Michele × Florence (Fragments)
9.10.2024, 21:30–00:00
Listening to My Love Mine All Mine by Mitski (on loop)
F:
It was as if we switched positions
M:
Switched positions, but with a similar gaping space– a negative space of loss, bounded by an invisible force
F:
Gasping, paced in solitude and similitude Without knowing, lost and found I guess our feelings of loneliness are quite universal anyway.
M:
We all crave intimacy, to care and to be cared for. An endless loop.
Our understanding of the world, of love and care, begins with our mothers first, possibly beginning even in the womb.
F:
When I was the mother, I wondered if they understood love and care from me. If there were even any from me I was too ashamed to say, I actually did try Even till today there was only coldness I could feel in my womb, and the warmth was just everywhere else.
M:
How does it feel like to be floating in the womb? I imagine it radiating with warmth that’s both physical and felt beyond the body – a world that pulsates with a mother’s love The heat of water, the softness of a mother’s voice, the steady flow of nutrients, and the quiet rise and fall of her raw unfiltered emotions. Perhaps it’s a space woven from both love and hate, tenderness and tension, for even hate comes from a place of care
F:
Hate is the polar extreme of love You have to care enough to hate, and love makes you care even more. We traveled to the highest of heaven and the deepest of hell. Our bodies change together, deteriorating and regenerating Growing, aging, disappearing into eternity, in the form of memory
M:
They say grief is all the unspoken, unexpressed love that you have for someone I believe the process of grieving lasts for a lifetime, leaving you changed forever. There’s a quote I particularly like from Meghan O Rourke’s book The Long Goodbye: 'Nothing prepared me for
the loss of my mother Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable '
How do you part with someone you’ve grown inside of, someone who has made you a home both inside and outside their body? How do you say goodbye to your home?
I’d like to believe that instead of disappearing, their energy remains Energy never dies; it is never created or destroyed. Likewise, your love, memories, and emotions never fade.
F:
How to part with someone who had grown inside you, someone who didn’t want to part? How do you part with someone who saw you as home?
I embroidered my clothes with needles and thread with a balloon underneath, trying my very best to not let it pop I collected sea water and watered carnation flowers planted on the seaside, trying to make it grow. I took ultrasound scans of my empty uterus and made it into mezzotint prints I tried shaping human forms of clay with an angel’s trumpet It was as if I tried my best of all the things I haven’t tried enough, to have the strength I didn’t have No, I haven’t tried my best yet, and there isn’t such a thing as the best.
M:
I see this desperation, this desire to cling onto someone or something, reflected in both of our practices
I channeled my anger into hammering glass, my care into mending and soldering this shattered glass, and my nostalgia through placing emulsion lifts of family photographs I wanted to express my pain by submerging my head in water while reciting lines of a poem I wrote underwater I even morphed my body in the shape of a lifeguard tower, clutching onto ice with my hands and feet This notion of drowning and to be saved This repetition of gestures brings a certain peace to my body; it needed to get out, to go somewhere, to be lived out.
M:
It seems like water is a recurring motif in our works. What does water mean to you?
F:
Water is versatile, it can hold and deliver different temperatures, emotions and objects It can take on different forms, and manifests differently when emerged in different things Water has drowned my eyesight, it created weight for me to bear on my shoulders when I submerge myself in the pain in where I lay, unconscious, it also washes away the painted camouflage on my face, dying into the depths of my body It can easily be polluted, charged with complexity, and the only way to purity is for it to change form and leave, to incarnate. It floats up into the air up high but it
stays within the ozone layer, we don’t see it anymore but it didn’t just vanish, perhaps just closer to where our parted ones are. Embracing them on behalf of us. If I’m qualified enough to.
Water is life and water is death, water is also what transports between life and death. When we look at nature, there isn’t really much division between life or death, it’s the same thing, therefore no such thing But it stays still when something tries to hold onto it, that’s when you are able to see it.
M:
Water holds memories for me. I remember a specific moment when my family and I were out for a walk near the beach We were silently watching the waves In the hush, my mother spoke, almost to herself, a strange, wistful thought about stepping into the depths, of letting the waves carry her far away. Away from all the pain.
I watched the waves crash against the rocks, my eyes drifting to the lifeguard tower nearby, empty and stark against the fading light There was no one on duty The tower looked so cold, and she looked so helpless It was around then that the symbol of lifeguard towers appeared in my works.
This duality of water Something that could be so peaceful and serene, yet violent Something that gives us life, yet can also kill us. Something that comes out of our bodies when we cry, something that we live in when we’re still forming It hits, slaps, envelops, mists Something that when in mist form, makes you lose your sense of time and space Something that you can never predict, like grief. Like a tap that isn’t properly closed, drip…drip drip…drip.
'Rocking cradles, wet blankets', was a line from a poem I wrote last year. Wet blankets remind me of childhood, but also of the days leading up to death A certain discomfort, of wet skin, wet socks, wet blankets Of body excretion, of the connection between mother and child
M:
With the many forms of water, also comes this ritual of cleansing I was really obsessed with onsens (Japanese bath houses) for a while, which encompasses this duality between comfort and discomfort, of the body and water, and relationship between the self and strangers A few years ago, I wrote this passage about this experience in an onsen:
It’s your first time
You nervously look around, mimicking the actions of others, searching for the unwritten rules of this unfamiliar place
You undress-
Chilling fear runs through your spine whilst shedding layers of your second skin, naked in front of strangers
You pour a bucket of water over yourself before entering
Scrubbing away dirt
Leaving behind the outside world, entering into the internal Your feet runs over each contour of jagged stones on the floor
Forcing yourself to be in the present
Your body slowly enters the sizzling water, the hazy steam fills your eyes
Beads of sweat roll down your face
Nostrils filling with the aroma of matcha scented waters
You expandTaking Up Space
The contrasting icy water jolts you awake
Ultimately expanding and contracting your muscles
Finding your rhythm
Filling in the comfortable silence with shared vulnerability
In an ensemble of unsaid thoughts, sighs of relief, and water splashes
Alone but together In this moment of catharsis
I wanted to re-create this cathartic experience of onsens in my solo exhibition at PHD last year, incorporating water in different forms along with the rituals that accompany it.
F:
This reminded me of the great times of visiting hot tubs at swimming pools when I lived in Iceland It was one of the cheapest alternatives to meeting your friends at bars when you are not in the mood of alcohol and loud music. You charge your swimming card with a bundle plan, shower naked among other poolers. As you leave the changing room, you run in the ice cold air outdoors and try your best not to slip on the ceramic tiles, and you immerse yourself into these hot tubs, finding refuge in the heat, quite small and intimate actually, so that split second while you run you have to overlook which tub has enough space for you (so you don’t awkwardly intrude the personal spaces of those Scandinavians) and whether their temperatures are the ones you are ready to dive into so you don’t get burnt. And if you did accidentally get too close to the Scandinavians and that you are trapped, you sort of make an exclamation sound of relief to express how cold you were in that 30 seconds of running and how glad you are now in the hot water, how this warmth has provided salvation, that it was out of necessity that they sacrifice
a bit of their peace in order to save you (a young Asian lady coming from a hot country) from dying in the harsh Northern weather.
Speaking of pools, I previously made a work that dealt with the weight of water. Water can be heavy, and the emotions they carry can be heavy. It was so so so heavy, way too heavy, so I made the decision to take the weight away Only by embracing the cold with all my force I was able to lighten it, to watch it go away. That’s when I tried visualizing and experiencing it two years ago at HART Haus when I dived into a small inflatable pool with a blanket, soaking it with water, trying to carry as much water as I could, I walked out I didn’t expect it to be so heavy, I could barely stand on my legs, it dragged me to the ground but I refused to kneel down, the weight of life and the weight of guilt, the pressure from society, but I’m free of regret I wrapped the watered blanket around myself, engulfed myself in it and squeezed Water gushing out like a waterfall. My limbs were not enough, so I pressed my face into it to squeeze all the water out. My maternal water The water that made me 'mother'
I guess I’m not so alone anymore, I don’t need to hold on to the codes that lock myself into my own grief It can be universal and be shared, it can be understood It can be experienced by many people through different entry points, it can carry emotions developed in different times and spaces Unknowingly and unprepared, parallel universes collide when the right time arrives Like when I finally arrived at the hot tub after running in the cold air
In 2018, I was crying in my sleep, the hormones I was experiencing when I was still pregnant took me somewhere I have never been, it was the time when I felt disconnection and mistrust with my body and my ability to grow, I bluntly marked it down so I don’t forget:
When I am sad I cry
When I cry it releases this hormone that makes me relaxed I felt that the problem is solved somehow, even though nothing has changed, Or at least I feel that everything will be fine eventually And so because I am relaxed I have more space to think of a solution, Or to transform the sadness into something constructive. It’s like my body is cheering for me
Making me cry to help me relax.
When I am sad and alone crying, I am not really alone. Because my body is my companion
My body is always there for me.
The unconscious part of ourselves that drives our body is what truly loves us, and it translates as the will to survive.
Love is the natural instinct to life, and life is the natural instinct to love.
Ironically, ironically, so ironically
I understood that crying was a love language of my body to myself It is in the DNA of our body that carries love and the ability to love. Perhaps I would have never understood this and felt this so vividly in my body without the presence of life within me, though short lived. This is what a child could give to a mother It protects, it’s much more capable of loving than me I think I am extremely grateful, but I feel ashamed and wrong to say it—gratefulness is too reductive of a word to express how I felt and am still feeling, the weight and the levitating power, it is too immense to be carried by a single entity, the strength it generates and multiplies It must be carried by actions, by lived time and space, by images, by poetry.
So vividly, but I am I’m so sorry I’m so sorry
M: There’s this clip from Midnight Gospel I really like that talks about grief and heartbreak At one point Duncan asks 'How do you stop a heartbreak?' and his mom says 'You cry'.
Something so simple yet true When I cry, I let the tears roll down slowly onto my cheeks and then to my mouth. I taste saltwater. The more you cry, the saltier your mouth gets.
That’s when I started to use salt in my works, in the form of sculptures and installations And then later as a sound and taste element in my performances. Thinking of salt as tears, but also preservation of memory There’s this participatory performance I did, where I wanted to build a flute out of salt and play it After some trial and error, I resorted to making a digital instrument instead where I used mics and hydrophones to capture the gestures I did with salt like stepping into salt, licking the salt pipes, washing people’s hands with salty water At the end of the performance, I gave the audience salt cups I baked, poured water into them, and we drank this salty water together, almost like a tea ceremony ritual After the performance, people texted me messages like 'I still have your tear-salt in my mouth', or that it made them feel emotional that 'now an object being a compression of time and movement and salt as a metaphor of tears now pressed into a cup that holds water'
I really hope to continue to make space for these personal and universal experiences of grief, to hold space for people to grieve and care for each other
F: Is it possible for us to hold each other this time?
Monique × Florence (Fragments)
14.10.2024 10:10–11:10
Listening to El Poder del Ahora by Sat-Chit
F:
What does it mean to heal? Do we listen to our body and into our memories, the parts where they have been tense or aching, but it has become such a constant that you have gotten used to it, almost uneasy if you don’t have it to hold onto?
M:
To heal is a process of containment and transformation. To contain is to embrace the trauma or yourself without judgment first of all Everybody has the ability to self-heal, even if it is a form of staying together with the trauma, maybe for a week, a year, or maybe 10 years… The good news is, that everythings is your own choice, and you own the power to make new choices in every moment you want in your life Once you cannot stand the discomfort anymore, you will know what will be the next step…
F:
What if we have been taught and conditioned to stand the discomfort for a long period of time? Like long durational performances that work with endurance We were made to believe that the discomfort is necessary for the bigger Or maybe it is? How do we let go and allow ourselves to transform? Like ice melting into water, then becoming clouds, and then rain, and then river, and then the sea, becoming a part of a snow in the Japanese Alps, the Ganges River, a part of the Victoria Harbour, the water that flows out of a living being’s eyes? Seeds sprout and bloom, embracing the sun and the nutrients, wilt, and become part of the soil again?
M:
Unlearning is a kind of important learning Unlearn to confront all your life substances on your own with impermission of fragility, but learn to let yourself be open, and give yourself unconditional love and divine compassion. When you have experienced what is and how is the feeling of being contained, like by someone or by nature, then you are empowered and expand your inner resources to contain yourself and transform your discomfort. Nature is one of our role models and good teachers full of divine compassion. Life is like a circle… birth, ageing, illness, death there is transformation Life is oneness as birth is everywhere and comes from death What if everything is empty but everything is love? Compassion and self-compassion are the keys to containing and transforming discomfort, and creativity is the key to achieving self-transcendence after endurance What did you learn to believe in the past and what will you choose to believe here-and-now? You can make a brand new choice in every next step in your life
F:
We usually relate love as a kind of wholesomeness, or full of something. How is it love when it is a kind of emptiness? Where does the feeling of love and love itself travel? Is nature full or empty? Perhaps like you said, nature is full of compassion, but empty of ego, there is no pride, no regret and guilt, no hatred. But I’m also curious, what made you interested in healing the collective and the individual?
M:
Emptiness is the nature of life and self To understand emptiness is to understand what is the nature of love and self-love, and healing and self-healing as well. Emptiness is once we have realized everything is equal, fluid, flow, and flexible and keep transforming with different possibilities, we will realize there are no standard answers, fixed goals and identities, or norms After all, you will find out everything is non-binary - not good or bad. What if your trauma is a gift to your life, and let you become a better self? So, luckily you own the absolute power to (re)define meaning, and excitedly you could freely live out your personal ‘hero’s journey’ of achieving a higher level of self-awareness and inner integration as Carl Jung suggested! The power of emptiness inspires us to forgive the person, the event and the object which make us discomfort, and to let go of upādāna which trapped us - our beliefs, our choices of life, our every action and feeling, our relationships to others and the world - including our traumas, and then let love and compassion come back to our life To let the energy of love circulate in ourselves and with others is a kind of healing, happiness and meaning of life. I agree with the saying of Dalai Lama that love and compassion are the nature of human beings - the desire to bring happiness to people, and to take away suffering from people - at least to me After I experienced the power of healing, my life changed. Meanwhile, I realized that the theoretical framework of therapy shared some common concepts with art discipline and aesthetics practice, such as creation and co-creation, creativity, experience, empowerment, relational interaction, etc. So, besides my passion and interest, it feels like a mission of mine to help people with my skills and develop interdisciplinary practice after I was trained in therapy approaches I hope to empower individuals’ life change to manifest social change.
F:
It’s beautiful how the prompts of healing and therapy are often facilitated by visualising emotional transformation with spatial qualities: Like you said, emptiness as forgiveness, compassion and self-compassion as keys to enter this room to transform discomfort. A house that is built for our souls and love to live together like a family. I’m still searching for ways to heal my traumas, traumas of the body, of loss, of betrayal I feel the warmth, calmness, stability and clarity when writing with you. A kind of non-invasive but welcoming embracement, generosity that is capacious I admire and respect therapists a lot The world needs to slow down and let itself heal
Bunny × Florence (Fragments)
14.10.2024 19:38–20:38
Listening to George Canseco's work
F:
Who would have thought, taking a step forward requires shifting your balance, lifting one leg, moving your feet forward, throwing yourself forward, and allowing yourself to fall before your foot touches the ground again.
To move is a constant defiance of gravity
It’s a lot of effort and courage and unknown
B:
Too much, everywhere, overwhelming, drowning, Yesterday, today, can it be today, not tomorrow In my eyes, illuminating, hopeful, yearning Why does yearning have to be this way?
Faraway, far, away
I hear the drill, i hear the buzzing, i hear the time, I am here, i can answer the call
I can take chances, I can try
I am light, i am my world’s half being
No body, no bodies I I I
I look beyond, cause it’s also me waiting on the other side
Every minute ticks, still not enough
Not enough, not enough
Water is blood
Water is oil
Water is blood
Water is soul
Water is soil
Water is home
Water is I
I am water
I am memory
I am soul
I follow the waves, can be damaging, wounding, losing I follow the rhythm, I follow the ends of the earth
I am there, waving still, waiting still
The world sees and feels, it never ends
But I am ready, I am there,
Let me listen to your thousands of words and songs
Let me step on falling thorns
I offer my flesh, I offer my voice, I offer my songs
Till the end of ends
Hanggang sa dulo nang walang hanggan
Kapagod na rin bhie
Borders? What do they mean?
Bakit kailangang may mga gates? Sino ba ang bumuo ng mga tarangkahang yan? Bakit ang hirap makapasok? Bakit ang hirap buwagin? How long does it have to take for me to get in?
Why does it seem like forever? Where should I go? How do I go?
I can’t say that I don’t care
Care is such a lonely word
F:
Our souls travel more freely than our bodies The heart, the mind and the spirit, they choose their homes, and our bodies lie in the 3-dimensional world, restricted by materiality and capital, identities, nationalities, genders, abilities, criminal records, histories but our souls are free
Free to flow
Free to fly
Free to follow
Free to fantasize
Free to fear
Free to fall
Free to free
Where is home?
What does it mean to leave home?
What does it mean to create a new home, at somebody else's home?
When does the child become truly independent of the mother
People say the adolescence is the second birth of the child
The unease, the rejection, the attempt to rebel
They are essential to the child’s growth into an independent adult
Our home is our creativity, our creations
They are carried in our bodies that continues to age and transform, regenerate, but they mark the paths of the growth of ourselves as human beings and creators
When I sing the song again, I’m reminded of the 'I' when I wrote it
I I I
Like pillars that braces the 'house' or the 'temple' of where our soul sleeps
In this 3-dimensional world
It’s the 'I' that builds
The 'I' that obstructs
The 'I' that creates 'You'
U
Two 'I's holding hands and becoming one.
B :
Why do I care so much? Wala namang pakialam ang iba sa’kin? Hypocrite! This human land is such a hypocrite! They pray everyday only to curse everyday!
Why do I have to be kind?
Why do I always have to be kind?
Why do hurt people work hard to be kind? To heal? To understand? To hold space? To embrace? To let go? To let live? To let flow? Why does it have to be me? Why me?
I am hurt
I am wounded
I am hurt
I am wounded
I am hurt
I am wounded
Dripping with so much tears, sweat, blood
Soaking wet
I am hurt
Never heard
Care is such a lonely world, care is such a lonely word Dapat nga ba?
This world is just not ready, too blinded
Too fake, to much, everywhere, overwhelming, drowning, Of this world, of themselves, of their superficialities
I am tired, of waiting, waiting
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Can we make a little more time to hear, listen to each other
Something is happening to us
It can be a wonderful thing, something everlasting
Can we make a little more time to feel each other
Hand in hand
Live together, here and now
Find out what it is for us
Right before the future and right after the past
Our skin have found something right
Can we make a little more time to heal
Heal from within
Heal from here
Heal from now
F:
Kind is not a must
It’s not our responsibility
It’s no one’s responsibility
There’s so much pain in this world
Pain that is multiplied and multiplied
Multiplied and manipulated
Manipulated
Manifested
Mourned
I don’t need to care
I don’t need to be kind
Pain is carried in the body to remember
Remember what needs to be remembered
Kindness is a body memory
Caring is a body memory
It’s an ability to feel pain and cause pain
It’s a kind of communication
A statement
An expression
When the world is silent
You are not obliged to speak
You can be silent too
I can be silent too
No one is responsible to create balance
When the polar dualities are not meant to be anyway
Garbled, encoded, encrypted into music notes
Cradled in the melody
The vibration in your chest chamber awakens memories stored in my sacred organs
The memories of when water was as pure as diamond and crystals
The air has nothing else but nitrogen, oxygen, argon and Co2
The soil only contained what it needed for growth and life
Way before it was soaked in the blood of souls not ready to leave yet
Blood and tears leaving my body like a calm tide
Quiet and unnoticed, under the soft gaze of Justice
Flooding out the carrier of hope
In exchange for hope
B : Is it too late?
For a brighter one
For a lighter one
For a lover
For a friend
For a home
For a chair
For a table
For a pillow
For a blanket
For a sunshine
For a moonlight
For an embrace
For a water
For a plate
For a spoon
For a home
For a friend
For an embrace
Is it too late?
To go back, to return, to turn back, to me as to you
I need my mother
I yearn for her
I never had the chance to feel her
Maybe that is why I work double time to create it
To create such things for me to heal
I never had the chance to be mothered
I have decided to be a mother
To be my own mother
To mother the lost
To mother the disappeared
To mother the hurt
I am hurt
I am mother
I too, am a mother
I I I Ay, ay, ay
F:
A mother does not need to be kind
A mother does not need to care
Nobody tells a mother what she needs to be
A mother creates
Creating mothers and creating mothers
A mother mothers
A mother is both a noun and a verb
The very existence is an ephemeral, continuous action
A mother is a spirit that is embodied
Created through connection
The child and the mother is created at the same time
They are the sole evidence of each other’s actuality
Their presence and absence
Their duration
Their continuity
Counting each other’s heartbeats
Each other’s breaths
Each other’s footsteps
Four legs walking side by side
Falling and catching oneself
Catching each other
Listening to the sand crushing below their feet
The tide rises as the sun starts to hide itself
Making space for silence
I await your song