Mapping out some \u2018tensile\u2019 (Manning) strings or Learning to do Crochet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
In this paper I’d like to address the event Into The Midst<\/em> as an artistic \u201cco-composed\u201d (Massumi 5,12,18; Manning) form of organization, that contours a possible \u201ccreative ecology\u201d (Shorthose and Strange), germinating from a collective necessity to explore different ways of engaging, creating and sharing within a world continuously proposed as driven by forces of control, imposition and determination, in a so-called era of culture as a commodity. It is of my hope to suggest \u2014 in answering Hardt\u2019s opening question in this paper \u2014 that indeed, new ways of life were created during the \u201cco-composing\u201d of Into The Midst<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In order to discuss such artistic \u201cco-composed\u201d artistic form as an event, I will engage with an experimental approach, that will try to challenge economic views on the geographies of creativity. I\u2019ll expose some radical principles and functions which I\u2019ll draw from this artistic form of organization. I propose this artistic form, manifests itself as a radical emergent and ever evolving \u2018action-non-action\u2018 \u2014 being that a possible core of it\u2019s ecological living. From the drawing above, I will then try to extend the \u2018action-non-action\u2019 concept in relation with a concept of \u2018stopping\u2019 as a gesture of waiting and waiting longer. Attending to an alternative economy. Deflecting away from an alienated idea of production, maybe, attempting to give it back it\u2019s creative cell(f); toward a probable new ethic for living. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach will attempt to interlace3<\/sup>\u00a0three theoretical perspectives: Antonio Negri\u2019s \u2018refusal of work\u2019 as exposed by Kathi Weeks4<\/sup>\u00a0(2005), Andr\u00e9 Lepecki\u2019s notion of \u2018stopping\u2019 (2006) and Frederick Matthias Alexander\u2019s proposition of \u2018non-doing\u2019 as exposed by Rachel Zahn5<\/sup>\u00a0(2004). The first perspective, will be pulled out, from the field of Autonomist Marxism; the second one, will fold in and out, from Dance and Performance Studies; and the third one, will find it\u2019s soft stretch, from a still very unknown terrain of Somatic Studies in relation to Cognitive Science. The malleable glue for sticking together some of the afore mentioned, will be a sort of entrance into \u2018process philosophy\u2019 (the midst) and a movement that intersects the representational field (the dome), in order to step into the grounds of a probable \u201cecology of power of existence\u201d (Massumi 28), (the event).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The notion of stopping then, will be related with a call for subversion of a representational model and will try to provide an acknowledging platform for other manifestations of culture. Within that other, I intend to make a point for that which is not localized or localizable within the mainstream, toward a perhaps proposition of a \u2018minor-stream\u2019, which grows from underneath as an uncontrollable creature6<\/sup>\u00a0(see fig. 1). Quietly yelling to destabilize the drive for power. And although in its own way strong, acknowledging at all times the dangers of the pulls coming from the mainstream, so working at all times too, to challenge and soften the forces of control. Even its own ones. But how?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2010, during the Art & Science Transdisciplinary Lectures Series that took place at the New School in New York, sociologist Pascal Gielen observes the parallelism between post fordism and artistic practice. He suggests that \u201cthe [contemporary] art scene, promotes [in a way] the post fordist labour ethics\u201d (2010). In Gielen\u2019s own description of post fordism, these ethics go hand in hand with the shift from an economy of material products and labour (from fordism) to a consumer economy of immaterial products and labour. Hardt adds affect labour as \u201cone face\u201d (90) of such immaterial labour7<\/sup>.\u00a0Such shift in a way, establishes the conditions that define contemporary labour in our days. According to Gielen, this kind of labour is characterized by: a\u00a0 huge mobility (physical and mental), temporary jobs with flexible rather than fixed hours of work, doing several projects at the same time, the use of the internet, communication being most important than doing, and adaptability rather than stability (2010). This modes of production, Gielen argues, carry implications of \u201cphysical mobility\u201d and \u201cmental mobility\u201d, generating mental states of anxiety, stress, depression, frustration, emptiness and even claustrophobia, as a result from a continuos demand for having new ideas (2010).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Similar to Gielen\u2019s exposition, on introducing us to Negri\u2019s \u2018refusal of work\u2019 Weeks displays a scenario of a growing tendency toward \u201cwork values [that] today play an even more important role in securing consent to the current system\u201d (131). She observes a demand for motivation where \u201cwork is glorified . . . and posed as a moral duty\u201d (131). The work ethics are driven by a constant demand for the worker’s auto-motivation8<\/sup>, who’s convinced that working is the highest value in order to attain a ‘somehow’ better life. We find a similar observation of a<\/p>\n\n\n\n rise of an increasingly speculative, high-turnover, innovation-driven \u201cknowledge economy.\u201d [Where] [t]he \u201ccreative capital\u201d fueling the economy tends to derive from fluid forms of social and intellectual cooperation often analyzed in terms of \u201cimmaterial labour\u201d. (Manning and Massumi 1)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This speculative economic turn, washes away all possibilities of becoming with it. Indeed, this new economy, aligns artistic practices to it\u2019s modes of proceeding, as Gielen suggests above and as Manning and Massumi also assert:<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the capitalist economy subsumes all other economies, it is not just capturing monetary value. It is capturing processes of individuation. It is capturing entire fields of emergent relation. It is capturing powers of becoming. Capitalism endeavors nothing less than the universal capture of forms of life. It subsumes them, sometimes gently, more often brutally, to techniques of relation dedicated to quantitative value-adding and accumulation. (30)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus the geographies of creativity seem to be subsumed by an economic drive toward the capitalization of an idea of work and productivity. A no-way-out alley from a system of the capital. But what is it that holds this system and how to challenge it in order to move toward new forms of life? Some interestingly confluent ideas pop-out from the authors here explored, suggesting the holding principles of this system: A) The \u201cglorification of work [as the] fundamental ideology of contemporary capitalism\u201d (Weeks 132), together with \u201coppositional logics\u201d inherited from the still active paradigm of a Hegelian \u201cDialectical\u201d thought (Weeks 124-127). B) \u201c[An] economy of mobility that informs, supports, and reproduces the ideological formations of late capitalist modernity\u201d (Lepecki 16). C) A \u201cmind-body\u201d dualism as that in which the world \u2018runs\u2019 (Zahn 12). D) The capitalization of \u201ccreative activity\u201d as the \u201cdominant tendencies\u201d (Manning and Massumi 2), and the \u201cquantitative growth . . . [through] mechanisms of accumulation [as that which] capitalist economy is formally dedicated to\u201d (Manning and Massumi 30). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Following Gielen\u2019s presentation mentioned above, Michael Hardt elabourated a question addressed to artists, which I found resonating together with the pulses and impulses of this paper: <\/p>\n\n\n\n […] in the Post Fordist context […] could [a] biopolitical militancy offer an alternative for artistic production or . . . [d]o you see already artistic practices that do operate, on a level of biopolitical militancy, . . . that is, that not only barks and bites the institutions and habits and social norms, but also create in a generalized social way, new forms of life that could provide an alternative to the society we are? (Hardt 2010)<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is clear then, that a necessity for new forms of life becomes crucial. New forms of life that move across an alienated alignment with the powers and drives of the \u00ab\u00a0modernity project\u00a0\u00bb (Lepecki) and the auto-imposed demand for \u00ab\u00a0quantitative value\u00a0\u00bb (Manning and Massumi) production. Crucial as well, becomes an exploration for that which holds the system together, in order to transverse it in a \u00ab\u00a0[non reversal] differential reaction\u00a0\u00bb (Zahn 127-131). Such exploration I believe, could find a point of coincidence, that challenges the values of the dominant forces enlisted before. Such point of coincidence, I propose, is a practice of difficult practice. The practice of action-non-action. Such practice is the one I\u2019m here intending to lay down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To move or not to move. That’s [not] the riddle. The adventure is how to move. In a world of pre-configured movement patterns. How to move? Stop. Stop moving. Move. Move Stopping. What’s the difference between the action of stopping and the action of moving? How to move differently? How to stop in a different place from that of habit? By stopping a long time, a really long time, we realize there’s no real stopping or that stopping is not contrary to moving as we might have thought in the first place. And maybe by moving we are stopping. Maybe by moving in a certain way we\u2019re blocking some movement impulses willing to manifest. So the consideration won\u2019t be about moving or not moving, nor stopping or not. The consideration would be on what kind of movement or stopping we could activate. If we stop for a long time. Wait. Wait longer. Pause. Freeze. Wait. Wait longer. Soon we realize that the body continues it’s own becoming flow. The blood keeps torrentially moving, oxygen keeps finding it’s way in and out, out and in again. There’s autonomy! If you keep still yet, something begins to occur. There’s movement, or is it the perception of movement? There’s an already movement going on. If you attend waiting, if you allow the autonomy of that movement to continue without imposing on it the movement of your duties, you might find that it flourishes. At some point your hand may be raising, your tissues may be undulating and twisting your abdomen organs in all strange manners, your saliva may drip, new geographies may be explored. New geographies generated. What if we move from there? From the autonomy of movement. How?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[T]he refusal of work should not be understood as a rejection of activity and creativity, . . . but rather comprises a refusal of the ideology of work as highest calling and moral duty (Weeks 121). Antonio Negri, according to Weeks says that \u201c[w]ork which is liberated is liberation from work\u201d (121). The \u201crefusal of work\u201d as a concept on the one hand is a \u201crejection of the present regime of work\u201d and on the other, a \u201cproject\u201d (Weeks 110). Like this it presents itself as a negative-positive. Not a dualistic negative-positive but a differential one. The difference between dualistic and differential is that the last one moves beyond and differently but not necessarily contrary as the former. By moving differentially the system eventually changes, by moving contrary, the system remains, perhaps displaced, but untransformed. The importance of this difference is that a differential movement allows to diverge from a representational field which in a way, produces the forces that sustain us moving within a certain ideology. In this case, the ideology of work, as a pedestal to reach for, on top of the system, and at the same time, the bottom that sustains it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In her analysis, Weeks finds this ideology to be the problem of Classical and Humanist Marxism. While these perspectives develop important critiques of Capitalism \u2014 of exploitation, in the case of the first one, and of alienated labour, in the case of the second one \u2014, they both fail to identify the core problem of the functioning system under consideration, for both still reproduce Capitalism most fundamental value: Labour (Weeks 112-120). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Weeks also concludes her proposal with an invitation for new forms of life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The refusal of work is a refusal of the mode of life centered around the capitalist organization of work and, at the same time, a theory and practice that seeks to secure the time and open the space within which to create new needs, desires, and practices, new ways of life. (131)<\/p>\n\n\n\n So if the refusal seems to be differential and the ideological value of work that from which we urge to move differentially away from, what is this work liberated from work? How to proceed? I propose the practice of \u2018action-non-action\u2019 as an option (one of many possible ones as in a differential practice there is no only one option).<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s Thursday. Or is it Friday? Or Wednesday still? During\u00a0Into The Midst<\/em>\u00a0time blends. It is a day, one of those days. Of the event. The event. Wasn\u2019t the event on Monday? Weren\u2019t we preparing for the event? Oh, the event is the preparing? Actually, there\u2019s no preparing. This is the event. So. It\u2019s the midst. There we are. SAT technicians awaiting. Where\u2019s the project? Where\u2019s the projection? What to project? Where are the images? Where\u2019s the video? Where\u2019s the art? Where\u2019s the work? They don\u2019t see it. We don\u2019t see it. Some of us see it. It\u2019s happening. All the time it\u2019s happening. But not in our idea of work, nor in our idea of producing an event for later. It is happening in it\u2019s autonomy to happen, without needing us a lot. We attend. We attune. To its torsions and tensions. Where is everybody? I don\u2019t know, it was agreed to postpone the meeting. Meeting? Which Meeting? Anyway, we\u2019re here what shall we do? Let\u2019s go for a coffee. The event enjoys itself as it moves us in and out of it\u2019s spectrum. But it\u2019s spectrum moves as well to catch us even when we\u2019re not around or inside the Dome. Actually, we\u2019re mostly around it, barely inside. During\u00a0Into The Midst<\/em>\u00a0the space collapses and expands. Micro events happen all the time. Ideas fly and others dissolve. We get in there. We practice \u2018relational movement\u2019. An hour. Or so. Passes by. We play. We engage. Something happens. The event activates us into an ecology of new forms of living. We stop wanting. We practice letting ideas go. We stop working and it starts working! It works in action-non-action. That kind of working of the imperceptible. That kind of action that is already going on. Always going on. As in an \u2018active stand\u2019. Stand up and do nothing. How come if doing nothing you\u2019re still standing up? And what happens if in that standing, in that stand, you do even less. Try it. Or not. As a matter of fact, you know what? Don\u2019t try it. You know why? Because it already tried you out! Or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2006, dance scholar Andr\u00e9 Lepecki wrote an essay that, from my reading, proposes the concept of \u201cstopping\u201d as drawn from the author\u2019s observations of dance manifestations at the turn of the 21st century. These dance manifestations, Lepecki analyses as symptoms of what the artists \u2014 the ones he chooses to focus on \u2014, were needing in relation to an exhausted moving society ignited by a modernity project. Such modernity project, imposes movement as it\u2019s \u201cpermanent emblem\u201d (Lepecki 9) and therefore as well, as dance\u2019s apparent ontology. As Lepecki describes: \u201c[m]odernity\u2019s subjectivity is its movement and modernity subjectivizes by interpellating bodies to a constant display of motion\u201d (9). In this scenario, the world is presented to us in constant movement and movement is demanded from us as a way to keep the world\u2019s never reaching peace. Lepecki centers in artists whose work took the form of a \u2018stopping\u2019 of this continual motion as a way to answer to the following question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n How can a putatively independent being establish a relation with things, world, or others while remaining at the same time a good representative of modernity\u2019s \u201cemblem\u201d: movement? The inclusion of the kinetic into this political-ethical question of modern subjectivity brings us back to the problem of how to dance against the hegemonic fantasies of modernity, once those fantasies are linked to the imperative to constantly display mobility. The call for a \u2018slower ontology\u2019 as Lepecki names it \u2014 I propose to take it further by naming it \u2018stopping\u2018 \u2014 opens up a crack into the heart of what moves the world, as presented by the capitalist economy: representation. This \u201ccritique of representation\u201d, Lepecki suggests, \u201cis one of the main characteristics of early twentieth-century experimental performance, theatre and dance\u201d (45). By suggesting a cut in motion as a cut in representation, Lepecki asserts, from my point of view, in that which drives capitalism to it\u2019s own exhaustion: not work, not accumulation, nor production, but the fixed ideas that populate majorities. Fixed ideas are, from my perspective, the danger. So how can I find interesting Lepecki\u2019s proposition for \u2018stopping\u2019 if I differentially refuse ideas that don\u2019t move? There\u2019s where the representational field plays it\u2019s cards. As long as representation is the only mechanism in work, the idea of \u2018stopping\u2019 is a fixed one. If we start moving in a relational field in \u2018conjunction\u2019 and \u2018disjunction\u2019 with representation \u2014 not merely in opposition \u2014 we can begin to relate differently with the concept of \u2018stopping\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During a movement workshop (fig. 2) of Into The Midst<\/em> we were into the Dome, exploring an idea of \u2018strings\u2019 in between our bodies. We started by imagining that threads connected our bodies with other bodies. We imagined those threads tense, but still mobile. We started moving, walking, around the space. But always trying to sustain the imaginary tensile threads in between our bodies. It was difficult. Specially because the exploration was performed in between 20 or more bodies. It felt more. How to keep attention to the invisible threads that connect our bodies with other bodies without loosing the tensile mobility in none while everyone commences to displace around a space that moves as a projected image transpositions itself around the Dome? We had to slow down. But we also had to practice rapid and sudden bursts of the experiment once we were more used to it. And then, just when we believed it mastered. Stop. There was a call for \u2018stopping\u2019. There was an observation that if we remained very long in a place of movement or in a movement occasion, we commenced to forget about the threads. In that moment when the threads commenced to disappear, the call was to \u2018stop\u2019. By \u2018stopping\u2019, the group was able to connect again the threads of relationality by being able to attend to the event\u2019s requests and tonalities. It was a difficult practice. We didn\u2019t master it. We tried. How important it became to \u2018act-non-act\u2019 or \u2018not to perform\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is an Alexander Technique10<\/sup>\u00a0exercise that I went myself through: Walk. Just walk. Keep walking. Stop. Stay there. Walk again. Walk as you would walk in the street. Just Walk. Stop. Keep doing this for a while. Stop for longer. Stop for shorter lapses of time. Now. Notice that every time you stop, you adjust your hips. Just notice it, don\u2019t do anything. Keep walking. Keep stopping. What if next time you stop you don\u2019t adjust? In a way, what if next time you stop you don\u2019t stop the flow of movement that you bring with your walking. So what if next time you stop, you stop adjusting. What if you don\u2019t try not adjusting. What if you stop trying. Do this once more or twice. Then forget about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zahn presents the concept of \u2018non-doing\u2019 with Alexander Technique as a case study. She suggests that \u201c[i]n non-doing we are immediately confronted with the fluid architecture of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) as well as the conscious and unconscious habits that often interfere with our voluntary intentions to inhibit doing\u201d (4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interested most of all on the western body-mind dissociation which she identifies as the mode that drives most of our movement creative inhibitions, she argues for a (re)association of the mind-body. As with the authors previously visited, she as well presents this (re)association not as a duality but as a process within processes. In order to explore the (re)association of\u00a0 mind-body processes, she links Francisco Varela\u2019s concept of \u201cepoch\u00e8\u201d11<\/sup>\u00a0\u2014 borrowed also from Husserl \u2014 with Mathias Alexander concept of non-doing. Varela\u2019s concept has the following procedure: \u201csuspension, redirection and letting go\u201d (Zahn 1). Alexander proceeds similar with a user friendly (as Zahn calls it) protocol: awareness, inhibition and direction. In this protocol, \u201cit is still possible for us to overlook or underestimate the subtle aspects of the [Autonomic Nervous System], during the business of conscious voluntary movement and certainly during intellectual activity\u201d (Zahn 4).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Zahn\u2019s recall, a crucial moment for Alexander, in investigating the possibility of improving his loss of voice, by the habits of his neck\u2019s posture, was when,<\/p>\n\n\n\n [e]ventually he arrived at a revolutionary idea, that the problem he was trying to solve was generated by an incorrect12<\/sup>\u00a0mental attitude that was incapable of correction in its present state . . . [so] he had to eliminate a mental attitude that was the cause of the problem rather than doing something more. (Zahn 4)<\/p>\n\n\n\n With this revolutionary idea, Alexander practitioners work with talked images and anatomical vocabulary with the body in action-non-action, in order to open new autonomic nervous system patterns capable to establish a mind-body relationality. So, Zahn explains that,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the user friendly protocol for entering efficient requests for change in the ANS seems always to include a form of non-doing. <\/em>[However] [t]he obstacles on this protocol present themselves almost immediately when you \u2018stop\u2019 as Alexander says you must, and experience the chatter of thoughts and the residue of muscular tension still going on. (4, emphasis on the original)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Considering the Alexander technique described above, we can conclude that \u2018non-doing\u2019 isn\u2019t really \u2018non-doing\u2019. But the terminology works for confusing the representational consideration of the action-non-action. When we hear not do. We automatically stop moving and by \u2018stopping\u2019 the movements of our habits, other possible movements in-creation become possible. Maybe subtler and less perceptible, maybe weaker, in the beginning, but perhaps powerful enough to bring out change and transformation. This movements would be, the movements of the nervous system which are the midst of our thoughts and actions or thoughts in action or actions of thoughts: the processual relationality of chemical-physical movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And talking about chemical-physical processes, one of the most interesting activities, at least for me, during the event Into The Midst<\/em> were the activities around food. During the week of the event, the group kept finding ways to convene in several pot-lucks. In this gatherings around food, eating became a relational technique of conviviality. On the other hand, one of the most important questions for the project was the in-out separation of the Dome with it\u2019s urban surroundings social threads. There were many attempts to relate the project not only with the inside of the Dome but also with it\u2019s outside. Interestingly, the most fruteful <\/em>activity in this regard was that where food was involved in the Peace Park<\/em> next to the SAT. During this micro event (which turned to be macro), a team of participants gather to dye some threads of yarn with raspberries. After this event, the left raspberries where shared with the community that surrounded the park. That maybe insignificant gesture, for me, accomplished a real relationality, a gesture of \u2018non-doing\u2019 in it\u2019s maximum expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1952. Cage enters the anechoic chamber at Harvard University with the intention to listen to \u201cactual silence\u201d (Cage 1981: 115 as cited by Nakai) that the room had promised. Instead he discovers \u201ctwo sounds\u201d (Cage, 1961: 14 as cited by Nakai) that disrupt his expectation. Being informed that they were the sounds of his own nervous system and blood circulation, the composer reaches a radical shift of perspective: there are, and will always be, sounds to be heard regardless of his intentions. The term \u2018silence\u2019 consequently ceases to signify an absence of sound, turning instead into a metaphor addressing all sounds that a listener excludes in his listening. (Nakai 31)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we have seen, I have tried to relate the concepts of \u2018the refusal of work\u2019, \u2018stopping\u2019 and \u2018non-doing\u2019 with my own proposition of \u2018action-non-action\u2019. For sure, my own proposition still needs in-action investigation. Yet the experience I had as a participant of Into The Midst<\/em> lead me to it. I believe that the practice of \u2018action-non-action\u2019 in daily life as in artistic practice can indeed aid to generate new forms of life and therefore new geographies of creativity. But we are not to generate them, we are better to attend to them and to non-do, in order to open space for them to manifest and self-organize themselves. Geographies of new territories yet unexplored. By practicing \u2018action-non-action\u2019 I\u2019m as well proposing that in the discovery of this self-manifested territories we may sustain a relation of respect and non-invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ironically, process philosophy \u2014 a differential way of thinking in movement to which I\u2019m trying to attain as an alternative to the representational model \u2014 proposes \u201cbare activity\u201d (Massumi 2) as its pivot. Massumi offers a possible way to relate to this concept: \u201cthe just-beginning-to-stir of the event coming into its newness out of the soon to be prior background activity it will have left creatively behind\u201d (2). This way of relating with the concept of \u2018bare-activity\u2019, I believe, offers an angular perspective from which to move in \u2018action-non-action\u2019. At the same time, I read it as a proposition to relate with the processes of power formation, such processes I believe, are crucial to explore, in order to aid in the generation of these new forms of life that Hardt is calling for in the form of a question posed in the epigraph of this paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The irony of my \u2018action-non-action\u2019 in relation with process philosophy\u2019s \u2018bare activity\u2019 is born only from a reading within a representational model. A model where every each has an equivalent. My proposal is that \u2018action-non-action\u2019 doesn\u2019t mean non action, but is intimately related with \u2018bare activity\u2019 in \u2018duplicity\u2019 (Massumi 5). As Massumi, suggests: \u201c[t]he relational-qualitative duplicity at the heart of activist philosophy is a differential<\/em>, not a dichotmy\u201d (5, emphasis on the original). The practice of action-non-action\u2019 thus could be a way to listen \u2018bare activity\u2019s\u2019 always going or the other way round. \u201cAs though thought could begin to think, and continuously begin again\u201d (Deleuze 132), that\u2019s the place from where \u2018action-non-action\u2019 can begin to emerge and manifest into the uncontrollable creature of creativity\u2019s ecological existence. \u2018Uncontrollable\u2019 within the differential logics takes on a different turn. It is not an uncontrolled destructive because it moves in gentle doses of \u2018action-non-action\u2019, toward new perishable forms of life, those becoming-forms of a creative ecology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1] I choose to cite James by Massumi in a gesture of respect for the source that for me, opened up a window to the in-process universe of process philosophy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2] Into the Midst<\/em>\u00a0was an event that took place from the 15th to the 22th of October 2012. For the duration of a week or so, something in between 30 people from different disciplines came together and worked in \u201ccollaborative explorations\u201d. On October 22nd there was a concluding public performative event for which invitation read as follows:\u00a0 \u201cJoin us for a performative conversation . . . capping a week of improvisational research-creation activities in and around the SATosphere, the large-scale interactive immersive environment at the Society for Arts and Technology. The aim has been to collaboratively explore the potentials and pitfalls of the digital environment. How can we activate the projection space, so as to reactivate the body, in its many experiential dimensions? How can a surround surface be made to house a field of embodied relation? How do we negotiate the complicated relation of the limited-access technology inside to its urban surroundings?\u201d (SenseLab).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3] By approaching these three theoretical perspectives with verbs as lacing, pulling, folding in and out and softly stretching, my intention is to give perpetuation to the act of crocheting that was explored during the event\u00a0Into The Midst<\/em>. From beginning to end, there was an invitation to learn crocheting. This activity became a relational field and I\u2019m trying to apply it\u2019s science to the experiment of writing this paper.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4] Similar to James cited by Massumi on the beginning of this paper, I\u2019m sustaining the same gesture for Negri as exposed by Weeks. While Negri himself is proposing his own work and concepts, which hopefully will become an occasion for a different paper, I found Weeks exploration central for the development of the ideas I\u2019m here trying to propose.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5] See Notes 1 and 4. The same applies here.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6] See Whitehead, Alfred North.\u00a0Adventure of Ideas.\u00a0<\/em>New York: The Free Press, 1967. Print. 255, 268, 294. And from same author:\u00a0Modes of Thought .\u00a0<\/em>New York: Free Press, 1968. Print. 166.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [7] On immaterial labour see also Hardt and Lazzarato.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [8] Weeks supports this observation with Henwood\u2019s suggestion that \u201cworkers [nowadays] are expected to be the architects of their own better exploitation\u201d (as cited by Weeks 132).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [9] According to Zahn, \u201chomeostasis is a concept coined by Walter Cannon in the 1930s which identifies an organic systemic phenomenon: the body\u2019s fundamental ability to maintain a biochemical norm. It has since been used to explain the transdisciplinary nature of embedded patterns to resist change, whether speaking of biology or organizational management\u201d (4).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [10] Alexander Technique was developed by Frederick Mathias Alexander at the beginning of the twentieth century as a series of observation based body exercises that focused on the association of the body-mind relationship. Today, Alexander Technique, is a widely known technique practiced and still under development by trained and certified practitioners all over the world. It is usually practiced by an observer an a mover, in order to release pain and to find a posture released from habits of the autonomic flow of the body.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [11]\u00a0Zahn defines (phenomenology exponent) Husserl\u2019s concept of epoch\u00e8 as: \u201cstopping the flow of habitual thoughts and belief structures long enough to perceive the phenomena of the present moment\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [12]\u00a0I find problematic the use of the word \u201cincorrect\u201d as it presupposes a good over a bad posture in the body. I understand that this problem has a connection with Alexander\u2019s moment in history (1859-1955) and I have observed that Alexander practitioners differ in perspectives toward this term. I would say that instead of incorrect we could think of \u201cecologycally disruptive\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Browning, Gary, Global Theory from Kant to Hardt and Negri<\/em>, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 208 p. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Deleuze, Gilles et F\u00e9lix Guattari, What is Philosophy?<\/em>, New York, Columbia University Press, 1994, 134 p. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Deleuze, Gilles, Difference and Repetition<\/em>, New York, Columbia University Press, 1994, 350 p. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Gielen, Pascal et Michael Hardt, \u00abArt & Science Transdisciplinary Lectures: Pascal Gielen Sociologist and Michael Hardt Philosopher\u00bb, Youtube, <\/em>vid\u00e9o en ligne, The New School, New York, 1 novembre 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Hardt, Michael, \u00abAffective Labour\u00bb, Boundary<\/em>, vol. 2, no<\/sup> 26, 1999, p. 89-100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Kanngieser, Anja, \u00abAnd\u2026and\u2026and\u2026The Transversal Politics of Performative Encounters\u00bb, Deleuze Studies, Spec. issue of F\u00e9lix Guattari in the Age of Semiocapitalism: Twenty Years After<\/em>, vol. 6, no <\/sup>2, 2012, p. 265-290. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Kanngieser, Anja, \u00abBreaking Out of the Specialist Ghettos: Performative Encounters as Participatory Praxis in Radical Politics\u00bb, dans \u00d6zden Firat, Beg\u00fcm and Aylin Kuryel, Cultural Activism: Practices, Dilemmas and Possibilities<\/em>, New York et Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2010, p. 115-136. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Lepecki, Andr\u00e9, Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement,<\/em> New York, Routledge, 2006, 160 p. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Liselott Mariett, Olsson, Movement and Experimentation in Young Children’s Learning : Deleuze and Guattari in Early Childhood Education<\/em>, Londres, New York, Routledge, 2009, 264 p. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Manning, Erin, ASEM 644N Reading Around Deleuze or How Art Thinks Course Notes<\/em>, Montreal, Concordia University, Sep \u2013 Nov 2012, notes de lecture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Manning, Erin et Brian Massumi, \u00abPropositions for an Exploded Gallery\u00bb, Thought in the Act: Passages in the Ecology of Experience<\/em>, Forthcoming.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Massumi, Brian, Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Ocurrent Arts<\/em>, Cambridge, Massachusetts et Londres, The MIT Press, 2011, p. 1-28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Murphy, Timothy S., et Abdul-Karim Mustapha, The Philosophy of Antonio Negri<\/em>, Londres, Pluto Press, 2005, 272 p. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Nakai, You, \u00abLost Information: Selected Perspectives on \u2018Experimental Actions\u2019 (1948-1972\u00bb), Tacet: Experimental Music Review<\/em>, n.p. n, d. p. 19-51.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013<\/em> SenseLab: A Laboratory for Thought in Montion<\/em>, Concordia University Hexagram, 21 octobre 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Shorthose, Jim et Gerard Strange, \u00abThe New Cultural Economy, the Artist and the Social Configuration of Autonomy\u00bb, Capital & Class<\/em>, vol. 28, no <\/sup>84, 2004, p. 43-59. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Tronti, Antonio, \u00abThe Strategy of Refusal\u00bb, Libcom<\/em>, 1966, en ligne, <https:\/\/libcom.org\/article\/strategy-refusal-mario-tronti>. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Weeks, Kathi, \u00abThe Refusal of Work as Demand and Perspective\u00bb, dans Timothy S. Murphy et Abdul-Karim Mustapha, Resistance in Practice: The Philosophy of Antonio Negri,<\/em> Londres, Pluto Press, 2005, p. 109-135.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Virno, Paolo, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life<\/em>, Los Angeles, Semiotexte, 2004, 120 p. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Zahn, Rachel, \u00abFrancisco Varela and The Gesture of Awareness: a new direction in cognitive science and its relevance to the Alexander Technique\u00bb, The 7th International Congress of the F. M. Alexander Technique<\/em>, Universit\u00e9 de Paris 1, Oxford, Angleterre, 16-22 ao\u00fbt 2004. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First Movement There\u2019s something happening. \u201cSomething\u2019s doing\u201d (James as cited by Massumi 1)1. It\u2019s October 2012. It\u2019s Montreal. The leaves from the trees have started to fall. There\u2019s crunchy yellow carpets on the sidewalks. Something\u2019s coming. An event:\u00a0Into the Midst2. There\u2019s a place. The Dome. The Dome or the SATosphere,\u00a0at the Society for Arts and … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1953"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1957,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions\/1957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/m1.jpeg\")
Subjective Ethics of Contemporary Labour and Geographies of Creativity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A Pause<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Refusal of Work Playing at Into the Midst?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Second Movement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Stopping-Stepping<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
This is where analyses of choreographies and performances that directly address the impossibility of sustaining \u201cflow or continuum movement\u201d are of theoretical and political import. (11)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/archee.uqam.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/m2.jpeg\")
Changing homeostasis9<\/sup>\u00a0patterns by stopping-stepping or non-doing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Third Movement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Practicing action-non-action as a technique for deflecting toward a Creative Ecology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bibliographie<\/h2>\n\n\n\n