During 2019, I’ve been busy with an interview project about life and travels of artists. I’ve interviewed no less than eighteen bright and generous and smart people. The interviews will be posted on workingontravel.tumblr.com during the autumn. Very much worth a read! The interviews are also published in a book with the same name, that is distributed by Skogen. The book will be available online as a pdf within a near future. Moa Schulman made the visual material.
The project is coproduced by Skogen and supported by Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse.
I was invited to give a lecture at a conference with the title Post-Epic Dramaturgy –International perspectives on the dramaturgical practice taking place at Stockholm University of Artsthe 28th-29th of March 2018. On the 28th, when I was scheduled, the headline was Spatial Interventions. I ended up talking about the ethics of employing intimacy in audience participatory performing arts. I also ended up recording the lecture. Here is the recording:
I september-oktober 2017 har jag bloggat via mitt residens på Kritiklabbet. Gå gärna in på länken och läs och lyssna! Där finns många samtal, texter och tankar om konstnärers relation till kritiken och kritikens roll i samhällsutvecklingen.
This text was written in Swedish, so I post it in Swedish.
Den här texten tillkom i samband med STDHs slutseminarium, dit jag var inbjuden som extern gäst för att reflektera över A Map to Get Lost från publikperspektiv. Den handlar om mina erfarenheter av föreställningen utifrån hur olika segment opererar och kontrasterar mot varandra, snarare än om en dramaturgi där ordningen är fast.
En del av A Map to Get Lost är en den utan levande kroppar. Där spelar ljud, ljus och doft ut mot en miljö som främst ramas in av ett antal stora lackdraperier. Denna miljö tycker jag innehåller en inbjudan till åskådaren att vistas med materia och rytm på ett annat sätt än i vardagen. Min relation till rummet och även till viss del kostymerna har en sensorisk eller rent av taktil aspekt. Utan att jag som åskådare någonsin rör vid ytorna som finns i lack, päls, sammet eller flytande choklad så gör ljus och ljud så att säga det åt mig. Det finns en glans eller vibration som förflyttar sig i materialen och närmar mig till dem.
Men kostym och rekvisita innehåller även andra kvaliteter; jag tvekar inför att kalla dem symboliska. Låt säga att de i alla fall efterliknar någon sorts figurer eller platser. För mig bryter huset, tältet, fåglarna, och dräkternas karaktärer av mot det ickeföreställande, introducerar en sorts fokuspunkter som gör att jag inte länge koncentrerar mig på material i rörelse utan mer på att försöka avkoda ett teckensystem med tydliga skillnader. Det låter sig dock inte göras på något enkelt sätt. Tecknen hinner aldrig fastna, ta form. Scenbilderna byter av varandra snabbt och associativt; fåglar följer på andra fåglar, det finns inga hårda klipp – saker tycks höra samman. Men därmed inte sagt att till exempel fågeln får samma betydelse från scen till scen, eller att en karaktär kan beskrivas på ett entydigt sätt. Symbolerna varken laddas eller töms. Formen varken etableras eller frångås.
Texten utgör ytterligare en faktor i spelet med betydelser och tolkningsramar. Den är på ett sätt ett bakgrundselement i sammanhanget; många scener utspelar sig i andra ljudbilder än talets och några talhandlingar tycks inte heller gjorda för att höras. Texten växlar därtill språk, uttryck och form, vilket gör att den inte riktigt går att beskriva som en text. Den rör sig mellan tyska, engelska, svenska, den rör sig mellan ett teoretiskt modus, dirty talk, interjektioner och fragment av narrativ.
Samtidigt är vissa textuttryck framförda på ett sådant sätt att de starkt färgar min läsart av verket som helhet. Eftersom texten inte alltid är förlagd till specifika kroppar utan också till högtalarna tycks den stundtals kommentera föreställningen, erbjuda ”nycklar”. Här finns bland annat en teoretiserande röst som talar om frånvaro av mänsklig agens; materia utan sorg och utan mening. Samtidigt är texten, både när den situeras i skådespelarkropparna och när den situeras i högtalarna, upptagen av sexualitet, våld och disciplinering – ämnen som traditionellt sett är djupt förknippade med den mänskliga historiens materiella villkor.
Texten blir därför en för mig motstridig nyckel, kanske en nyckel som vittrar sönder om jag försöker använda den alltför ihärdigt. Men jag ser ändå rörelserna på scenen i ljuset av textens behandling av sexualitet, våld och disciplinering. Öppningar i dräkter och scenografiska objekt slukar återkommande andra kroppar hela. Skådespelarna arbetar ofta med mångtydiga omfamningar, låsningar och fasthållningar. Ibland tar det sig mer koreografiska uttryck, men främst är det teater i bemärkelsen att det på någon nivå porträtterar känslor i relationella förlopp mellan en sorts karaktärer som ibland framför repliker.
Det är också i första hand mot skådespelarnas aktioner som min blick riktas när det befinner sig kroppar på scenen – de ställer för mig det övriga görandet i bagrunden. Detta trots att det finns ett sammansmältande mellan skådespelarkropparna och scenografi/kostym. Kanske är det i A Map to Get Lost snarare så att skådespelarna tvingar föremålen att spela teater åt dem än att kropparna blir likvärdiga objekt bland andra. Om kropparna är sysselsatta med att iscensätta inklusion och exklusion genom mer eller mindre explicit våld, så blir föremålen också det. Samtidigt gör de visst motstånd, talar om annat och mer än kropparna – till exempel genom sin taktilitet, vibration eller glans.
Ljud- ljusbilderna är kanske det i föreställningen som är mest konsekvent – för mig hänger de samman både med sig själva och med varandra på ett annat sätt än det övriga jag har beskrivit. Starkt färgade ljus, strob och rök går i linje med olika loopade technobeats, ibland med mänsklig röst som en del av ljudmattan. Allt det här skulle för mig kunna höra hemma på en klubb.
Men huset, dräkterna, texten och skådespelarnas aktioner hör inte riktigt hemma på samma klubb, eller de hör inte alls hemma med något jag kan tydligt kan urskilja. Det skär sig, och jag tänker mig att det är meningen. Som åskådare försätts jag i ett tillstånd där jag är vilse i referenserna. Ska jag gå till spekulativ realism, psykoanalys eller genusvetenskap? Ska jag gå till Lilla huset på prärien, Min pappa Toni Erdmann eller Tadeusz Kantor? Ska jag gå till Sarah Kane, Mr International Rubber eller MoMa?
Jag upplever att föreställningen upprättar ett formspråk som frånsäger sig många av mina egna krav på form. Det är för mig ganska ansträngande att gå vilse eller inte veta vart jag är på väg, att få mina förväntningar brutna, att inte hitta bärande trådar att hålla fast vid, att inte få stanna upp i bilderna, att inte riktigt veta hur eller vad jag så att säga ställer till svars i min dialog med den estetiska upplevelsen. Men det är också intressant och inte så vanligt. Föreställningen sätter igång en process hos mig i efterhand där jag behöver arbeta för att identifiera vad jag har varit med om. Jag tänker att det finns olika sorters kraft i ett formavvisande formspråk, inte minst därför att det ställer frågor till vad form är.
Jag tänkte på olika inslag i normkreativ formgivning, som jag har lärt känna lite genom till exempel Moa Schulman, Sepidar Hosseini och Sara Kaaman. Jag skulle beskriva normkreativ formgivning som att den medvetet använder sig av formgrepp som är motstridiga eller anses fula i syfte att utmana gränser och normer inom och bortom formgivningens fält.
A Map to Get Lost gör mig så att säga som minst vilse när jag tänker på den som en sådan utmaning av scenkonstens former. Varken dans eller teater brukar se ut såhär i Sverige idag. Kanske är A Map to Get Lost en del av en rörelse som håller på att framträda, ett språk som upprättar nya nycklar till vår samvaro i scenkonsten.
Om det är så tror jag att föreställningen kan ställa fler frågor till mig än vad jag kan ställa till den, eftersom jag bara kan fråga utifrån de kategorier av estetiskt tänkande som jag själv så att säga hittar i.
Yet again something I wrote for the festival Dans ❤ Stockholm in early December 2013 – this time about On Orientations: Untimely Encounters by An Kaler.
There is a desire in reaching out to the world or letting the world come to you. It can be as great or as small as what we feel for a coffee cup, the caress of the wind or something half unknown. But this desire is also compulsive. But one that is also compulsive. We need points of orientation to move. Without knowing what constitutes space, the body or how the body moves in space, it is impossible to make sense of the movements, to tell the difference between point a and point b, to be able to distinguish the wind, the coffee and the rest. On some days, the necessity of expriencing the world through your body can seem excessively heavy. Why this particular body? Why this particular world?
In Untimely Encounters, one of several works in which Kaler explores orientation in various respects, there is an unusual ease in relation to the constraints of the points of orientation. Since the work comes into being precisely where the intention arises, in movements that precede touching, each direction retains more of its many possibilities. Where a completed movement always risks being tied to its meaning, culturally and relationally, the uncompleted movement leaves an openness as to where it is going. Is it on its way to a cheek, to a wall, into thin air? What will it do there, what will it create? It is undefined and therefore unlocked.
In some ways, Untimely Encounters is a duet – there are two bodies on stage, relating to each other. Disrobing the obligatory love story of the duet is no easy task. The very idea of two bodies on stage asks the question of how they belong together. But precisely because the work consists of a game of directions where the negotiation of each gesture is still open, where one’s own body or the other’s body, as well as the floor, walls and air, are all objects of the same open intentionality, it is also not a duet. The space and its attributes become an additional dance partner, appears in its own function as the bodies turn towards it. Distance and proximity become relative categories: Distance from what? Proximity to what?
These questions should not be mistaken for being an attempt by Untimely Encounters to disorientate the audience by assimilating the movements, rendering them meaningless beside each other. Rather, meaning is created in the relativity of direction. There is an intimacy in the incompleteness that invites those who encounter it to add bit of themselves or mirror a movement in order to understand it, to discover its origin. In this way, Untimely Encounters also involves the audience in the ostensible duet.
On certain days you can feel the friction from every direction taken. It is here the relationship between the body and surroundings is unlocked. The face touches the wind just as much as the wind touches the face, the coffee cup reaches for your hand just as much as the other way around. Such days do not alter the fact that all movement is conditioned by physical and spatial constraints. Yet, they can reveale how movements always touch something bigger than themselves, something that can never be fully overviewed, pinpointed or finished. Untimely Encounters could be an excerpt from such a day.
I write this text as a solo study for an imagined group piece that has the same title as an imagined exhibition. I also write this text as a piece for someone else, a performer, namely my friend and colleague Josefine Larson Olin. When she accepted to take on this position in my piece of writing, she also altered my modality of writing. Although I am still the author in terms of initiative, I cannot write without her. And although we will both take the consequences for how we structure our work, I am responsible for the outcome. One likely consequence of this is that people will perceive Josefine’s occurrence in the text as a vehicle for my thoughts and desires. Both of us can try to disturb this order in different ways, but it will still be my signature under the piece of writing, and her name in it.
The reason why I put us in this tricky relation is that I had a text commissioned by the master students of choreography at the Stockholm University of Dance and Circus. They asked me to write something about their festival Ok Show Kids Return (May 22-29 2011) that took place in four different locations around Stockholm. Six out of the seven performances in this festival were made precisely with the demand that they should function as solo studies for imagined group pieces that had the same title as imagined exhibitions.
With me and Josefine joining in, seven pieces out of eight now fill this criteria. The festival also goes on for a considerably longer period than originally planned – i.e., until this text can no longer be read. This modification of the format of the festival is our way of responding to the strive for prolongation that often comes with the wish to have someone write about or document live events. Instead of trying to capture, break down or by other means make these live events accessible after their disappearance, we wanted to address the very question of the ephemeral and the continuous in different kinds of performance. As our title Burn After Writing indicates, we are primarily thinking of the performance of writing and about in what ways the activity of writing could take on a value beyond the text that it generates. Of course, text and writing are then also to be understood as an analogy to choreography and dance, i.e. what value can the performance of dance have beyond the choreography that frames it?
Even though the seven other performances in the festival clearly influenced this piece – not least in its festival-infesting format – there are also other influences that made the theme of ephemeral writing particularly interesting to me. One is an unfortunate tendency to lose my diaries and never find them again. Another is my many experiments with creating text material through actively altering the rules that frame the writing – experiments that in their turn can be traced to a long tradition of scores for writing, most commonly exemplified by dadaist and surrealist poetry practices such as cut-up techniques and cadavre exquis.
Texts such as A Room of One’s Own (1929) by Virginia Woolf or Queer Phenomenology (2006) by Sara Ahmed also play a part. From two different points in time, Woolf and Ahmed address how writers and thinkers challenge or confirm the limits for recognition by writing through and about material conditions that are not so easily altered. As both Woolf and Ahmed point out, the recognition of a text as a text is not only about the criteria of selection set up by different social or cultural institutions. The questions of readability start already before the process of writing has taken place, and questions of this character can of course also be put by, through and to choreography. Where are the social and spacial stages for the performances of writing and dancing? Where are the material resources? Where is the subject legitimized for an authorship within those fields?
Those who, for some reason, have sufficient resources to become recognized as authors can of course stretch the scope for recognition through insisting on leaving traces of material conditions that might not fit into all legitimate categories. They can also try to undo some of the readability of their authorship by willfully introducing an element of disturbance. The latter is one of the functions I imagine that Josefine could have in this text. This by no means implies that Josefine could stop me from making this text readable – I am too much of an author for that. On the other hand, not even the author in me can stop her presence in the text from embodying the idea that writers are also practitioners inscribed in a complex sociality, and that writing is an activity that always happens outside the text.
To embody the idea of the complex sociality of writing is of course also a function that the presence of Josefine fills in this piece. And yet, this is not a process diary where me and Josefine give an exact account of how we worked together with the text. Instead, I have covered all traces of my specific ways of working with Josefine, so that the circumstances of production of this piece are present mostly through their absence. The honesty of this solution is that it mirrors the power relation that we engage in as writer and performer, as well as openly admits to the fact that we are still prioritizing perfect form and clear authorship over the process of writing, even if we indicate a possibility of something else.
To speculate in what futures an ephemeral writing could have, i.e., what is to become of the imaginary group piece and the imaginary exhibition called Burn After Writing, is one such indication. To propose any exact protocol for the future is of course risky, since it must rely on the experiences of text and writing that I and Josefine already have and thus repeat the thoughts that we can already think. But even from this figuration of hierarchical power exchange and half-hidden contextual bodies that is ours, we will propose.
In this solo piece, I use Josefine’s unclear bond to the authorship of the text as a way of underlining that the idea of putting writing persons on display or making writing a part of a performative set-up is definitely not what I am after. How it looks when one writes says very little of what it does. Rather than imagining writing as a spectacular practice, I imagine it as a relational practice, whether or not the text that results from it is read by anyone else than the writer. Even to write something that is unpublishable – unsharable, unreadable, fragile in its to and from – is to simultaneously rewrite one’s position in the social. This not only because writing culturally represents a specific act of withdrawal (and this might be a point where the analogy between writing and dancing falls apart), but even more because the writing as such structures the experience of inner and outer worlds. Writing a memory note is not only about being able to look at it later. Writing a letter is not only about who receives it. The writing is a process of inventing binding notions between fragments, choosing experiences and framing realities.
Thinking writing like this gives an opportunity to imagine how it could have priority over text, for example in a group piece and exhibition named Burn After Writing. As this title suggests, immediate destruction is a possibly useful tool if one wants to isolate the practice of writing from the traces it leaves. The destruction of text is in this sense not necessarily a memory loss or a threat to shared intelligence (as in the culturally charged image of burning books), but rather a way of getting to know something about writing that the preservation of the text would not have allowed the writer to know. The written is thus in its destruction replaced by an affirmative loss, a loss that gives back meaning to an act of writing that is all to often co-opted by the text, just like dance is frequently co-opted by choreography.
Towards the end of this solo piece, Josefine and I keep insisting on the possibilities of writing and destroying the written as two nodes of desire that can overlap and constitute each other in ways that disturb the privileges of text. In this insistence, we simultaneously criticize and reestablish our positions as writer and performer. All this said, it is too late to burn this text.
By Tova Gerge with Josefine Larson Olin
The other pieces in the festival Ok Show Kids Return were:
40 minuter by Nadja Hjorton, Chrisander Brun, Cicilia Östholm, Per Sundberg, Emelie Wahlman, Erika Thalinsson Ranhagen, Anna Strand Andersen and Elvira Roos.
Burn Your Fun by Kim Hiorthøy with Ilse Ghekiere.
We Made a Piece from Thin Air by Stina Nyberg with An Kaler.
So What by Zoë Poluch & Valentina Desideri.
One on One by Juli Reinartz in collaboration with Liz Waterhouse with Linnea Martinsson.
Gear and Tactics, You Know What It Is What It Is When We Do What We Do, To Rely with Confident Expectancy, The Precious Moments Are All Lost in The Tide, Sidestep Translation, Again and Again andAgain and Again, Metaphor Motion by Rebecka Stillman in collaboration with Ulrika Berg.
The Authentic Ludvig by Uri Turkenich with Ludvig Daae.
This is another text written before PAF 2011. It is a slightly frustrated reflection on the difficulties of finding functioning structures when you work within the realm of art. As a reader, you’re mentally filling in the blanks with whatever information you find suitable to describe a situation, choosing one of the given suggestions in every multiple choice. What you can’t do is rearranging the order of things or rewriting the whole form. And this is also pretty much what happens when you try to organize yourself officially…
You are … persons in … different cities (leave or add blanks if necessary):
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………
, in … different countries (leave or add blanks if necessary):
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………,
…………… .
At least … of you have a valid a) passport b) green card in at least one nation state.
What you all have in common is a strong interest for the artistic field of …………… and the ideological field of ………-ism. You also have an interest for alternative organizing, and you decide to somehow formalize your social network into a platform for actions that actively promote, perform and support ………-ist …… -ing.
You a) are a group where everyone knows everyone else in the group b) are a group were most people knows someone in the group before, but noone knows everyone c) are a group where some people know everyone, and some people only know someone.
Your initial intentions are to work according to founding principles not so different from your normal informally structured sociality. You want to define your network in terms of actions and encounters. You want to work with dissensus in the sense that noone needs an absolute majority of votes to start a project or act in the name of the network. You want the keep the borders fuzzy and fluid in the sense that noone needs a formal legitimation to invite someone to act in the name of the network, and there is no precise obligation to fulfill in order to stay in. You also want a system in which no chosen leader or official core is necessary.
The difference from just leaving things as they are consists mainly in centralizing communication and explicitly announcing an interest in acting collectively. This also implies using democratic meeting technique, transparence and systematized information sharing. You thus have open meetings … times a a) month b) week and you set up an internet platform where you can discuss how things proceed.
To be able to do certain kinds of projects, you realize that you need a formally registered association of some kind, for example a non-profit organization, a joint-stock company or a general partnership. In one meeting, you decide that you will found a …………….
Some of you have not been able to participate in the meeting, mostly for the following reasons (leave or add blanks if necessary):
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………,
……………,
…………… .
The ones of you who were absent think a) that the chosen association form is good. b) that the chosen association form is bad or that you don’t know enough about association forms to tell wether it is really good, b1) but since you were absent, you accept the choice. b2), and thus, you raise objections. You think that the association form is a decision way to important to be concluded without a consensus, since this decision will structure many of the possible actions that the network can do in the future. b2a) Your objections are overruled. b2b) Your objections are heard, and the matter is more thoroughly examined before you proceed with the decision making.
…. a) days b) weeks c) months later, the research is done and the authorities in the field make a strong recommendation for founding a ……………………. However, to be able to conclude this affair, you have to agree on some association bylaws and a name.
Some minor discussions occur during the process of setting up bylaws, mostly concerning economy, membership and stated activity. Some of you don’t really care, others care a lot. However, reminding yourselves that you can rewrite most parts of this guiding document later, you settle for a solution where the possibilities of having economical support from the members of the society are quite ………………. , where it is quite …………… to exclude or include a new member and where it is fairly ………………….. what kind of activity you as a group will engage in.
When you start to speak about the name, you a) agree completely and settle for a name. If this is the case, jump the following multiple choice section about names. b) don’t agree. You discover that despite your common interests in …………….-ist ………………-ing, your opinions on what this means and how it should be practiced, promoted and supported vary more than you thought. No matter how much you all insist that the name could be anything and that your organization will be whatever you do together, the name activates ideological questions. Should the name for example make reference to a specific canon of …………-ing in which you would like your projects to be inscribed, and can you in that case agree on such a canon? Should the name be an acronym for all the members in the group, as so to symbolize each and everyones individual agency within a crowd, and in that case, in what order should the letters come? Should the name mirror the open platform-thought by making reference to a fictive or abstract place by which your future activity is framed? Or is the idea of a name that connotes name-ness or place-ness problematic altogether because, in the long run, it is a reaffirmation of identity, legitimacy, belonging and borders rather than actions, alliances and fluidity? And how should the name relate to different centers of power? Should it try to communicate with them, appear as reasonable? Or should it rather make itself uninteresting or even admit an aggressive approach towards other figurations of power then the ones that you imagine as your closest allies?
After these discussions, a) you choose the name ……………………. by consensus. b) you choose the name ……………………. by democratic voting. c) you choose the name …………………… through a conspiracy by a fraction of the group, that send in your papers without telling the rest. d) you don’t choose a name.
Once you are done with the name question, a) the project of organizing yourselves is abandoned, a1) but the cooperations that existed before this initiative took place are still functioning, and you all continue with your ………-ist ……………-ing. a2) and the cooperations that existed before this initiative took place are abolished. a3) and pretty much all of you abandon the field of ………-ist ……………-ing, especially in relation to each other. b) the project of organizing yourselves through an official platform is abandoned, b1) but the cooperations that existed before this initiative took place are still functioning. b2) but you have discovered a lot of new friends and potential new cooperations. Over all, the initiative keeps enhancing and enriching your practice of ………-ist ……………-ing, and you are a network or platform in the sense that you keep on communicating and exchanging knowledge. c) you proceed in organizing yourselves officially c1) and you use the official platform in most of you activity. c2) but you don’t really ever use the official platform for anything. c3) and you do both activity that demand the official platform and activity that demands no such platform.
I wrote some texts before, during and after PAF Spring Meeting 2011 that I now repost here. First out is an essay on swans and lakes. Enjoy!
I recently had a dream about two authors who chose very similar titles – both containing the word “swan” – for their books. In the dream, I also had a rather clear idea about the content of each book.
The whole dream was set in a dance context, which made the reappearance of two different swans very loaded. In The Black Swan (funnily in the dream it had the same cover as the Hollywood movie, but it was absolutely not the same), Nassim Taleb argued that any type of forecasting in economy is futile, since the appearance of the unimaginable event – i.e. the black swan – is an ever present possibility that mainstream economic theory tends to deny. But he took the metaphor not from The Swan Lake, but rather from the – in a colonialist point of view – unimaginable discovery of the black swan in Australia.
In the mirror-book The Blank Swan (not the same cover as the film, more abstract), Elie Ayache suggested that the market makers – who worked mainly with derivatives – should somehow become swans themselves and move in the same irrational pattern as economy. As the title in the dream indicated, it was still not a reference to Odette and her companions – these were not des cygnes blancs. Nor were they dessignes vides, or even floating signifiers. They were simply blank swans, which meant that they had no expectations. They just moved empty-headed through the market making and tried to feel the next second trend: they were the in-between and the waiting that made the market.
When I have a strong animal dream, I always consider that there is some deeper meaning to it. Just to do a quick recap of what more traditional interpretations would suggest, the swan might be an omen of economic wealth, a recommendation to take care and act with dignity and grace, a sign that the dreamer is happy with their personal life, or even a phallus symbol (just think of its long neck and the rape scene between Leda and the Zeus-swan in Greek mythology). The relation to the water is also of importance. If the swan is black and close to clear water, this could denote illicit pleasure or feelings of discord with sexuality. If the swan floats the surface of a swimming pool or a little pond, this could mean that spirituality is restricted. On the other hand, if the swan dives, this is a sign that the dreamer is really getting into life. If the dreamer is a believing Christian, the swan might be a representation of the Holy Ghost.
Now, it would be easy to assume that the ballet relationship between a black and a white woman-swan was – according to dream logic – transposed and distorted, so that the story about the two male authors is actually about working with issues such as mirror stage, narcissism and lesbianism. This is quite an obvious reading and very much derived from recurring themes in my spiritual life: integrating different sides of myself, taking pleasure in the illicit, and so on. This doesn’t make the interpretation unimportant, but possibly, it is too simplified.
For what truly intrigues me with this dream is not the relationship between the two authors, but rather, how the dream partly emptied the swan symbol of traditional cultural meaning. In the dream, the swans somehow insisted on being inconsistent. They were certainly not woman swans. They were not even swans. For example, the black swan could take form as a violent event, but it could just as well be a nice surprise, or just something. The blackness had nothing to do with dark sides. It was more an image for improbability. The blank swan (aka the market maker) was maybe slightly more inscribed into a dream story in the sense that it had a spacial and corporal aspect to it. The blank swan was floating (possibly in a pond that was the pit – could this stand for an experienced restriction of spirituality in economy?) and it interacted with other swans, blank and black ones. So in a way, they made the black swan – which was not really a bird-swan – behave more like a bird-swan: at least when they encountered each other. The blank swans thus had more of a subjectivity, but their actions were not individual, spacial or temporal. They were not enemies or lovers: they didn’t plot. They just werea mindset.
If I would have to force them into a Swan Lake-setting, they would probably be a chaotic corps de ballet, guided by unknown impulses. I think I could like a Swan Lake with black and blank swans. Maybe that is how this dream was a wish fulfillment: a feasibility study for an unimaginable project.
fingervals 