Karina Sarkissova
SNDO 1
2009-07-30
How I found it and what to do with it
During the year, I have experienced that I have a lot of scattered qualities; a lot of energy, a lot of forces and a huge ambition of embrace them all in order to find a particular freedom I am striving for. I have been thinking how to master this body, how to master this mind and how to direct it where I want it to go in order to reach independence and freedom and preserve certain strength.
So I started in May with my wish of being spectacular. It is a dream I have been striving for since I was 16 years old. Spectacular in that way that my idols are. Strong, talented and all-mighty individuals; Freddie Mercury, Missy Elliott, Grace Jones, M.I.A, Emir Kusturica. The most important physical reference was images of the statue The Bewinged Victory of Samothrace, also called Nike. It is an old Greek statue of the goddess, standing in a forth position. Her arms fell and head fell off, but most truly she was screaming victory and holding one hand by her mouth on order to be heard.
The work started a few times in the studio where I spread photocopies of these icons. I started with simulating a transformation into them. It was just an image, nothing I succeeded with. I studied the pictures very much, and understood a physical verticality these icons were all inhibiting.
The embodiment of this verticality started on a daily basis in school. As fast as the alarm clock rang, I woke up and became aware of an insisting quality I placed behind my neck. It was directed forward. It also came from my solar plexus. I imagined a half-moon sphere behind me, touching the top of my head and heels while I was walking. I realised how much direction it gave to y body, and how much clearer my intentions became. I understood that this physicality and these qualities worked.
By this time, I broke a lot of my rehearsing patterns. To preserve this physicality, I could not roll on the floor, lie around on the floor or lean to the walls. This is a very common thing I do when I start to rehearse. It was very frustrating not to be able to lean to something or roll around, one of the movement patterns that are the strongest for me. I needed to grow up, become more vertical. Not leaning to my environment and trust the space. This was also dealing with Rias feedback. I wanted to create space.
By a chance, surfing on the Internet, I found a social-realism Russian statue of a soldier, who more or less stood in the same position as Nike. I thought a lot about resistance, about insisting and about become vertical in order to be able to absorb energy that comes against you. To absorb it all, not letting it pass by.
I realised that the military movement is a constructed form of insistence. So I started to watch military parades on Youtube, I rented Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Jarhead. I studied attitudes and qualities. I realised that this quality of resistance is not to protect you from the outside, but to fight with yourself. War is not about fighting countries, its about fighting the conflict inside, about sharing the world with others, accepting others and to understand that there is a round sphere that always echoes back to you whatever you do. These thoughts told me to always, no matter what insist on myself. To insist on my will and my intentions, to be in contact with the earth and the sky and not to give up on this insistence. I could dress anyhow I want, I can look however and be whoever, as long as I insist on it, intentionally.
All of these thoughts were very clear in my head, but I did not know how to translate it into space and into my body. I had a clear military form but I didn’t know what to do with it. By this time, Ria came into the studio, and told me to start marching. To march in 10 minutes non-stop. I did that. I realised that it was extremely demanding and physical, and it arose very much emotions. And it demanded very much focus and concentration. Together with Ria we distinguished the quality. This embodiment took very much effort, and the execution was so much work that it was very hard to see this from the outside. Sometimes Ria went into the space and showed me, and watching that spoke for itself. I understood that I had to insist on this form in order to understand it.
The demand of this form came very quickly and at a time it overwhelmed me. Ria saw it and pushed me to insist even more on it. The more effort and energy I put into this form, the more weaknesses and emotions came to the surface, which was unexpected but I had to let them come in order to keep the insistence.
The boots worked as an object that could extend the weight to the ground and to create a better form of narrowing the military form. In order to balance this energy of force, power and historical reference, I found this beige silk-dress. It had to be a dress I would never wear on an everyday basis.
In a late phase of the piece, I needed to put the transformation from the vagueness into the insisting on stage. I could not start marching the first thing I did, but I had to introduce the necessity of doing this. It represents a development from an insecure and chaotic state into a clarity of power and intentions.
The performance itself is a presentation of the process. To show it for people, for the audience is a very big insistence itself. The point of the process was taken to its edge.
On the Sunday of the performance, I was exhausted. I somehow exhaust myself in my work, and I do not really know why I do it, and how to control it. I am just seeing myself travelling with a piece, and how to deal with reaching a point of exhaustion after each performance would be very bad for my health. But this is further to explore.
This force, this embodiment and this insisting is nothing I can hold on to, its is nothing I earned. It is something that needs to be preserved, revisited and transformed into the energy of my pieces. I have to keep storing, be clear with my intentions and insisting. As long I insist, I create a form that is not able to question, and then I am free to do whatever I want. That is where I find my freedom. Through the insisting.
In my next piece, I would like to do a piece for someone else. To reach a point where the other person also perceives the work meaningful and when we can deal with the person’s personality, dynamics and qualities. To stage someone else is a very big challenge for me. But I would like to be able to be intuitive for someone else.
