« Hyphenation, body memory »
Text commissionned by Skol for Hyphenation, body memory, exhibition and performance workshop by François Morelli at Centre des arts actuels Skol, Montréal.
2018
We came with sugar, pieces of string, birdhouses, styrofoam balls. Something to eat, something that ties, something for sheltering the living, something made of transformed materials.
We find ourselves with all this in a space: that of a gallery, a class, or a territory. We know we are there for learning, for knowledge and skills to be passed on. There will probably be something to build; certainly there will be something to experience.
Having come from different directions, we could be a few or a gathering of many. We will come back alone, too; it’s necessary sometimes. Before we do anything else, we take the time to talk, to exchange ideas, to give each other instructions, and to give ourselves liberties, too. As soon as we set to work we see how we all do things our own way—by repeating characteristic gestures, by following familiar paths. Even when we have made our decisions together and even if we envision a common goal, we realize that each of us gives it a distinct form, that ideas, when given a chance to exist, transform themselves and us as well.
And so we will let go of our preconceptions, set aside what we know too well, and make room for wandering, experimentation, and the unexpected. Our gestures will be clumsy, our points of reference will have to be relocated. There will be times when we will be surprised, pressured, or vulnerable. When we will judge and be judged. We will observe others’ ways of doing things and become aware that it is also we who do things otherwise. We will learn to know ourselves, noticing that we don’t all think the same way, that we don’t see the same details, that we don’t have the same traits. We’ll finally understand that what we can bring about together is what no one could have imagined being able to create alone.
It is in this way that sugar will turn into sand, that string will allow us to trace forms, that birdhouses will become markers along the way, that we will see snowflakes in styrofoam balls. And this is how we will become friends.
Beyond what we can create, there is what creates itself. Beyond a work that may or may not materialize, there are the marks that creation leaves on us and around us. Because knowing what to do must lead to knowing how to be, it is not enough to learn to make something that one would call art or a work of art, one must also learn to be an artist. The artist is a role to play in a community, a person to be in the world. The space of creation is thus also a space of learning, of openness, and of connection. And this space follows us everywhere we go.