Dynamic Presence

By Skye Jin // Jette Hye Jin Mortensen // (2015)

The central part of my project is an existential and uncompromising exploration of what it means to be one human among humans. It is about an understanding of ourselves as individuals and, at the same time, collective minded, generic and interrelated beings. I almost work as a performance artist in an abstract way: Even though I sometimes am present in a work, it’s not my body that is present but a progressive life history subject to a number of experiments. The story of ourselves is present in many places at once: In relationships, the gaze of others, cultural images, personal experience, collective ideologies, inherited narratives, the environment, nerve paths and our genes.

All these aspects of ”self” may seem contradictory - that is, if our purpose is to maintain a single entity. But if the optics are that we exist on many levels of consciousness and ways of expressions at the same time, we will then see an opening to dimensions which exceed physical form, time and space! This is the multi-dimensional self knowledge that I seek to activate at performative spaces.

Colors, materials, and acting techniques are always carefully chosen as active co- narrators in the projects: for instance, the frame is made of wood, which was harvested in the garden belonging to the actor in the photograph. The stage curtain design is indigo blue – a color with a wavelength of about 430 nm, which affects the production of melatonin in the brain and thus the viewer ́s ability to relax. Along with the viewer, I’m looking for introversion, tranquility, and meditation as methods for processing, agitating and confronting the things that are painful, are seen as taboo or just as unusual ways of articulating identity. The mate- rials are often transparent fabrics and stage curtains, which - instead of separating and hiding - propose fluid structures, synchronicity, smooth transitions, and a dynamic relationship between the audience and actor. There is no sharp distinction between different areas of knowledge, aesthetic expressions, and the personal and the collective parts of my projects; on the contrary. I seek to understand transitions and transfor- mations, how to endure conflict and create connections. Where do “you” stop, where do “I” begin, and how am I connected to or detached from the whole? Is it plausible to describe ourselves as autonomous units in a common organism?

Genetic research shows that we have divided us in haplogroups contrary to all ideas of racial categories, and that all living humans can be traced back to a common ancestress by means of their mitochondrial DNA. Epigenetics indicate that we - on a microscopic level - can be defined as platforms for a collective organism of bacteria interacting with its surroundings, and that trauma, hunger, and the living conditions in one generation can bring about permanent changes in the next generations. In develop- mental psychology it is said that we begin our lives in a symbiotic state with our mother, and from there on we move towards an independent sense of self. In this process much can ’go wrong’, and as a once two-year old, cross cultural adoptive child, I might be such a case. To unlearn the official explanation of this minority experience and to create a new language and new knowledge has naturally affected my project. As a result of the second world war´s instrumentalization of the biological ancestry, my generation grew up in a time influenced by a perception of ourselves as being products of the environment, and not of physical heritage. At the same time, we have moved into a post-genome era where one answer is no longer enough. Bio-psychologist Susan Schneider describes it well: We are 100% genes and 100% environment. The genes are still important, but they are included in a liquid, ever changing life process.

The reason why my projects are based on collective processes, where parts are interpreted by others, where the room’s set design is activated by the audience, or where I, in cooperation with actors, design the work backwards, is to understand how things arise as chain reactions dependent on the work of others, and their gaze and experiences. How does the imperceptible negotiation between the text and the act of performance take place? However, not only things, but also our persons arise as projections and characters in the minds and gaze of others. Involuntarily, we exist as multi- identities in a divided being. In ”A Conversation with myself”, the zen philosopher Alan Watts describes - during a walk in the countryside outside San Francisco - how human perception is incredibly limited: Nature is a complex network of rhythms, conditions and forms so informative, that our brains actually discard most information to cope. When Euclid invented geometry, the reduced, straight lines and circles were not accurate pictures of our surroundings, but a picture of the limitations of human consciousness.

In “Art as Vehicle - At work on an alternative potentiality of performing arts”, the inventor of the paratheatre Jerzy Grotowski describes, how the performer has an introvert focus on transforming energy, rather than a focus on appearance, text and the observer. Not a constant energy, but a vital energy that moves back and forth, from the biological to the spiritual and subtle, just to return to the ordinary. The cancellation of the separation between performer and observer was also one of objectives of the para-theatre, and it manifested itself in non-performance events in nature or urban spaces and a focus on group dynamics. Compared to the widespread acting techniques as the ones of Stanislavsky, where emotions and memories create a relation to the role, and Meisner’s focus on impulse reactions to signals from co-actors, Grotowski ideas of our masquerade to and with each other have a far reaching social and spiritual intention. An intention, that I am inspired by and share.