novel of T. Von Harbou)

In creativity
Methods are bound to failure --- conceptualism is bound to failure --- intellectualism is bound to failure --- sentimentalism is bound to failure --- random emotional inspiration is bound to failure.
The first three approaches are completely strange to living signs, the seeds of creativity; what they propose can be extremely well-done but it is dead.
The last two approaches deform and exploit the living signs; the result is an emotional soup lacking in precision and pumping impulses and images instead of letting them come naturally.

Research is the key, but not systematic
(Fleming found penicillin but was not specifically looking for it; yet he did not hesitate to give his research a different direction as this last showed to be promising and interesting.)
Developing an idea, paying attention to when some living elements/signs appear; then listen to where and how these living elements spontaneously lead the research.

Keep the “searching” alive
-why “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon “ is a masterpiece and “Guernica” just a good painting-

Ex. When we sing a song for the first time, in the voice, beside the quality of the singing, there is a tension and a surprise; we try and feel the song, discover it, find it. If we don’t pay attention, after we learned it , we improve it more and more formally, we become skillful, but we take it for granted; that vibration, that hesitation of the first time must be kept alive; in it there are two elements : the fear of making a mistake (social and un-useful emotion) but also “the excitement of exploration and discovery.” (very creative element)

Introducing a “via negativa”
You can work by accumulation of signs = very formal result (ex. Traditional oriental theater and art)

You can work by proliferation of signs = mixed results, unpredictable (traditional western approach)

You can work by distillation of signs = consistent results (precision and spontaneity co-exist) thinner currents and inner sources are activated.
- get rid of everything that is: mental, intellectual, manipulated
- it’s not about yourself, it’s about art (music, painting, sculpting, etc.)
(ex. If you play an instrument what you do is about the music, not about yourself)

In the end, stripped to the bone, you’ll do the only thing that you simply cannot prevent yourself from doing---this is the connection, the sign.

There is a verticality between organicity and awareness;
The path between them is a creative one.

To be continued............ How to rediscover organicity and work on the signs.

By alessandro rolandi. Beijing

Movimento numero zero / 0 - Prelude

“Because something with a certain quality can happen, it is necessary that an empty space is available” These words by Peter Brook, still resume today the starting point and the development of the creative process.

Why an empty space ?....Because an empty space potentially allows the birth of something new and spontaneous.

I don’t think the creative process is different in plastic art, music or performing arts; it just works with different containers in each of these disciplines, and yet if we were to be precise, the division is made more for intellectual purposes than for the sake of a natural truth.

Starting these interventions I’ d like to begin with a general point of view, and each time, focus more on every piece of the puzzle and every aspect of the subject.
If we want to talk about the creative process------detached from any artistic marketing strategy -------we should start by talking about the “invisible”.
There is an Indian word which in its own sound suggests the sense of the creative spark, of the unseizable instant : this word is “sphota” , something like “life spark”.

So how can we materialize the invisible whether in writing, dancing, sculpting, painting, drawing , playing, acting or in any other else way? We simply can’t.
The invisible does not need to become visible, yet even if the invisible is not obliged to manifest itself, it can, at the same time, do so everywhere and in every moment, through everyone or every thing, if the given circumstances are the right ones.

The only thing that can help is a certain awareness of the present. If we accept the present moment in an intense way and the conditions are right, the spark of life might appear within the right sound, the right movement, the right image, the right fold of the paper or stain of colour or gesture of the hands on previously “inert” material. It is within a special exchange that the invisible might appear, that’s why it might appear in thousands of unexpected forms.

In a more provocative sense we can also say that, the invisible, the creative spark has or at least had, a sacred origin ; it is rooted into the ancestral world. But what is the sacred, the ancestral? It is a transformation, in terms of quality, of what that is not sacred at the beginning.

A simple human life is an example of “the visible” through which the invisible might appear.

Sometimes it’s not even necessary to be able to do something extremely well. If there is no attempt to fake that a creative gesture, or a form, or a sound is more than what it really is, then another criteria takes this place: the need to find an interior echo; within this empty space of authenticity the contact with something really different is possible. There is no method proposed; it is only about being aware of something, and this may happen anytime in anyplace or never in no place.
Here is a be-bop about creativity; quick flashes that we’ll consider one by one in the coming “movements” in this blog.
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All is evoked by one thing----the creative gesture is a gesture of the soul; it does not matter what you do; it is not connected to any behavior.

Extension of the gesture of the soul = creativity
No talent differences---there are levels to cross----something invisible must be switched
no guarantee/only possibility

The way someone creates = the way the viewer receive the message

The way a person works defines what the person is

APPEARANCE = STRUGGLE AGAINST WHAT IS ORGANIC
The idea starts from the mind, but not “through the mind”. If I start from the mind it means the world around is DRY

TO CONCEIVE EMPTINESS / SPACE AROUND US, NOT THE OBJECTS

All methods are systematic : you learn to do everything right but it’s mechanical, it does not move.

We become insensitive to the world when we become a character, a caricature; this prevents the possibility to be reached across. All stimulation from outside can feed the character-monster: if something that it cannot analyze gets to this character-monster, there is a block = identity crisis

To be creative we need to dismantle any masque or role, even unconscious

Physically being empty and transparent
EMPTINESS---RELAX & CONCENTRATION = ACTIONS HAPPEN BY THEMSELVES
(it’s not us that mentally create them)

CREATIVE ACTIONS = THEY HAPPEN WHEN THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY
( it’s like in a death-or-alive situation)

WE NEED TO ALWAYS LOOK FOR SUBSTANTIAL RELATIONSHIPS OF CAUSE

The key is CREATIVE SENSITIVITY
Correspondence with flowing things
FLOWING = ALIVE
Do not try and fix them
(if we fix them, we are “acting” like if we were creative)

IF YOU ARE SOMETHING, YOU ARE NOT BORING BECAUSE YOU CHANGE CONTINUOUSLY

AVOID CHANGE = REPETITION = DEATH

TO BE WE MUST NOT TRY AND UNDERSTAND / No obligation to react

OBLIGATION TO REACT = IMITATION

When we really become something we do not look like it

We cannot truly understand something without getting lost in it


This sensitivity it’s the origin of creativity

DO NOT TRY AND FIX THINGS

THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN KNOW

IT IS POSSIBLE TO FOLLOW FOR A WHILE SOMETHING CHANGING, BUT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO DO IT CONTINUOUSLY
TO BECOME SOMETHING ;
the mistake begins when we think that “something” is a “thing”.
It is our EXPERIENCE , OUR ENCOUNTER with them , which gives life and meaning to things
Nothing and nobody is fixed , all is flowing

In ART

To interiorize = to lose the sense of self and of truth
In art we should not live “inside”:
We should imagine that we do not exist inside, but just OUTSIDE, near by.
The encounters we make define who we are

Maybe TO BE = TO BE THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE WORLD

Creative experience exists revealed in the interaction with the real world; if we interiorize, we need codes to explain ;
EXPERIENCE REVEALED = INTENSELY CREATIVE

BRING THINGS IN THE SKIN AND IN THE ACTS INSTEAD OF IN THE MIND
You can enjoy Beethoven or being Beethoven, but not both.


To be able to give a creative response :

-) do not focus on what we think we want
-) become more sensitive towards what we do not want
-) develop capacity, attention, sensitivity toward WHAT WE DO NOT KNOW
(instead of what we want)

First important question about creativity:

HOW CAN WE ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE TOUCHED BY THINGS THAT DO NOT ORIGINATE IN US ?

-) Identify the fluxus and follow it
-) being able to see when it is manifested and it is flowing, not caring about where does it go



To be continued..............