A Body That Reminds / A Thing That Remembers

I'm currently engaged in a dance practice called "Contact Improvisation", a form about listening, gravity, momentum, and connection, with the body of the self and the bodies of others. My professor, Margaret, says that one of the cool things about Contact is that we learn it less through the words of our instructors than through physical contact with other bodies.

 

Leather cuff, mirror self, mother

Each of our bodies contains all of the lessons and thoughts and feelings of all of the people we have danced with, all the teachers we have learned from, and how we adapt the lessons we are taught to our own needs and wants. When I dance with Margaret, I am also dancing with her mentor Nina Martin, and I am also dancing with Nina's mentor Nancy Stark Smith, perhaps considered to be one of the "mothers" of Contact. Margaret's body is both the teacher and the lesson.

Hand, wall, self, friends

Margaret also likes to say that "it matters who is in the room". I think about both of these ideas in a lot of other parts of my life, how each person in a class, in a group house, in the audience of a performance, all bring their whole lives to that space. We carry our child selves, our hopes, dreams, lessons we've learned, every person who has ever loved us, and every person we have loved, in our bodies all the time. 

Hand, wall, father, self, Paris, Santa Fe

Hand, wall...

Hand, wall, mother, family, friend

Hand, wall, grandmothers, dance

In thinking about these ideas, I wanted to assemble some photos that blur the line between the object that reminds us of something, and the parts of our body that remembers. 

Where does memory live? Where does it come from? Am I a conduit for memory, or does it exist in the object that reminds me? 

I took photos of parts of my body as objects in other spaces, other objects placed in the space of my body, and objects from my body/other bodies in significant spaces. The primary "spaces" I'm looking at here are the space of my body, of my dorm room/mirror/walls, and my grandmother's car. I had fun imagining what "space" could mean.  

Watch, altar, grandfathers, time, youth

Watch, mirror self, grandfather, time

How is my body a space or an environment that can hold something? Does the mirrored space of my room take on new meaning? What makes an object different from a space?

Leather cuff, body, mother, gender, self

I had a lot of different objects. A lot of them are people-reminders, jewelry, things you can wear. I also tried playing with what it meant for my body to be simultaneously a space and an object, how to transform it from one into the other, what it can both hide and reveal. 

Jade heart, body, grandmother

Carnival coin, body, past love

Tattoo/address, body, home, child self

Necklace/birthmark, body, youth

The brief context I'll give for these last few photos is this is my grandmother's car. She can't drive anymore because she couldn't remember where she was going, so I brought it here, a truth she will probably never comprehend. I think there is something interesting about playing with my memories of her, of this car as both space and object, while knowing that the only reason I have her car is because she has lost her memory. 

Hand/glove, glove/car, grandmother, self, time

Gloves, body/car, grandmother, child self

Atlas, car, grandmother, time

Atlas, car, grandmother, memory, home

Gloves, car, grandmother, memory, child self

Jade heart, glove, car, grandmother

Jade heart, car, grandmother