BridgeIdea

The Bridge Rule is :

Hover over the environment (the social & psychological moment)

Enter a social-psychological field, and seed that field

With radiating centers--

With image/gestural clusters

That lift the participants out of the normal way of processing their environment

And remember, their processing of that environment is always a way of attaining “goals”—but such goals are always predicated on the way things are—yet the way things are is what (this new art proposes) must be radically changed.

One’s way of RELATING to the way things are, is what must be changed.

(HERE IS THE CONTROLLING FABLE:

Two artists enter a receptive community, bringing ways of generating art that have “nothing to do” with what most performance arts have, until this point, considered the basis of making performances. Because these two “visitors from another aesthetic planet” are bringing, on the basis of their 30 years of philosophical and practical working, a new modus operandus that creates a totally new kind of artistic collaboration.

Inside this newly formed community, people from different art forms and different walks of life will find themselves working together in terms of a seemingly “rarefied” aesthetic that yet, surprisingly, has wide social and inter-personal application)

There are two kinds of seeds that can be introduced into the social world, into the community in which art is to be created.

One seed—normal art—is the kind that issues forth—so that “what is” in terms of agreed upon reality-- flowers and develops and builds mental and physical structures-- palaces, and prisons.

The second kind of seed—(the basis of the Bridge’s art-style) instead, used the rich ‘loam’ of the environment to implode and deepen, to develop itself, as seed, into the unexpected ‘universally applicable’ potent image into which totally new possibilities of being are then projected.

For instance, the first group of such planted imploding ‘seeds’ (in terms of the Bridge project’s history) were slowly evolving tableau’s of people being blindfolded. This image, in different context, among the different participants, set up chambers of resonance which then, layered over with voice tracks, music tracks, etc—created as it were a new cerebral “brain” layer being folded over the existent brain of ‘the world as it is’ --postulating a new world-- hovering over ‘real life” as pure possibility.

The Bridge involves communities of people around the world in building an artistic structure that at least hints at new, supplimentary layers to the collective brain.

It suggests a new environment in which some new, unimaginable creature (post-human?) might come to eventually live.

It introduces people (artists, intellectuals, students, people from all walks of life) to a “post-world” in which every moment twists to reveal --“behind the scenes” --a new, slow, glacial and yet cosmic interpenetration of mental and emotional vortexes at work.

(Example: A typical bit of over layered speech, as one is blindfolded: “Don’t believe it. I’m no more a human being than I am a rodent. There is so much scurrying back and forth inside me. Especially if you shift to the focus on my mental apparatus.

That’s how the world works. Back and forth. Back and forth like a rat looking for a way off a sinking ship. But sometimes, nevertheless, I go to sleep. We all do”

Another speaks-- “ Oh—that’s when I enter the picture. As you can tell, I’m a substantial human being. The way I dress—this elegant double breasted suit, defines me. If I were at my summer vacation at the beach, I would not dress like this. Instead I would have on a stripped bathing suit, and the stripes of that suit would strum your consciousness just like that recurring waves of the ocean in front of us are struming your brain strings also”.)

This kind of art, promoted by the bridge—lets ideas and images and gestures arise in response to what is present in the chosen, potent image-series—rather than in response to some pre-determined goal, which is always co-opted by the way things are now in the world. But The Bridge art ends up being organized with musical rigor—helping the participants as well as the spectators to climb towards a different plateau of being.

Because-- while the purpose of life may seem to revolve around the drive “to be”—we propose that the purpose of art is to make life (being) ever more multi-layered. And discovering new and lucid ways to move into this intensified ‘multi-layered” ness represents the door that opens for each individual, as he moves into wider life of the spirit.

The new structural principal is—one network, superimposed over other superimposed networks.

**************

(adorno)

truth of works of art, hinges on whether they

succeed, in accordance with their inner necessity, to absorb the non-conceptual and contingent

(their purposefulness requires the purposelessness, which is illusion)

the mimesis of works of art is their resemblance to themselves (art imitates itself) subject to the prohibition against graven images

Ivory tower enlightens as it reflects mimetic impulse which is impulse towards identity with oneself (ie avoids regressive “communication”, proposes freedom)

Move from communicative to mimetic language

This is me, here I am. No place that doesn’t have eyes to see you

Art work re-enacts the process thru which subject comes painfully into being—

Expression is not so much the subjects expression, as the impression, the sense of imprint

Paradox of art: art aims at the creation of things of which we do not know what they are

concretizing the enigmatic.

Art works kill what they objectify, tearing it away from context of immediacy and real life (so are negative per-say)

Reality around art work seems unreal and indifferent to it’s essence as art, while at the same time being its necessary pre-condition. So it is paradoxical in that they appear

Age of silence, works of art no longer speak—but their silence speaks all the more loudly

Art satisfies no needs (war does)

Art should imitate itself

Art= freedom from biological necessity (stories accommodate reproduction)

--A flash—

others want that flash

we are here for someone else’s agenda

not art to lead by hand to goal, make art to project into (lightening) (could be anything) and see (sense) whole

see whole, (my ‘globe” experience of expanded consciousness) and there are no “needs”

there is “freedom”

Motives: next move (dialogue, etc) not from logic

Nor ‘be crazy” (for others)

But for elsewhere on ‘totality’ of that globe

“STORIES HIDE THE TRUTH”

Richard Foreman is basing his new work on projected images, but NOT because he accepts the fact that this technological form should now take center stage in our current version of reality.

He rejects such an idea. Rather—he places slow, tableau-like projected images at the center of his forthcoming productions because they are able to ground the ‘Reality’ of the live performance which occurs in front of these images, in the hallucinatory temporal coagulation of time passing—evoked in projected symbolic tableau that do not so much ‘advance’, but rather breathe, drift, and palpitate, just like the world around us is quietly doing while our limited mental faculties agitatedly invent adventures and interpretations we project as our daily reality—but which in fact exists under that atmospheric blanket of the “GREATER” reality which is the slow oscillation of the cosmic drift.

So the projected images in Foreman’s new work certainly do not point toward a commitment to the new and superficial technological society, but rather to the slow evolution of cosmic forces , massively coagulating into images and symbols behind our backs, that used to be called, dare we say it. . . .God.

Dear Ana
To answer your questions--
If God famously died, and human’s no longer constructed their inner selves as complex “cathedrals” trying to echo the circling of a “God” that was essentially the un-manifest— then in our time— the unconscious replaced God as the great “un-manifest”. Now— with the “information age”-- everything is basically manifest, available to human beings who now have the world at their finger tips, but no longer have real un-plumbable depth— it’s all on the paper thin surface of “information”. The unconscious is dead. We are all wide— but paper thin. Indeed a well has dried up.

This being the case, the old sources of creativity— the un-manifest depths, are indeed no longer available. I myself am searching for an alternative— which is why I choose to concentrate on the obsessive image for the next few years. The “blindfold” image -- stasis . Into which the viewer can project him/herself and GROW a world of meaning— like a fungus— rather than the old way of plunging into a current (narrative) that carries one, develops one, along pre-determined lines.
Since we are all spread thin over the total available field of information, there is no linear development possible, no development possible in terms of exploring the depths— there is only a multi-directional mold-like growth of a potent image that slowly saturates like ink on a blotter. So my current work is to place such a pregnant image (variations on that image) in different settings that reflect the width of the new, flat world. And discover (and for me it will be a discovery, I feel I am going I know-not where— into the uncharted future) -- discover new possibilities in that new flat world that I do not really “like” but I know is our unavoidable future.

As far as the altarpiece— yes , I find it very evocative. When I started my theater years ago, the art of the middle ages was very important to me. The divine “woodenness” and “frontal” aspect of the poses spoke to me powerfully about the mystery of “presence itself” as overpowering the particular subject matter. After all— the “ontological” of Ontological-Hysteric Theater was all about a similar presence co-opting the hysteria of normal dramatic situations.
I return to that now, in this new work— this Bridge Project is for me a new beginning. The re- insertion of overpowering presence— this time into a new kind of “flat” world quite different from the inherited “modernist” world of spiritual yearning within which I began my work, nearly 40 years ago.

(Textual snippets to possibly be folded into the forthcoming Bridge Project--

“DEATH OF THE UNCONSCIOUS”)

I am here to empower people in inappropriate circumstances

When I die, having not been famous or important, I will be able to fold hidden experiences into death, enriching thereby that other realm.

I think my brain is ok

No laughter has been captured.

Permanently

It is never enough.

Amazing escape mechanism.

Think of the cost, think of the psychic cost.

The whole world

Is irresponsible.

"A" for effort.

On the boulevard of dreams

In transit.

Dance with me!

Deep catharsis.

I squeeze a few last words out of this machine.

This word machine

Eventually

Self destructs.

Why should I die.

This exhausted mechanism--

Into the depth

Of things.

Never again

Real discoveries.

Ah, I've arrived.

I want more

Having more-- I want more.

Go to war with each element.

Negate it,

subtly

undercut it.

Everything eats itself

Flame.

Burn up

Each.

The Universe-

stars

(that continual conflagration)

Looking

into the sky.

Nothing

Traveling into the sky

The sky getting

Closer and closer

What dies-- the sky.

Do it to me

And will I recover.

The void of the sky.

The eye in the center of the sky.

The bright sky.

Vast.

The sky, spreads.

What's falling from the sky.

Except the sky itself.

The sky is

Pouring into my

head

The hole in the sky

Is the sky

Good things

Fall from the sky

Invisible.

A cloudless sky.

I looked into the sky.

Light behind the sky.

Light inside the sky.

The sky continues.

The sky spreads.

The sky folded over a second sky

The sky folded over a third sky

The sky folded over another sky

And another sky.

The sky deepens.

This rocket ship will carry us all

Into the sky.

The empty sky.

The empty sky

Strumming the brain strings.

Reaching into the vulnerable

Proffered brain.

Stroking the brain

Like stroking the cool limbs of the beloved.

Empty and beloved

pale sky.

All of you-- enter now--

the room with the intense light.

Agree to certain pre-conditions.

Agree that you will have—playmates.

These may be totally imaginary creatures

No matter

You will benefit from the illusions they provide

Trust me.

The unconscious is dead.

Is this a good or a bad thing

How can it be proved that the unconscious is dead

The way to prove

That the unconscious is dead

Is to--

Enter that other realm.

Don't be fooled.

With the invention of the airplane--

That was a mortal blow to the unconscious.

The invention of the airplane.

When the unconscious dies

Poetry renews itself.

But this is useless.

Did I die

When the unconscious

Having died--

The unconscious is dead.

Therefore I am alone

Amidst. The multitude.

Here

The unconscious is placed in an iron chest

And cast adrift

Into a sea of ( forgetfulness)

But nobody really understood that this had happened.

He sky is blue.

The sky engulfs me.

The light comes

Again and again.

I am

Hopefully

My own

disappearing act.

Destruction of all plot development.

Construction that contains oppositions of pure means--

dynamic rhythm.

THE SKY IS BLUE!

The unconscious is being destroyed

So that totally free elements

Capable therefore of unlimited extension

Can construct a place

In which

The void of things--

The void

At the center of things-- can be seen as

The energetic source that causes existence to

Repeat itself forever.

I am trying to say the one statement that will render all further statements unnecessary, and then-- with no need for additional statements-- I will dissolve into the world itself

(make everything self destructible, in contradiction? No-- not the opposite, but the OTHERWISE. FIRE-- like Heraclites)

THIS WILL ALL GO INTO THE DATA BANK.

A new world is automatically old-fashioned.

Treat everyone like a hero

Because you suffer.

In bad times

Shine elsewhere.

Be awake

Without

Knowledge about it.

The useless agenda.

Where there was one, make two.

Frightened.

But alert and so-called

In control.

This is no escape route

Because

You're one hundred per-cent

On your own.

Behavior

Is a solution when

Alive is a limitation.

Whatever it is that vibrates under my fingers when my fingers touch the surface of things--

This is death

Shaking minutely

The real world

Into the more universal

Configuration

Of the nothing.

Over and above

The clamor of voices

The burning instance of the blood

Pounding inside me

Erasing all messages

giving me that kind of freedom

Which I, alas

Never dared taste.

You too

You too will resurrect in my image--

I'm that unimportant

You too will die without being noticed

Being credited with no real achievement.

And that is you secret glory--

Being folded into death

Carrying a host of small

Everyday experiences

Of no particular significance.

Secret

Glory.

You burn there

In the deep dark of death,

Incandescent like a vast cosmos--

Far enough from this earth

That the blinding-ness resultant

Is never registered by those

Who possess registering consciousness

Which trivializes, of course,

Those few items that penetrate,

As opposed to the vast

Disappearing into space

Depth-death--

Your pregnant

Once-only

Gift.

You will never be seen

Or appreciated or honored

For what you are,

A 'noting' who withdrew

Just in time

From the richness of life.

Hence saving yourself for yourself alone--

That self-- yourself

Nothing like the

Depths of the cosmos--

Is the finally achieved

Nothing.

You are nothing.

(He didn't find anything important in. . .