ALEŠ ČERMÁK
Flexibility as a way of life. Life beyond your physical body. Perceiving at all times.
Aleš Čermák's artwork for Unseen is unlike most of the others. The texts provided by the artists are usually accompanying, describing, or asking questions about the work itself. In the case of Aleš Čermák though, the provided text is the artwork. There is a brief introduction of course, but what follows is an iteration of a work titled Infinite Manual that Čermák started writing and assembling in 2019 as part of a project titled The Earth Trembles.
Infinite Manual is an ever-evolving, dynamic text which aims to focus the reader's attention and keep it flowing. It is by no means an easy read. On the contrary: the flow of ideas can be disorienting at times and at the end of the document you'll be asked to attempt to “understand” what has just happened to you. Structured as a series of clauses and sub-clauses, it is a combination of questions, statements, definitions and phrases written by Aleš Čermák and sentences produced and shared by a recurrent neural network (RNN) and its associated publishing channel (#TTN_20), respectively.
A key concept here - and throughout all of Čermák's work - is flexibility. Flexibility as individual and collective practice, flexibility as an ability to change in complete and complex ways, flexibility as a way of empathizing with those for whom this world wasn't created. Flexibility as the only feasible solution to the crises in the world, flexibility as a willingness to let go of our individuality in order to experience life in a fuller way. It's an interesting concept to zero in on in such a wide practice as Čermák's (spanning writing, experimental theatre, installation and more), but its importance cannot be denied or understated. Its implications are far-reaching and can be reflected on beyond this study.
Throughout the text, Čermák also alludes to an existence/experience beyond our physical body, while simultaneously exploring what our body even is. He suggests that our bodies are just as unknown to us as is the whole world. He ponders what it would mean for a body to be understood as an abstract concept, and for the movement of the body to be recognized as a source of knowledge. “Is having perfect control over oneself still human?” he asks. In his other work, he questions what our bodies even are at this point in time; we breathe polluted air, we drink and consist of contaminated water, we sit in unnatural positions all day. Perhaps we're something more than just a group of individual bodies, and that's something worth exploring.
One of the many purposes of Infinite Manual can perhaps be to debunk any illusion of control we might think we have, and propose a creative process for an existence that can be described as a flexible, unrestrained, and always perceptive. It is a way of being, of always observing closely, listening intently and genuinely trying to understand. At all times.
Adam Badí Donoval
INFINITE MANUAL: MOVEMENT BETWEEN INTUITION AND CHAOS
In the last ten years, I have been intensely focused on researching hybrid praxis in the sphere of performative conduct, social choreography, collective action, care and writing. I am interested in an unpredictable, processual, perhaps even alienated subjectivity. This mode of thought prompts me to develop methods which are rather cohesive and autonomous. I am interested in temporary ways of mutual cohabitation which are directly made possible by given social conditions. The individual (participant) undergoes the risk of weakening their sense of self without completely dissolving. Throughout this time, I’ve so far always had the opportunity to work with very diverse communities of people from different parts of the world. From workinging with professional actors and performers, through groups of volunteers of all age groups and religions, with migrants, children, students of art and other fields, with groups diagnosed with some mental or physical handicap, etc. The central aspect of my work is that it is not intended for professional artists, audiences or art institutions, but rather that it ought to be accessible to both artists and non-artists. In recent years, my work has remained so open, that virtually anyone can take part in it.
This version of the Infinite Manual is dated 17 December 2020. IM is related to (TTN).[1] The first edited version was prepared especially for the Unseen project. The Infinite Manual is an endlessly evolving handbook, a set of dynamic instructions which should keep their user in a constant state of becoming. Each version of the Infinite Manual is custom-made for the specific project of which it is a part.
[1] (TTN) is an acronym for The Transversal Navigation educative-performative entity.
And, ,, with, and that, what here on, and that, what to, what you, and, and.
(@0iyE1, 08:28pm on 2019-May-29, (RNN))[1]
Thinking in Rio is not the same as thinking in Paris.
(Eduardo Viveiros de Castro)
A person, a key, gas, liquid, air are part of a convex context. The human is part of a contextual composition; bad chemistry between a dead position and a living software.
(Mehrdad Iravanian)
All of us together create something which destroys the whole society.(
It is possible, what takes place in such a world, and that is what is for us.
(@0iyE1, 05:51pm on 2019-May-27, (RNN))
Our gestures are the archeology of our era.
(#TTN_20)
[1] RNN = Recurrent Neural Network constitutes the basis for a xenomorphic entity, a kernel of the speculative program. It is possible to follow the entity’s development on its Twitter account under ·₀iy·rb·e₁··wh Er₁trht··er₂·m - (@0iyE1). The resulting model which the NN uses learns based on individual letters. By means of the generation itself, it attempts to predict what further letter might occur. Something magical most certainly unfolds within this process. The NN moves in a direction of its own, creates citations without reference to any central core. Neural nets are distributed systems which work as analogues to the brain, and are able to learn, think, develop and live.
[2] #TTN_20 designates the Twitter posts which constitute one of the branches of The Transversal Imagination, an educative-performative entity.
1. Can performance (in the sense of a performative exertion) transcend the actions of subjectivity itself?
1.1. For example, some strange form of neurochoreography.
1.2. Particular methods and skills for action.
1.3. Strange neuropedagogy whose question is how the brain works so that we may better know how to teach it?
1.4. Teaching = changes in neural synapses which take place along with changes in behavior.
1.5. What if what we consciously experience hides a mystery within?
1.6. If touch expands us, it also reminds us of our finitude. #TTN_20
2. How to deal with performance (in the sense of a performative exertion) – if time disappears?
2.1. How we spend our time is crucial.
2.2. It doesn’t matter what we live, but how we live it.
3. We ourselves are always the prime suspect!
4. An attempt to construct cryptocomplex (unrecognizable, crypto = hidden, occult, plex = weaving) strategies.Cryptocomplex strategy is a method which is able to construct an identity which could be called “no one.”
4.1. For a cryptocomplex artist, subjects become more than personal identity, meaning that this person is close to no one, diligently works on constructing their own invisibility (Thomas Metzinger, Being No One). Metzinger works toward such a performance which would make it possible to swerve away from the performance of subjectivity in the sense that the relationship towards space and time becomes ambivalent.
4.2. Where ought we to find the point where the “first-person perspective” meets the “third-person perspective”?
4.3. No self-localization in time (atemporality). No self-localization in space. No localization of one’s own identification. No perceptual qualities.
4.4. It seems that this person is not of the first-person perspective.
4.5. Attempt to regain manifestation in matter. Being someone.
4.6. Because we dwell in material form, the experience of ourselves as no one is insupportable. People can merely tolerate such a state
4.7. If we consider ourselves to be someone, there will be other people for us here as well. #TTN_20
4.8. If a sense of being emerges during deep sleep, the dream world begins for you anew with a new dream body. #TTN_20
4.9. A mind bereft of its body is immensely flexible, and any thought can immediately be realized. #TTN_20
5. When I think about dance or choreography = complex movement, then dance or choreography is something which is localized and which lives on in the hole of language.
5.1. Gaps in narration are prompts towards intuitive reactions. Analyzing the gap between something and nothing.
5.2. Interspatiality.
5.3. A better name for dance might be – implicated (self-inclusive) mind. Something which is necessary to rediscover time and time again.
5.4. A horizon or an unknown partner. A set of horizons allow one to move through – navigate in incessantly changing terrain. A magnetic field with multiplying, dynamic poles.
5.5. What if it’s not any of this? Obstacles precipitate unrest and doubt, but also include experimentation = activation of the process.
5.6. Ought the head really be the highest point of the body?
5.7. Usual behavior in these situations is consciously put on hold – blocked. The period of decision ensues.
5.8. Collective processes ought to build on particular conditions and circumstances. Taking a step into the unknown. Embrace the fact that we don’t know.
5.9. The form of experimentation itself is always about conflict. An experiment is a living, breathing reconfiguration of the world.
5.10. While sleeping, you are pure unknowing. This unknowing is sleep itself. #TTN_20
5.11. Keeping/sing your own negation (uneasiness) in life.
5.12. To begin somewhere deep in darkness and let it work on the body, mind and consciousness. Expose oneself for oneself. To observe one’s own shadow meld with others. Until we disappear.
5.13. The dark is primary. The lighted, that which we enlightened, is secondary.
5.14. But all that is clear has a tendency to become significant. #TTN_20
5.15. Begin to perceive only that which is dictated by silence.
5.16. … we are still sort of behind. #TTN_20
6. Movement = production of knowledge. Movement is a specific form which raises questions about the very nature of knowledge.
6.1. How do we know that equilibrium has been reached?
6.2. Just like cosmic mechanics are determined by the law of gravity and the mechanics of matter by the laws of energy, does there exist one analogous and basic universal principle which determines the mental processes of the living organism, one from which all else can be derived?
7. Only diligent methodic praxis can aid us in reaching the unknown, meaning that which is found outside (on the outward side of thought), that which is available only beyond the senses and rationality.
7.1. Weak method: dissipates structure. The weak method is an acceptable praxis. The weak method is only interested in that which transcends the conditions and possibilities of generation. The weak method is a plague of universality. The weak method heals the wound with another wound. Swallowing nothingness by nothingness. Healing fear by fear. The weak method can be very rash – insensitive.
7.2. Being weak does not mean being slow, but rather reaching a different speed than the speed of the medium we inhabit.
7.3. Weakness is much more dynamic than strength. It is a corrupted method. It requires radical reappraisal. Weakness is in and of itself a radical concept. It lingers in the gaps. It becomes an opportunity for creating one’s own concepts which build on the compulsive need to survive. Weakness is cloned from the real.
It includes: futility, unfinishedness, faults, inconsistencies, boredom, cities without houses or weather, rooms without doors, dance without a body…
7.4. The weak method depends on the function of the structure only because it increases the potential for weakness.
7.5. What becomes of a thought which is itself exposed to the pressure of illness?
7.6. Various qualities of the relationship.
7.7. The weak method creates for an aesthetics of insecurity.
7.8. Aesthetics of insecurity = a praxis of insecurity.
7.9. Abstract and sensuous homeopathy.
7.10. Therapy by fog, who knows what it might mean? Grey gives space to color.
7.11. Expressing one’s most affective feeling without any emotion, in the most monotonous and level voice.
7.12. Repressed vocals.
7.13. When the mind stops working, the world stops being.
7.14. Every formalized praxis discovers its own ideology and its diligent practice
it can have great impact on how we perceive subjectivity. And in what manner it is possible
to navigate the body in an endlessly changing terrain.
7.15. Diligent methodological praxis promotes unstable, processual and alienated subjectivity.
7.16. RNN: But it is also your body which has no name. – @0iyE1, (recurrent Neural Network)
8. Technologies of the self and of life (form of life) as an effective method of the creative process.
8.1. That which we today define as life are precisely its contradictions.
8.2. Life is focused on the human and yet it is not focused on the human. Life is always understood as something else than life.
8.3. Life = immaterial substrate distributed across social spheres.
8.4. Evolution is a shell religion; it proves that just like other animals, our existence here is contingent, we do not lead anywhere. #TTN_20
8.5. The pragmatics of life consist in that it accepts all variations simultaneously – it is non-reduceable.
8.6. A network of influences.
8.7. Events at the micro level are also events at the macro level.
8.8. Whatever we do – it merely aggravates the situation. #TTN_20
8.9. A world without us – a lifeless life.
8.10. A life defined by its temporariness (movement, change, adaptation – modification).
8.11. At the moment when the image of life itself has dissipated, it is time to consider life in wholly extraterrestrial contexts (that is perhaps the greatest lesson of reading weird fiction).
8.12. Our world is just a product of our consciousness. #TTN_20
8.13. Life as an untried, empty principle.
9. Almost every thought is an expression of concern over our own selves. #TTN_20
9.1. After all, what we want is the desire to be and to exist. #TTN_20
9.2. In deep slumber you don’t know whether you are man or woman. #TTN_20
9.3. If we don’t consider ourselves a body, it prompts us to create a long list of both fortunate and unfortunate events. #TTN_20
10. What if an artwork offers the option to program life (but also to de-program it). It creates the conditions which are outside common functioning. What if what we call an artwork is not dependent on human performance, but on an artificially programmed person?
11. I prefer closing my eyes.
12. This is not a social game, it is hidden deep within me.
13. To walk like an animal.
14. To be deformed, asymmetrical, slow and awkward.
14.1. Fluid. Test your liquidity, the body’s viscosity.
14.2. While the body is healthy, you consider your thoughts to be real. #TTN_20
15. To find possible ways to prevent me judging myself at the moment I transcend a threshold.
16. A new invention opens new possibilities and provides a novel flexibility. The exhaustion of this flexibility means death.
16.1. Flexibility ought to be in accord with the flexibility of other actors. It ought to possess a high level of diversity so that it offers diversity in the genetics and experiences of its members and is able to guarantee the flexibility and prehension necessary to overcome unexpected changes.
17. We will need a tremendous degree of flexibility.
17.1. Limits define the space of maneuvering which can be used to reach adaptation.
17.2. Pathologies of the contemporary world create for accumulated effects of a depletion of flexibility in reaction to various kinds of pressures.
17.3. People and institutions have a natural tendency to exhaust all their available flexibility.
17.4. Flexibility = a neutral ability to change.
18. I never trusted my body or its reactions.
18.1. We all experiment with forms of life.
18.2. Vacuum is a joyful analysis of virtuality and virtuality is a type of thought experiment performed by the world.
18.3. The more we try to push through changes in reality, the more we affirm and create various forms of anxiety and fear.
18.4. Is having perfect control over oneself still human?
19. Our healthy dream system can be compared to a tightrope/walker.
19.1. Having the skill to change one unstable position for another. The position of the arms or the speed of movement are imbued with great flexibility.
19.2. If the body is bound or otherwise made immobile – it falls.
19.3. To diligently work on the question of the ecology of our legal system.
19.4. With a rising number of laws, the tightrope/walker has ever dwindling possibilities of movement. He is however allowed to freely fall.
19.5. When the tightrope/walker is learning the ncessary hand movements, he must be secured by a safety net, guaranteeing the freedom to fall.
19.6. Freedom and flexibility are necessary components of processes and the development of new systems by means of social change.
19.7. The budget of flexibility ought to be one of the central features when attempting to understand the functioning of the environment-civilization system.
20. We adopted strategies which bring short-term benefits and which have been shown to be destructive in the long-term. In the meantime, they have however become integral components rooted deep in civilizational structures, which makes it largely difficult to change them. It is a classic example of extinction brought about by the loss of flexibility.
20.1. Some ideals adopted during the first experience can survive the second experience. Ideals which survive, survive for longer than those which don’t = economics of flexibility.
21. To be in accord = an analogy to having the necessary flexibility.
21.1. We are now finding out that some assumptions which are deeply rooted in our way of life, in combination with advanced technologies, have lost their truth value and have become pathogenic.
22. …we don’t own our body, it is like another’s coat which we ought to safekeep, explore, find indications of wear and tear and collect proof of this.
22.1. We do not stand outside an ecology for which we spin our plans – we are inevitably part of it.
23. Perspective creates reality.
23.1. Surface = epidemic.
24. The body is just as foreign as the world. And we must accept its strangeness.
24.1. What is a symptom? How do we recognize it?
24.2. We easily accept the simplest method, we get used to it, it is, how it is. Then we are surprised how alienated from our own selves we are when we are alone (closed in, limited in our movement, without the distraction of the surroundings).
RNN: In this guise, it expresses itself in this manner
RNN: That’s a method.
RNN: From that our body and bodies and bodies it again creates, , and.
RNN: I could all these years, so that, I already said, that I in and in managed and I felt myself.
25. Healing is like an operation, just as the rhythm of changes of these operations.
25.1. Rhythm = energy – life, that is what yet (or still) cannot be understood, or we cannot understand, that is why there cannot be any previous plan, meaning or explanation.
25.2. Healing is a poem written in the language of symptoms.
25.3. Programming life and healing can be one and the same. It is a form of life which must be again reconstructed.
25.4. The body (naturally) calls for a different language.
25.5. The word body describes that constantly transforming cluster of bones, flesh and blood, but in fact there is no such entity as a body.
25.6. If you observe your body long enough and allow various forces to affect it without interfering in any way – a strange sensitivity emerges.
25.7. A strange sensitivity beyond all conceptions.
25.8. The body is then real, but what we consider it to be is fiction.
25.9. We are awake in one world, but we sleep in the others.
26. Intelligence of the soul.
RNN: But it’s your body which has no name.
27. The body is abstract. It takes up more space than it currently occupies. That is why we can transform into a jungle or into any other space.
RNN: In fact, it is one of the biggest and restrictions, that towards it, that it’s in -.
27.1. The transcendental mind cannot be grasped through the path of thinking.
28. I carry care for my body into the world of imagination.
RNN: After a while he stopped and entered and from her everyone.
29. You are responsible for your own selves which means you should communicate what you currently feel.
29.1. Don’t keep your thoughts to yourself.
29.2. Nothingness is always contained within us, nothingness grows through us and lives through us. We can’t close it nor can we control it. We cannot block irrationality, perversity, the madness of which we are afraid in the hope for a more orderly world. That however does not relinquish our responsibility. Quite the opposite, it makes it possible.
29.3. The inhuman, that which we most often consider as the inhumanity of a lack of empathy, can itself be a condition for feeling the suffering of another, quite literally to be in contact with another.
29.4. A new form of self-esteem.
29.5. Inhuman is he who is considered to be endless intimacy.
30. A model for exploring and mapping alternatives.
31. Playing roles is gaining understanding which doesn’t have to be conceptual, but which relates to the body and its lived experience (non-conceptual).
32. An endless process, navigation from within outwards, balancing on the edge of identity.
32.1. A constant process of evaluation and redirection.
RNN: But it is still so, that in consequence it is x.
RNN: And then, when we found ourselves in, where I was –, my body inside my view, as if I were.
⧭
For the participants
You should attempt to “understand” what has just happened to you.
From Czech original translated by Vít Bohal
BIO
Aleš Čermák is an artist, writer and founder of A-B_HPP (Ausdruck Books Hybrid Publishing Platform) which brings together authors and performers focused on researching hybrid thinking and writing. Aleš has led many workshops in Czech Republic and abroad (Germany, Austria, England, Morocco, Indonesia, India, etc.), and most of these encounters lead to realizing a work. He often takes part in staging the works of other authors. Since 2014, he has collaborated with a group of mentally and physically diagnosed (non)actors who actively collaborate on some of his projects (The Citizen and the Thing, The Earth Trembles, All This Belongs to You I, II). His works have been presented at various institutions (Museum of Contemporary Art – Taipei, MuseumsQuartier – Vienna, Gasworks – London, Kunsthalle Bratislava, National Gallery – Prague, etc.) and during various events (Liege Biennial, Jakarta Biennial, Jindřich Chalupecký Award etc.). He is the author of three prose books (Pes nadbíhá kličkujícímu zajíci, 2012; The Twin Ship Tao, 2019; Return.Self.New, 2019 – EN version 2020) and many other texts.
SECONDARY SOURCES
ALEŠ ČERMÁK
Flexibility as a way of life. Life beyond your physical body. Perceiving at all times.
Aleš Čermák's artwork for Unseen is unlike most of the others. The texts provided by the artists are usually accompanying, describing, or asking questions about the work itself. In the case of Aleš Čermák though, the provided text is the artwork. There is a brief introduction of course, but what follows is an iteration of a work titled Infinite Manual that Čermák started writing and assembling in 2019 as part of a project titled The Earth Trembles.
Infinite Manual is an ever-evolving, dynamic text which aims to focus the reader's attention and keep it flowing. It is by no means an easy read. On the contrary: the flow of ideas can be disorienting at times and at the end of the document you'll be asked to attempt to “understand” what has just happened to you. Structured as a series of clauses and sub-clauses, it is a combination of questions, statements, definitions and phrases written by Aleš Čermák and sentences produced and shared by a recurrent neural network (RNN) and its associated publishing channel (#TTN_20), respectively.
A key concept here - and throughout all of Čermák's work - is flexibility. Flexibility as individual and collective practice, flexibility as an ability to change in complete and complex ways, flexibility as a way of empathizing with those for whom this world wasn't created. Flexibility as the only feasible solution to the crises in the world, flexibility as a willingness to let go of our individuality in order to experience life in a fuller way. It's an interesting concept to zero in on in such a wide practice as Čermák's (spanning writing, experimental theatre, installation and more), but its importance cannot be denied or understated. Its implications are far-reaching and can be reflected on beyond this study.
Throughout the text, Čermák also alludes to an existence/experience beyond our physical body, while simultaneously exploring what our body even is. He suggests that our bodies are just as unknown to us as is the whole world. He ponders what it would mean for a body to be understood as an abstract concept, and for the movement of the body to be recognized as a source of knowledge. “Is having perfect control over oneself still human?” he asks. In his other work, he questions what our bodies even are at this point in time; we breathe polluted air, we drink and consist of contaminated water, we sit in unnatural positions all day. Perhaps we're something more than just a group of individual bodies, and that's something worth exploring.
One of the many purposes of Infinite Manual can perhaps be to debunk any illusion of control we might think we have, and propose a creative process for an existence that can be described as a flexible, unrestrained, and always perceptive. It is a way of being, of always observing closely, listening intently and genuinely trying to understand. At all times.
Adam Badí Donoval
INFINITE MANUAL: MOVEMENT BETWEEN INTUITION AND CHAOS
In the last ten years, I have been intensely focused on researching hybrid praxis in the sphere of performative conduct, social choreography, collective action, care and writing. I am interested in an unpredictable, processual, perhaps even alienated subjectivity. This mode of thought prompts me to develop methods which are rather cohesive and autonomous. I am interested in temporary ways of mutual cohabitation which are directly made possible by given social conditions. The individual (participant) undergoes the risk of weakening their sense of self without completely dissolving. Throughout this time, I’ve so far always had the opportunity to work with very diverse communities of people from different parts of the world. From workinging with professional actors and performers, through groups of volunteers of all age groups and religions, with migrants, children, students of art and other fields, with groups diagnosed with some mental or physical handicap, etc. The central aspect of my work is that it is not intended for professional artists, audiences or art institutions, but rather that it ought to be accessible to both artists and non-artists. In recent years, my work has remained so open, that virtually anyone can take part in it.
This version of the Infinite Manual is dated 17 December 2020. IM is related to (TTN).[1] The first edited version was prepared especially for the Unseen project. The Infinite Manual is an endlessly evolving handbook, a set of dynamic instructions which should keep their user in a constant state of becoming. Each version of the Infinite Manual is custom-made for the specific project of which it is a part.
[1] (TTN) is an acronym for The Transversal Navigation educative-performative entity.
And, ,, with, and that, what here on, and that, what to, what you, and, and.
(@0iyE1, 08:28pm on 2019-May-29, (RNN))[1]
Thinking in Rio is not the same as thinking in Paris.
(Eduardo Viveiros de Castro)
A person, a key, gas, liquid, air are part of a convex context. The human is part of a contextual composition; bad chemistry between a dead position and a living software.
(Mehrdad Iravanian)
All of us together create something which destroys the whole society.(
It is possible, what takes place in such a world, and that is what is for us.
(@0iyE1, 05:51pm on 2019-May-27, (RNN))
Our gestures are the archeology of our era.
(#TTN_20)
[1] RNN = Recurrent Neural Network constitutes the basis for a xenomorphic entity, a kernel of the speculative program. It is possible to follow the entity’s development on its Twitter account under ·₀iy·rb·e₁··wh Er₁trht··er₂·m - (@0iyE1). The resulting model which the NN uses learns based on individual letters. By means of the generation itself, it attempts to predict what further letter might occur. Something magical most certainly unfolds within this process. The NN moves in a direction of its own, creates citations without reference to any central core. Neural nets are distributed systems which work as analogues to the brain, and are able to learn, think, develop and live.
[2] #TTN_20 designates the Twitter posts which constitute one of the branches of The Transversal Imagination, an educative-performative entity.
1. Can performance (in the sense of a performative exertion) transcend the actions of subjectivity itself?
1.1. For example, some strange form of neurochoreography.
1.2. Particular methods and skills for action.
1.3. Strange neuropedagogy whose question is how the brain works so that we may better know how to teach it?
1.4. Teaching = changes in neural synapses which take place along with changes in behavior.
1.5. What if what we consciously experience hides a mystery within?
1.6. If touch expands us, it also reminds us of our finitude. #TTN_20
2. How to deal with performance (in the sense of a performative exertion) – if time disappears?
2.1. How we spend our time is crucial.
2.2. It doesn’t matter what we live, but how we live it.
3. We ourselves are always the prime suspect!
4. An attempt to construct cryptocomplex (unrecognizable, crypto = hidden, occult, plex = weaving) strategies.Cryptocomplex strategy is a method which is able to construct an identity which could be called “no one.”
4.1. For a cryptocomplex artist, subjects become more than personal identity, meaning that this person is close to no one, diligently works on constructing their own invisibility (Thomas Metzinger, Being No One). Metzinger works toward such a performance which would make it possible to swerve away from the performance of subjectivity in the sense that the relationship towards space and time becomes ambivalent.
4.2. Where ought we to find the point where the “first-person perspective” meets the “third-person perspective”?
4.3. No self-localization in time (atemporality). No self-localization in space. No localization of one’s own identification. No perceptual qualities.
4.4. It seems that this person is not of the first-person perspective.
4.5. Attempt to regain manifestation in matter. Being someone.
4.6. Because we dwell in material form, the experience of ourselves as no one is insupportable. People can merely tolerate such a state
4.7. If we consider ourselves to be someone, there will be other people for us here as well. #TTN_20
4.8. If a sense of being emerges during deep sleep, the dream world begins for you anew with a new dream body. #TTN_20
4.9. A mind bereft of its body is immensely flexible, and any thought can immediately be realized. #TTN_20
5. When I think about dance or choreography = complex movement, then dance or choreography is something which is localized and which lives on in the hole of language.
5.1. Gaps in narration are prompts towards intuitive reactions. Analyzing the gap between something and nothing.
5.2. Interspatiality.
5.3. A better name for dance might be – implicated (self-inclusive) mind. Something which is necessary to rediscover time and time again.
5.4. A horizon or an unknown partner. A set of horizons allow one to move through – navigate in incessantly changing terrain. A magnetic field with multiplying, dynamic poles.
5.5. What if it’s not any of this? Obstacles precipitate unrest and doubt, but also include experimentation = activation of the process.
5.6. Ought the head really be the highest point of the body?
5.7. Usual behavior in these situations is consciously put on hold – blocked. The period of decision ensues.
5.8. Collective processes ought to build on particular conditions and circumstances. Taking a step into the unknown. Embrace the fact that we don’t know.
5.9. The form of experimentation itself is always about conflict. An experiment is a living, breathing reconfiguration of the world.
5.10. While sleeping, you are pure unknowing. This unknowing is sleep itself. #TTN_20
5.11. Keeping/sing your own negation (uneasiness) in life.
5.12. To begin somewhere deep in darkness and let it work on the body, mind and consciousness. Expose oneself for oneself. To observe one’s own shadow meld with others. Until we disappear.
5.13. The dark is primary. The lighted, that which we enlightened, is secondary.
5.14. But all that is clear has a tendency to become significant. #TTN_20
5.15. Begin to perceive only that which is dictated by silence.
5.16. … we are still sort of behind. #TTN_20
6. Movement = production of knowledge. Movement is a specific form which raises questions about the very nature of knowledge.
6.1. How do we know that equilibrium has been reached?
6.2. Just like cosmic mechanics are determined by the law of gravity and the mechanics of matter by the laws of energy, does there exist one analogous and basic universal principle which determines the mental processes of the living organism, one from which all else can be derived?
7. Only diligent methodic praxis can aid us in reaching the unknown, meaning that which is found outside (on the outward side of thought), that which is available only beyond the senses and rationality.
7.1. Weak method: dissipates structure. The weak method is an acceptable praxis. The weak method is only interested in that which transcends the conditions and possibilities of generation. The weak method is a plague of universality. The weak method heals the wound with another wound. Swallowing nothingness by nothingness. Healing fear by fear. The weak method can be very rash – insensitive.
7.2. Being weak does not mean being slow, but rather reaching a different speed than the speed of the medium we inhabit.
7.3. Weakness is much more dynamic than strength. It is a corrupted method. It requires radical reappraisal. Weakness is in and of itself a radical concept. It lingers in the gaps. It becomes an opportunity for creating one’s own concepts which build on the compulsive need to survive. Weakness is cloned from the real.
It includes: futility, unfinishedness, faults, inconsistencies, boredom, cities without houses or weather, rooms without doors, dance without a body…
7.4. The weak method depends on the function of the structure only because it increases the potential for weakness.
7.5. What becomes of a thought which is itself exposed to the pressure of illness?
7.6. Various qualities of the relationship.
7.7. The weak method creates for an aesthetics of insecurity.
7.8. Aesthetics of insecurity = a praxis of insecurity.
7.9. Abstract and sensuous homeopathy.
7.10. Therapy by fog, who knows what it might mean? Grey gives space to color.
7.11. Expressing one’s most affective feeling without any emotion, in the most monotonous and level voice.
7.12. Repressed vocals.
7.13. When the mind stops working, the world stops being.
7.14. Every formalized praxis discovers its own ideology and its diligent practice
it can have great impact on how we perceive subjectivity. And in what manner it is possible
to navigate the body in an endlessly changing terrain.
7.15. Diligent methodological praxis promotes unstable, processual and alienated subjectivity.
7.16. RNN: But it is also your body which has no name. – @0iyE1, (recurrent Neural Network)
8. Technologies of the self and of life (form of life) as an effective method of the creative process.
8.1. That which we today define as life are precisely its contradictions.
8.2. Life is focused on the human and yet it is not focused on the human. Life is always understood as something else than life.
8.3. Life = immaterial substrate distributed across social spheres.
8.4. Evolution is a shell religion; it proves that just like other animals, our existence here is contingent, we do not lead anywhere. #TTN_20
8.5. The pragmatics of life consist in that it accepts all variations simultaneously – it is non-reduceable.
8.6. A network of influences.
8.7. Events at the micro level are also events at the macro level.
8.8. Whatever we do – it merely aggravates the situation. #TTN_20
8.9. A world without us – a lifeless life.
8.10. A life defined by its temporariness (movement, change, adaptation – modification).
8.11. At the moment when the image of life itself has dissipated, it is time to consider life in wholly extraterrestrial contexts (that is perhaps the greatest lesson of reading weird fiction).
8.12. Our world is just a product of our consciousness. #TTN_20
8.13. Life as an untried, empty principle.
9. Almost every thought is an expression of concern over our own selves. #TTN_20
9.1. After all, what we want is the desire to be and to exist. #TTN_20
9.2. In deep slumber you don’t know whether you are man or woman. #TTN_20
9.3. If we don’t consider ourselves a body, it prompts us to create a long list of both fortunate and unfortunate events. #TTN_20
10. What if an artwork offers the option to program life (but also to de-program it). It creates the conditions which are outside common functioning. What if what we call an artwork is not dependent on human performance, but on an artificially programmed person?
11. I prefer closing my eyes.
12. This is not a social game, it is hidden deep within me.
13. To walk like an animal.
14. To be deformed, asymmetrical, slow and awkward.
14.1. Fluid. Test your liquidity, the body’s viscosity.
14.2. While the body is healthy, you consider your thoughts to be real. #TTN_20
15. To find possible ways to prevent me judging myself at the moment I transcend a threshold.
16. A new invention opens new possibilities and provides a novel flexibility. The exhaustion of this flexibility means death.
16.1. Flexibility ought to be in accord with the flexibility of other actors. It ought to possess a high level of diversity so that it offers diversity in the genetics and experiences of its members and is able to guarantee the flexibility and prehension necessary to overcome unexpected changes.
17. We will need a tremendous degree of flexibility.
17.1. Limits define the space of maneuvering which can be used to reach adaptation.
17.2. Pathologies of the contemporary world create for accumulated effects of a depletion of flexibility in reaction to various kinds of pressures.
17.3. People and institutions have a natural tendency to exhaust all their available flexibility.
17.4. Flexibility = a neutral ability to change.
18. I never trusted my body or its reactions.
18.1. We all experiment with forms of life.
18.2. Vacuum is a joyful analysis of virtuality and virtuality is a type of thought experiment performed by the world.
18.3. The more we try to push through changes in reality, the more we affirm and create various forms of anxiety and fear.
18.4. Is having perfect control over oneself still human?
19. Our healthy dream system can be compared to a tightrope/walker.
19.1. Having the skill to change one unstable position for another. The position of the arms or the speed of movement are imbued with great flexibility.
19.2. If the body is bound or otherwise made immobile – it falls.
19.3. To diligently work on the question of the ecology of our legal system.
19.4. With a rising number of laws, the tightrope/walker has ever dwindling possibilities of movement. He is however allowed to freely fall.
19.5. When the tightrope/walker is learning the ncessary hand movements, he must be secured by a safety net, guaranteeing the freedom to fall.
19.6. Freedom and flexibility are necessary components of processes and the development of new systems by means of social change.
19.7. The budget of flexibility ought to be one of the central features when attempting to understand the functioning of the environment-civilization system.
20. We adopted strategies which bring short-term benefits and which have been shown to be destructive in the long-term. In the meantime, they have however become integral components rooted deep in civilizational structures, which makes it largely difficult to change them. It is a classic example of extinction brought about by the loss of flexibility.
20.1. Some ideals adopted during the first experience can survive the second experience. Ideals which survive, survive for longer than those which don’t = economics of flexibility.
21. To be in accord = an analogy to having the necessary flexibility.
21.1. We are now finding out that some assumptions which are deeply rooted in our way of life, in combination with advanced technologies, have lost their truth value and have become pathogenic.
22. …we don’t own our body, it is like another’s coat which we ought to safekeep, explore, find indications of wear and tear and collect proof of this.
22.1. We do not stand outside an ecology for which we spin our plans – we are inevitably part of it.
23. Perspective creates reality.
23.1. Surface = epidemic.
24. The body is just as foreign as the world. And we must accept its strangeness.
24.1. What is a symptom? How do we recognize it?
24.2. We easily accept the simplest method, we get used to it, it is, how it is. Then we are surprised how alienated from our own selves we are when we are alone (closed in, limited in our movement, without the distraction of the surroundings).
RNN: In this guise, it expresses itself in this manner
RNN: That’s a method.
RNN: From that our body and bodies and bodies it again creates, , and.
RNN: I could all these years, so that, I already said, that I in and in managed and I felt myself.
25. Healing is like an operation, just as the rhythm of changes of these operations.
25.1. Rhythm = energy – life, that is what yet (or still) cannot be understood, or we cannot understand, that is why there cannot be any previous plan, meaning or explanation.
25.2. Healing is a poem written in the language of symptoms.
25.3. Programming life and healing can be one and the same. It is a form of life which must be again reconstructed.
25.4. The body (naturally) calls for a different language.
25.5. The word body describes that constantly transforming cluster of bones, flesh and blood, but in fact there is no such entity as a body.
25.6. If you observe your body long enough and allow various forces to affect it without interfering in any way – a strange sensitivity emerges.
25.7. A strange sensitivity beyond all conceptions.
25.8. The body is then real, but what we consider it to be is fiction.
25.9. We are awake in one world, but we sleep in the others.
26. Intelligence of the soul.
RNN: But it’s your body which has no name.
27. The body is abstract. It takes up more space than it currently occupies. That is why we can transform into a jungle or into any other space.
RNN: In fact, it is one of the biggest and restrictions, that towards it, that it’s in -.
27.1. The transcendental mind cannot be grasped through the path of thinking.
28. I carry care for my body into the world of imagination.
RNN: After a while he stopped and entered and from her everyone.
29. You are responsible for your own selves which means you should communicate what you currently feel.
29.1. Don’t keep your thoughts to yourself.
29.2. Nothingness is always contained within us, nothingness grows through us and lives through us. We can’t close it nor can we control it. We cannot block irrationality, perversity, the madness of which we are afraid in the hope for a more orderly world. That however does not relinquish our responsibility. Quite the opposite, it makes it possible.
29.3. The inhuman, that which we most often consider as the inhumanity of a lack of empathy, can itself be a condition for feeling the suffering of another, quite literally to be in contact with another.
29.4. A new form of self-esteem.
29.5. Inhuman is he who is considered to be endless intimacy.
30. A model for exploring and mapping alternatives.
31. Playing roles is gaining understanding which doesn’t have to be conceptual, but which relates to the body and its lived experience (non-conceptual).
32. An endless process, navigation from within outwards, balancing on the edge of identity.
32.1. A constant process of evaluation and redirection.
RNN: But it is still so, that in consequence it is x.
RNN: And then, when we found ourselves in, where I was –, my body inside my view, as if I were.
⧭
For the participants
You should attempt to “understand” what has just happened to you.
From Czech original translated by Vít Bohal
BIO
Aleš Čermák is an artist, writer and founder of A-B_HPP (Ausdruck Books Hybrid Publishing Platform) which brings together authors and performers focused on researching hybrid thinking and writing. Aleš has led many workshops in Czech Republic and abroad (Germany, Austria, England, Morocco, Indonesia, India, etc.), and most of these encounters lead to realizing a work. He often takes part in staging the works of other authors. Since 2014, he has collaborated with a group of mentally and physically diagnosed (non)actors who actively collaborate on some of his projects (The Citizen and the Thing, The Earth Trembles, All This Belongs to You I, II). His works have been presented at various institutions (Museum of Contemporary Art – Taipei, MuseumsQuartier – Vienna, Gasworks – London, Kunsthalle Bratislava, National Gallery – Prague, etc.) and during various events (Liege Biennial, Jakarta Biennial, Jindřich Chalupecký Award etc.). He is the author of three prose books (Pes nadbíhá kličkujícímu zajíci, 2012; The Twin Ship Tao, 2019; Return.Self.New, 2019 – EN version 2020) and many other texts.
SECONDARY SOURCES
Unseen is an online platform and web archive that presents different approaches to listening and cultivating the relationship between our bodies, space and sound. Through a series of exercises, methods and video guides, we are invited to focus on sound as a tool for relieving feelings of separation and isolation, as a tool for imagining better futures.
Unseen is an online platform and web archive that presents different approaches to listening and cultivating the relationship between our bodies, space and sound. Through a series of exercises, methods and video guides, we are invited to focus on sound as a tool for relieving feelings of separation and isolation, as a tool for imagining better futures.