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# 17.01

Introduction




STAYING WITH OTHERS

THINKING WITH THE OTHERS

 
Spent the evening in my lodgings struggling with my will. Too flabby to work, disinclined to read, a dreadful vague unrest possessing me. I couldn’t sit still in my chair, so walked around the table continuously like a squirrel in a cage. I wanted to be going out somewhere, talking to some one, to be among human beings.
(From W.N.P. Barbellion’s “Journal of a Disappointed Man”, 13 October 1914)
 
In what way does one have a shared life today? In what way a “magnificence” in which, all injustices aside, everybody can participate?
(From Elio Vittorini’s “Diario in pubblico”, July 1946)
 

Workshops, seminars, teaching, group exhibitions, residencies with artists, group works, group actions, taking others inside my own space, entering the space of others…

From the introspective space, set apart from the shared space. From the solitary work to the communal one.

If one way for escaping isolation is to open up to dialogue, to relationships with others (I talk about this in the chapter “Meeting the other”), another one is that of the group, of staying with others to form a collectivity.

I do not exist alone, but in relation to others who help me to understand who I am, who give me strength, who give me a sense of what I am doing.

I was urged to act from a desire to share, trying to involve others and take them directly inside my world.

Starting from what I am, I tried to tempt them to activate a process, to build a common ground from which single individualities could emerge.

Sometimes I infiltrated groups that already existed, finding my dimension, at other times I determined them myself, trying to respect and listen to individual differences.

How can we stay with each other? Trying to find a cadence, a constant rhythm with the relationship with one’s own subjectivity on the one hand and on the other with the collective relationship.

From one to one, from one to another, from the other to the group and then again from the group to one’s own individual nucleus. Not always alone and not always together. 
 
IN PROXIMITY
It starts with my own breathing. I create a nucleus, a concentrated lump. I start from what I know and then slowly move away and try to broaden the journey in the pleasure of getting lost. It is a point which slowly widens and expands, and I distance myself in order to touch others. I always remain in proximity. I always remain close to home. By always remaining in proximity to the nucleus I can find the way to meet the other. Every so often I take a break: a walk, a conversation, then I return and leave another trace, another colour. I remain nearby, concentrated, close, close to the thing, close to others.

(Written in 2017)
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