TQW Magazin
Sabina Holzer on Something for the Heart/Algo para el corazón by Deborah Hazler & Macarena Campbell

Matters of the heart

 

Matters of the heart

As I leave the room and all the oscillating bodies covered in pink light, the stream of images and stories about love and friendship, which pour down on us, the social staging and visual sexualisation, which try to lure our desire and manipulate our yearning, are only left with a faint echo of what they once were.

I am reminded of Roland Barthes’ “A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments”. The fragmentary, alphabetical order of love feeding on literature, philosophy and his own experiences. The various aspects of intimacy and distance he addresses. And even though he knows about the fear to be left, to be left alone, he directs the attention toward the potential of the playful side and the decision-making process in relationships. Barthes tender irony examines sensibilities without ever overlooking this most existential interaction with the partner, which might eventually leave us feeling deserted in the dark, dark night.

“…the lover’s discourse is today of an extreme solitude”, he writes in the preface to his 1977 book. And, he goes on: “This discourse is spoken, perhaps, by thousands of subjects (who knows?), but warranted by no one; it is completely forsaken by the surrounding languages: ignored, disparaged, or derided by them, severed not only from authority but also from the mechanisms of authority (sciences, techniques, arts). Once a discourse is thus driven by its own momentum into the backwater of the ‘unreal’, exiled from all gregarity, it has no recourse but to become the site, however exiguous, of an affirmation.”[1]

Prior to the performance, I have listened to an Ö1 interview with Deborah Hazler and Macarena Campbell talking about their new work: “To allow another person to be close to you, for them to open up before you and for you to be open to them, that is what we shared together and what we try to advertise to others. I have this image of people going outside and thinking: You know, tomorrow I will open up to someone.”, Deborah Hazler says. And we all know just how difficult this is. “Too many prejudices do prevail. We only accept physical contact when it comes to the constellation of being a couple or a parent and a child. But how may I touch a friend?”, Macarena Campbell asks.

Thus, Something for the Heart is concerned with physical contact and the ways the two women have experienced it. Their performative experimental setup[2] shows that physical interactions are somewhat like a bodily “mobile processuality”[3]. In times of digitalisation and #metoo, Deborah Hazler and Macarena Campbell direct our attention toward this seemingly tiny space in which physical contact takes place. Man/Woman – everything – have to move in order to touch, in order to be in contact with someone. For being in contact, as shown here, essentially serves as basis for anything to occur, to come into being.

In the foyer, before admission, I am informed of that I may – only if I wanted to – take off my shoes and sit on the floor, and that I may even change my position in the room.

The room is covered in pink light. There are also pink and skincoloured pillows in various sizes, which can be used by the audience. A few chairs are scattered around the room. One may choose one’s own place in all this. Deborah Hazler and Macarena Campbell both sit on the floor. Both dressed in light grey t-shirts and jeans and their heads wrapped in big glittery hearts made of fancy paper. The hearts’ fronts are silver, the backs are red. Flower heads. Their bodies gently sway.

This vibration continues throughout the whole performance. It turns into swaying, shaking, rocking, twitching, dangling and swinging. Continuous movements, back and forth, micro-movements, shifting of weight without ever losing balance or falling over. A constant and gentle pushing of boundaries that will give way to actions and interactions. A beat of the heart, a movement. Hearts and wings.

Together, and yet each at their own pace, the two women get up and face each other. Come closer. At first, their foreheads touch, then, their faces are pressed together sideways. The other’s face gets reflected in the own heart shaped frame. I want to be with you, at your side. To be with you to be myself. Loving you to find myself. To love you only to see myself. Reflections of the mirrored hearts. To shine within the radiant being of the other, the others. The others I feel. The other who feels me. Touches. Moves. Throws me into turmoil. Within this togetherness, this – almost – mess. This rather clumsy attempt of merging. The ever more frequent contact of two bodies. Full body contact.

Torsos merge, legs intertwine. As if they wanted to get through the other, into one another. But even though the bodies try to invade each other, they remain equally impenetrable. You expose me to the loneliest sort of loneliness. Arms and hands cannot get a grip, do not grasp, cannot take a hold, do not hang on. Do not know much more than the rest of the body, which is expanding toward the other body. Is leaning against the other body. Hands extended during the embrace. It is the skin that senses, sounds, detects. It navigates along tensions, pressure, rhythm. A trial of strength, which gradually and eventually ends in both sinking down on their knees. To sink in. To sit inside the other and loose oneself in this roundelay. To be open to this swaying nature. To be “two-in-one”, it seems. Heart-throbbing quiet.

Only to make them break loose once again. These plants of the heart. To turn to someone else: to us, the audience. Although, not with the attentive eye, they still turn to us with an attentive body. They pass on that halo which stems from the heart.

We are surprised and slightly embarrassed. What shall you do when someone presents you with their heart? With a shy smile we pass it on, the glittering heart. We do not (yet) dare to adorn ourselves with this, to enter this round dance, to take part in this fine game. And yet, we have already quietly and strangely become part of the swaying. We have become attentive spectators observing these changing, wandering acts of contemplation and coalescence before us.

What is happening to this world? Has it been forgotten in this pink light? During this process of turning to one another? This eternal visual touch they present each other with and with which they sense each other before it all begins anew again. The interaction. The leaning in. The sinking in. The head buried in the other’s throat pit as if it was a dream, perhaps a thought, a notion, a possibility, a variation of being in contact. Of love, of friendship, of matters of the heart. Of consent and equality. An interaction never to end after it has begun. Each time, there is one less layer, peeled off, which opens up to the entirety of the world. It gets passed on. It creates worlds. Just as it does right here where, for once, the focus is fortunately on something else than on power and all its predicaments.

 

Sabina Holzer is a performer, choreographer, author and SIB® coach (systemic and integrative physical therapy). She teaches and designs transmedial settings at the intersection between theory and practice. Her texts on performance and contemporary dance have been published in different media and artistic publications (www. corpusweb.net, Sternberg Press, epodium Verlag München, Scores Tanzquartier Wien, engagée, www.stffwchsl.net, mindthedance. com etc.). In collaboration with Jack Hauser, she creates performances and interventions in public space, galleries, museums and theatres: Lentos Museum of Modern Art Linz, WUK, Essl Museum, Hidden Museum, Documenta 13, University of Applied Arts Vienna and Tanzquartier Wien, e.a. www.cattravelsnotalone.at.

 

 

More texts in TQW MAGAZIN

 

[1] Roland Barthes, A Lover’s

Discourse. Fragments, trans. by

Richard Howard, New York, 1978.

[2] Interview transcription

from Ö1, Kulturjournal, 28.03.2018

(trans. by Christian Keller).

[3] Jean-Luc Nancy, Rühren,

Berühren, Aufruhr, Wien, Tanzquartier

Wien, 2011 (trans. by

Christian Keller).

 

 
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