14. the roof of the world

Last weekend I visited Sisters Hope Home for Floating Inhabitation, a 5 year research project which looks at artistic frameworks of living. The performance starts at 14.00 in the afternoon and finishes around 12.00 the next day.  Sisters Hope Home also hosts residencies, longer stays and the opportunity to do multiple inhabitations. There are no electronic devices allowed inside, each inhabitant is given a notebook which stays in the home - contributing to a larger archive of the research itself. It is part of director Gry Worre Hallbergs' process of Sensuous Learning to discover The Poetic Self. 

I'm a little sad I didn't have Hallbergs' PhD Sensuous Society – Carving the path towards a sustainable future through aesthetic inhabitation stimulating ecologic connectedness as a model to compare to my prior learning process - I'm sure it would have offered new insights to the wide possibilities of what learning can be. It's also just exciting to experience an artwork that has so much accompanying theory - alongside the privilege of experience something that feels like a life's work.

I definitely learned a lot during my stay - I will buy some of the Sisters Hope books and talk around it later once it's settled. For now, I will share something I wrote on my way back to the little town where I live after experiencing it. It might not make any sense, you should probably ask someone to burn incense in a dark room and read it aloud to you as a whisper whilst standing in the opposite corner of the room.

If you would prefer to hear it about through the songs I compiled you can find that here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Mtws7bDOnmnKMZoqKpXrm?si=17571e4e4da14c46

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The Roof of The World - Dr Who, Season 1, Episode 14

hi there sisters hope home,

i’m not quite ready to write about you yet, but here I am. writing.

you’d be disappointed in me already. i’m typing onto a screen. i’m feeling the stress of the laptop dying before i’m finished. time.

First Interlude - touch the keys of the keyboard. make it matter. do not do it because you’ve trained to do it. just do it. 

i’m sure you wouldn’t be disappointed in me actually. it’s not a utopia. what does that mean?

i haven’t figured out how i’m feeling. maybe that’s for the best. why is the how interesting. 

i became preoccupied by people, an intoxication of the delights of being around others, of others. where is the fancy dress party i signed up to (one*)? i can feel a deep imprint. i am touched all the time. like in the sense that people come into contact with me. like in a moment where our matters collide. but somehow that has caught me off guard that I’ve forgotten what it means to be touched, for pleasure. maybe i’ve also forgotten to grant myself space for platonic pleasure, for non transactional pleasure. 

i could scream when i think about being an adult, having a life and making sacrifices. the contracts we sign that destabilise the opportunity to live. and here we are taking time to live. making space to reevaluate what possibilities are available to us. 

oh my god it’s beautiful.

oh fuck i’m in a cult.

oh my beautiful cult.

you are so beautiful.

my fragile little heart is pounding and aching and it’s not putting anything on a pedestal but it’s somehow caught in amidst feeling, and it’s like the stinging when a football hits you in the face. that’s an old metaphor. It’s an old memory. it tingles.

Second Interlude - do you want to cry? 

Third Interlude - wait.

this part is a love letter - it’s seeing things emerging elsewhere, seeing you, feeling it, being, holding - outside. existing. it’s snowing - did we do that?

i’m sitting on an arriva train from vejle to holstebro. it’s the same seats as the arriva busses that goes from manchester airport to hale barns, where i went to high school - the number eighteen. it is seats made of this fabric which hides how much dust and dirt and shit it absorbs. the kind of seats that would go viral on a carpet cleaners tiktok page.

i made two beautiful friends. or that was the act of the artwork anyway. friendship. care. not being a character but also being alive, living inside art and contributions. the performance artists smile - imbued with power, gentle but direct. slightly creepy. slightly sensual. i know the rules and you don’t. there are no rules.

last night was cozy. 

fragile heart.

Fourth Interlude - compile songs.

how can it be that i fall too quickly and i’m also afraid of falling that i actively sustain that upward motion. 

also - introspection. i feel shy. i seem confident, or interesting. i feel like it’s obvious i’m scared. but my heart is on the outside. my relationship to the pretentious and the conceptual is so clearly defined, how do I feel that this is no longer true? that’s certainly part of a longer prior journey. i’m suddenly incredibly busy with this thing i have no interest in. 

Fifth Interlude - cook something blindfolded. Properly taste it. Smell.

one* : Immersive theatre has become detached from its radical origins. Its appropriation by advertisers, events promoters and PR consultants has rendered it a shorthand for selling tickets to elaborate and expensive fancy dress parties.
The post immersive manifesto (2020) by Jorge Lopes Ramos, Joseph Dunne-Howrie, Persis Jadé Maravala & Bart Simon