Christos Polymenakos - CoJAM1312: Corporealities and Dramaturgies as tools for creating a hybrid work employing the body/word Performance Writing methodology.

Photo: Fani Pozidi

The hybrid, in progress work “JAM1312 ~ an epic DIWO collective ritual failure in eight episodes~” currently in development becomes fertilizer, soil, and seed. Hopefully, through this process it will grow and bear fruit, through collaborative (Co) processes of artistic research and dramaturgy. body/word Performance Writing is the methodology I developed to explore and share tools that emerge from a combined examination of the body and the word through the lenses of various arts, disciplines, and experiences. For many of the research questions, I already have some answers – permanent, temporary, elusive. Others are being updated and answered by an independent, parallel research project titled “Scoring Corporealities”*. Here, I would like the work to emerge in dialogue with the creative processes of the other fellows and my collaboration with them.

How can all this be geek fun and more without risking the credibility of the research?

The endurance, the endurance, the endurance, the ritual and the rite, the paganism, the failure, the collective failure, the hybridity, the tragic relief, the ecology, the democracy, the psychedelia, the nature, the poetry.

Am I institutionalizing my work now?

*“Scoring Corporealities”: Interdisciplinary, multimodal research using Christos Polymenakos’s body/word Performance Writing methodology, with the participation of 28 scientists and artists from various fields exploring how the relationship between body and word, when approached in the light of different arts and sciences, can make dance available to different bodies, their communities and spaces. It is supported by Flux Laboratory Athens, Kinitiras, the Artistic Network of Performing Arts, the Duncan Dance Research Centre, Nicosia Dance House and TWIXTLab.

Image1/4

Photo: Christos Polymenakos

Creator 's note - Reclaiming poetry amid precarity

This is like a farewell letter.

Welcoming all that has arrived.

August 2023, Finland. Artistic Research and Dramaturgy. body/word Performance Writing in Finland again. CARPA8. It will be a reflection process, won’t it? (add link to initial abstract)

Quiz: Which subtleties are there in the documentation photos?

What does it do to be paid for your research presentation and post-conference proceedings by an institution?

What does a prominent university conference do to facilitate such commonings? Who is there? Who is not there?

First encounter with COVID-19. Parallel, small institutions involved, big research ignited. What is community?

September 2023, Greece. Basil plant. To water, eat, smell, drink, and keep mosquitoes away. Fellow fellows ate more. Happy, all of us. Share practice and conference. Yum, Yum. My work speaks more clearly than me, no matter how poetic it is. Duly noted and cross-checked. Meet fellow fellows and more. Thankfully, out of comfort zone. Or in? What does it do to be a fellow? Offering back initiates a series of mentoring sessions for fellow fellows and Stegi artists. No less than 10 and counting through the season. Artistic collaborator. Mentor is just not what I want or am? Will be super grateful for all the challenges, dead ends, windows, hugs. A privilege really for an artist to become even the slightest slice of another’s creative process. Do more of this? Meeting communities that get evicted by the colonizing state. Feedback. The original process, thank you. How much has changed since the last time I was here? What made the difference?

October 2023. So much work outside the fellowship. Nighttime embraces reflecting on a failed proposal, being, working on a work, outside working hours and fees. Really?

Snippets of expert collaborators. I know there is not enough money to do this properly. I have enough money to consider this.

Reflect on conference and practice as a whole. Feeds the work without touching. Always at night. Day is too busy in all ways. Fellows. Yeahy!

November 2023.

Check in!?! Definitely jam. Like a pea under loads of mattresses. Seed.

How different are people working in institutions from people not working in institutions? Time. Resilience. Circles. Do individual circles constitute communities by default? Work description fails. Work grows. Loses, transforms, leaks. Trust.

Proceedings. While in Cyprus. Mentoring, again. Artistic collaborator, please. Less power, more space. Words become elusive. In relation to being. Ok.

Work outside, overload. Overflowing comfort zone. Fellows.

CARPA8 proceedings (add link to proceedings). Thank you, Finland.

December 2023

Balloons. Helium balloons. Deflated enough to barely yet clearly stand upright on the table, on the floor, next to the trashcan, out in the atrium. Thank you, I needed this sign. You were already cast, but it’s nice to greet me on the verge unexpectedly.

When are you part of an institution? Is a dialogue a form of war? How much can you claim from what is not yours? How do you reclaim what is yours? Can we bear less antagonism?

Bombs keep dropping. Understatement.

Do you have a life outside work? What work do you do?

January 2024

The work has never been more devoid and closer to completion. Every challenge gets rid of layers between you and your gut feeling. Admit: not scientific enough. Does institution mean power? Does this go for all institutions? How do you deal with your own power? Is it yours alone? How much does this pleasure you? (reference. or not. rather. don’t capitalize on your letters.) When does a fellowship end? When does it not end? Is a fellowship like a text bleeding into the future, the past, and the unnamed time? When did you present your methodology at two different universities? Would they be interested had it not been temporarily residing in an instituition? Sorry, meant institution. Or not.

Can clouds be a good thing? Open question. How can clouds be open, sorry, good things? Not sorry, open. Poetic is not an insult. It needs another time. How do we share time?

Bam! Beyond bombs. Understatement.

People… Am I people?

If it does not do something, a word is just a word. Never thought that was even possible. Yet, we do.

Make connections. To myself. Through myself. Am I my work when at work?

February 2024

Seriously overworked. Leaking through the boundaries. From Sunday to Monday, the work reappears. Rather, from April to January. How do you say re-sounds?

Work enters the room and fills the thin air. Thank you. Really.

Is there anyone who works only on the fellowship? I met them later. Impressive. Fellows. Yeahy. Where can a community call itself a community? If it is not called a community, can it still be a community? What’s in a name, Bill? (pun intended)

How do you openly call?

How do you explore without causing explosions?

March 2024

No day will be open for you, yet. Please fail again to describe your work. When will you have had enough of your words? Give it time.

The work is there. Like a silent, turbulent sea. Silent. Not silenced. Becoming what you knew not it would become.

Postnatal hormonal unsettling. Reclaim being regardless of wordly titles. Mourn. Spring.

Which language are you?

Did you really make it this far being poetic?

April 2024

The time will come. It’s been a year it’s been here. Where do you want your seeds? Trust.

Evaluate. Be evaluated. Community work.

May 2024