These are the questions / topics / explorations that came up for us this week:

We spoke with a philosopher who is researching Radical Hospitality and focuses on Derrida, and out of our conversations we came up with three new topics of exploration: 1. Ways of organizing difference (this came from a conversation about the difference between judeochristian societies which are based on politics as a way of creating unity, and ancient greek society, where politics were a way of organizing difference. The differences between the two have a huge effect of the ways hospitality is understood and enacted in the respective societies). 2. Adaptability, and its positive and negative connotations. 3. Derrida’s understanding of the word ‘radical’. We’ve been exploring these questions and topics through discussion and improvisation, and will continue discussing them with the philosopher this week.

Juan made a chair with two legs that requires a person to stand within it to create the back rest and back legs. We used this chair in rehearsals to create dialogue between the person sitting on the chair and the one holding it. We also improvised with it as an extension of the body, or a host/guest of the body. This coming week we are working site-specifically in a local bar, with a non-performer we have met in Oldenburg, to shoot a video-performance using the chair.

We continued to question and define what is territory – exploring its possibilities in terms of space, visual, smell, sound and language.

We began working with sound, Alma live-composing based on improvisations (translating between forms).

We explored text, using the chair to generate dialogue, and also within an improvisation which brought us to an interrogation. (In Derrida;s text he discusses whether hospitality requires knowing anything of the guest – questioning the guest. He calls the guest the ‘question-being’ – ‘the one who, putting the first question, puts me in question.)

We continued our exploration of textures and materials – for one exploration each person went alone in the town and brought back an object to create games/dynamics/tasks with. Liquid which became bubbles, orange velvet-like cloth, and small beads which expand in water.

We continued to explore our movement phrases with the symbiotic elements, brining in an outsider to give the commands, and then creating set phrases for Alma and Kinga which nondancers (Juan and Kathryn) were then placed inside of.

We revisited the duets of body-hospitality which we created in the first week and began to get into more detail of what the tasks should be and how the two pairs are different.

We discussed removing things from their context – for example, all the objects from a house stacked on the street. Or moving a person from their context/country. Removing use function changes the way we see a thing or a person.

Finally, we read together sections of Derrida and responded to it with exercises and images.