Playing with words

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This video comprises experiments* that I conducted during the module Dramaturgy through the lens of Poetics.

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Observations

Four people (three classmates and I) play a ball game in the entrance hall of ArtEZ University of the Arts.

-Why are they playing here?

-They are taking up so much space.

-They are art students.

The entrance hall is spacious. It is a type of public space that is built to serve specific functions: to welcome visitors, to give out information at the reception desk, to allow orientation, to lead to other parts of the building.

If you don’t know which direction to take,

you linger in the entrance hall.

If I don’t know yet what time is,

I linger.

Studying is a type of work.

Discussing work

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Studying and learning and making art are types of work that lead to unexpected outcomes, which sometimes are immaterial. The unpredictability and immateriality of their outcomes, often, render these types of work unproductive and wasteful.

We

(four adults)

play a game

without

aiming for a useful and predictable outcome;

in a space that is not supposed to function as playground.

We waste our time in the entrance of ArtEZ.

We accentuate that studying presupposes wasting time.

We ask passers-by to suspend their passing-through

and their doing,

to linger in the entrance hall,

and

to

partake

in

the temporality of

wasting time.

The willingness to suspend doing and the duration of lingering vary from person to person. They evoke questions about the individual temporalities of the passers-by and play with the contours of temporality of productivity.

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Speech

Reading

a book

aloud

in the entrance hall functions in the same way.

I

waste

my time

in a public place

and implicitly invite people to

pause

and

observe.

Particularly, I read

an excerpt from

French novelist

Valentin

Louis

Georges

Eugène

Marcel

Proust’s

In Search of Lost Time (published 1913-1927).

The novel consists of seven volumes and is over 4000 pages long.

-Why would someone read that?

-Are you going to read the whole novel?

What initially intrigued me was the title of the novel, which seemed to relate to my research on alternate temporalities. What I discovered is that Proust’s way of writing resists linearity. In a non-chronological order, the author accumulates memories that are associated with the narrator’s past life. The incidents in the novel are not connected through a line that advances from past to future.

About linearity

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If I think of a production line, it seems that resisting linearity is a way to subvert temporality of productivity and to invite in alternate temporalities.

The game we play in the entrance hall

relies on

word associations.

I am interested in exploring

a game-structure,

a set of rules, that

allows

a

text

to emerge through the

present

actions of the players.

The rules of the game:

• we stand in a circle
• we throw the ball in random order to one another
• the first one to throw says a word
• every time someone gets the ball hum** says the first word that comes to mind in association with the last word hum hears
• each word can be said once

During the game, words accumulate with the repeated exchange of the ball. A word is related to the previous one. It evokes associations and images in the bodies of the players. Each time only one association is formed into a word and uttered into the circle.

What happens to the rest?

To the associations that players make, although it is not their turn to speak?

The text that emerges is composed of various materials: words, images, memories, sensations, feelings, silence. It is woven by the game-structure and by association regardless of whether each association is formed into a word or not. The passers-by, if they pause to listen, might as well contribute to the game. Their associations become implicitly part of the text and, thus, the circle of the game expands.

Considering that syntax is a form in language that allows for words to be put together in a meaningful/rational sentence; considering that linear narrative is a way of arranging the incidents of a story according to a chronological axis; it becomes clear that the text, which comes into being through the ball game, departs from rationality and linearity. In resisting these features of temporality of productivity, it resists the temporality of productivity itself.

The game proposes a temporality of wasting time, which perceives time as non-measurable and heterogeneous (diverse in perception and quality). On the other hand, temporality of productivity considers time measurable and, therefore, homogenous (same for everybody). Each body that is activated through the game can deflect quantitative time. Its individual temporality can be hosted during the game and can relate to other individual temporalities.

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Pick a tile and click on it to continue

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Notes

*Four classmates participated in the experiment “playing a word-game in the entrance hall of ArtEZ”. Players: Antrianna Moutoula, Fernanda Gonzalez Morales, Ella Tighe, Foivi Psevdou. Behind the camera: Daniel Voorthuis.

**hum (hum in the nominative case and hums in the genitive case) is used here as personal pronoun to indicate a human being regardless of hums gender.

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