Lecture performance: Forest
Walk
Photography slideshow, storytelling.
Location: MA Scenography studio space.
Duration: 20 minutes.
Walk
Photography slideshow, storytelling.
Location: MA Scenography studio space.
Duration: 20 minutes.
Script:
From time to time, when I feel a bit overwhelmed or just numb, I go for a long walk. Often, I go to what my housemates and I refer to as ‘the
forest’. In reality it is more like a park, or an old sovereign nobility land that is now shared with the public, and intentionally overgrown with plants and trees.
Last week, Henny told me about ‘elephant paths’. They are paths that are formed in space by people making their own paths.
These are unofficial routes. But in this sovereign land, there are no true elephant paths. There are old alleys landscaped and designed to frame the nobility mansions. Today they are also elegantly blocked by tree trunks elegantly placed as if they have fallen, to tell us not to venture into the wilderness. Keep walking on the imported grey sand and gravel. If you do venture into these informal overgrown areas, you will encounter the stinging nettles. But isn’t it always the risk of performing the forbidden? Obstacles will sting you.
In the forbidden areas, or in those least inviting, wild berries grow. Berries are energizing. They help in overcoming the obstacles. In the ‘forest’, there unhealthy plants are rarely kept, but often there are beautiful still waters. Stable water. So stable and unchanging that it is out of order, inaccessible. The stability of these waters, I would like to disturb. They must be jumped in and splatter everywhere. Next time I go for a walk I will ask you to join. Together we will jump in the still waters, cover ourselves with slime, and walk back home through the real elephant path behind the highway. Perhaps even at night.
From time to time, when I feel a bit overwhelmed or just numb, I go for a long walk. Often, I go to what my housemates and I refer to as ‘the
forest’. In reality it is more like a park, or an old sovereign nobility land that is now shared with the public, and intentionally overgrown with plants and trees.
Last week, Henny told me about ‘elephant paths’. They are paths that are formed in space by people making their own paths.
These are unofficial routes. But in this sovereign land, there are no true elephant paths. There are old alleys landscaped and designed to frame the nobility mansions. Today they are also elegantly blocked by tree trunks elegantly placed as if they have fallen, to tell us not to venture into the wilderness. Keep walking on the imported grey sand and gravel. If you do venture into these informal overgrown areas, you will encounter the stinging nettles. But isn’t it always the risk of performing the forbidden? Obstacles will sting you.
In the forbidden areas, or in those least inviting, wild berries grow. Berries are energizing. They help in overcoming the obstacles. In the ‘forest’, there unhealthy plants are rarely kept, but often there are beautiful still waters. Stable water. So stable and unchanging that it is out of order, inaccessible. The stability of these waters, I would like to disturb. They must be jumped in and splatter everywhere. Next time I go for a walk I will ask you to join. Together we will jump in the still waters, cover ourselves with slime, and walk back home through the real elephant path behind the highway. Perhaps even at night.
