Centre for Art and Architecture Affairs (CAAA), Guimarães, Portugal, 22/07/2016, footage by Bárbara Mesquita
Details
Breathing Underwater (performance within The Museum of Boughs: Room 2), 16 min.
Performance history
The Museum of Boughs: 4 Rooms, Centre for Art and Architecture Affairs (CAAA), Guimarães, Portugal, 22/07/2016
Performance text
1.
In principle, breathing underwater has always been reproducible. Actions undertaken by human-beings could always be copied by other human-beings.
2.
Breathing underwater is simple.
3.
Breathing underwater takes place for a variety of reasons.
4.
It is form and content.
5.
When I think about breathing underwater, images come into my mind. Many of these images are connected with my training and work as an architect. They contain the professional knowledge that I have gathered over the years. Some of the other images have to do with my childhood. There was a time when I used to breath underwater without thinking about it. Sometimes I can almost feel it.
6.
Roughly speaking: water is colourless.
7.
The social significance of breathing underwater, even – and especially – in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic side: the liquidation of liquids in the cultural heritage.
8.
In order to breath underwater, one must know not its external but all its internal qualities.
9.
Breathing underwater could be described as a state in which everything beyond our own personal biography seems vague, blurred, and somehow unreal.
10.
The case of breathing underwater is indeed an interesting one. It was established in opposition to a certain kind of psychiatry, the psychiatry of degeneracy, eugenics and heredity.
11.
It is like a scale applied to reality.
12.
When breathing underwater is subject to the transfiguration of an authentic art, it becomes a pleasure, an intense pleasure, but a pleasure all the same.
13.
Man should possess the capacity of breathing underwater indefinitely – every sense could be expressed without having an idea how and what each word means (just as one speaks without knowing how the single sounds are produced).
14.
It is form and content.
15.
When I breath underwater, I frequently find myself sinking into old, half-forgotten memories, and then I try to recollect what the remembered situation was really like, what it had meant to me at the time, and try to think how it could help me to revive that vibrant atmosphere pervaded by the simple presence of things, in which everything had its own specific place and form. And although I cannot trace any special forms, there is a hint of fullness and of richness which makes me think: this I had seen before. Yet, at the same time, I know that it is all new and different.
16.
Breathing underwater contains the possibility of the state of affairs which it breathes. What is breathable is also possible.
17.
It is like a scale applied to reality.
18.
Breathing underwater is highly theatrical; it is a staging or restaging of an ephemeral sound event that is given visual form as a pictorial image.
19.
Breathing underwater is a complex image, or train of images passing through the mind, or a set of incipient bodily movements.
20.
In modern times, all this changes. Traditional ways of breathing underwater become obsolete as new materials and new techniques emerge. Age old practices no longer serve the needs of a rapidly changing society. For the first time in human history, breathing underwater is not to be taken for granted.
21.
In principle, breathing underwater has always been reproducible. Actions undertaken by human-beings could always be copied by other human-beings.
22.
What, then, is to breath underwater? A strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be.
23.
Roughly speaking: breathing is colourless.
24.
The only person whereabouts who owned a grand piano asked me to dive deeply into the water and stay there breathing for as long as I could. I lit a cigarette and went out into the balcony where I found my hostess sitting on a chair. We began chatting.
25.
Breathing underwater could be described as a state in which everything beyond our own personal biography seems vague, blurred, and somehow unreal.
26.
When I think about breathing underwater, images come into my mind. Many of these images are connected with my training and work as an architect. They contain the professional knowledge that I have gathered over the years. Some of the other images have to do with my childhood. There was a time when I used to breath underwater without thinking about it. Sometimes I can almost feel it.
27.
It had always seemed to me possible that by means of breathing underwater I could change my ordinary mode of consciousness as to be able to know, from the inside, what the visionary, the medium, even the mystic were talking about.
28.
In order to understand the essence of breathing underwater, consider hydroglyphic writing, which doesn’t picture the facts it describes. And from it came the alphabet.
29.
As always with relations of power, one is faced with complex phenomena which don’t obey the Hegelian form of the dialectic. Mastery and awareness of one’s own body can be acquired only through the effect of an investment of power in the body, thus, to effectively breath underwater.
30.
Breathing underwater, to be sure, does not define a field. It is everywhere. Without it, there would be no society, no institutions, no history. Anyone can specialise in the analysis of it; it is not therefore a specialty. Through experience and more or less spontaneously, each of us can to some degree play the part of the analyst or critic of it; no one refrains from it. Moreover, to play a role in this work, to play a role whatever it may be, one must at the same time be inscribed in the logic of it and, precisely as to perform properly in it, to avoid mistakes and transgressions, one must to some extent be able to analyse it. One must understand its norms and interpret the rules of its functioning.
31.
In principle, breathing underwater has always been reproducible. Actions undertaken by human-beings could always be copied by other human-beings.
32.
Breathing underwater is simple.
33.
Breathing underwater takes place for a variety of reasons.
34.
Breathing underwater could be described as a state in which everything beyond our own personal biography seems vague, blurred, and somehow unreal.
35.
It is like a scale applied to reality.
Details
Breathing Underwater (performance within The Museum of Boughs: Room 2), 16 min.
Performance history
The Museum of Boughs: 4 Rooms, Centre for Art and Architecture Affairs (CAAA), Guimarães, Portugal, 22/07/2016
Performance text
1.
In principle, breathing underwater has always been reproducible. Actions undertaken by human-beings could always be copied by other human-beings.
2.
Breathing underwater is simple.
3.
Breathing underwater takes place for a variety of reasons.
4.
It is form and content.
5.
When I think about breathing underwater, images come into my mind. Many of these images are connected with my training and work as an architect. They contain the professional knowledge that I have gathered over the years. Some of the other images have to do with my childhood. There was a time when I used to breath underwater without thinking about it. Sometimes I can almost feel it.
6.
Roughly speaking: water is colourless.
7.
The social significance of breathing underwater, even – and especially – in its most positive form, is inconceivable without its destructive, cathartic side: the liquidation of liquids in the cultural heritage.
8.
In order to breath underwater, one must know not its external but all its internal qualities.
9.
Breathing underwater could be described as a state in which everything beyond our own personal biography seems vague, blurred, and somehow unreal.
10.
The case of breathing underwater is indeed an interesting one. It was established in opposition to a certain kind of psychiatry, the psychiatry of degeneracy, eugenics and heredity.
11.
It is like a scale applied to reality.
12.
When breathing underwater is subject to the transfiguration of an authentic art, it becomes a pleasure, an intense pleasure, but a pleasure all the same.
13.
Man should possess the capacity of breathing underwater indefinitely – every sense could be expressed without having an idea how and what each word means (just as one speaks without knowing how the single sounds are produced).
14.
It is form and content.
15.
When I breath underwater, I frequently find myself sinking into old, half-forgotten memories, and then I try to recollect what the remembered situation was really like, what it had meant to me at the time, and try to think how it could help me to revive that vibrant atmosphere pervaded by the simple presence of things, in which everything had its own specific place and form. And although I cannot trace any special forms, there is a hint of fullness and of richness which makes me think: this I had seen before. Yet, at the same time, I know that it is all new and different.
16.
Breathing underwater contains the possibility of the state of affairs which it breathes. What is breathable is also possible.
17.
It is like a scale applied to reality.
18.
Breathing underwater is highly theatrical; it is a staging or restaging of an ephemeral sound event that is given visual form as a pictorial image.
19.
Breathing underwater is a complex image, or train of images passing through the mind, or a set of incipient bodily movements.
20.
In modern times, all this changes. Traditional ways of breathing underwater become obsolete as new materials and new techniques emerge. Age old practices no longer serve the needs of a rapidly changing society. For the first time in human history, breathing underwater is not to be taken for granted.
21.
In principle, breathing underwater has always been reproducible. Actions undertaken by human-beings could always be copied by other human-beings.
22.
What, then, is to breath underwater? A strange tissue of space and time: the unique apparition of a distance, however near it may be.
23.
Roughly speaking: breathing is colourless.
24.
The only person whereabouts who owned a grand piano asked me to dive deeply into the water and stay there breathing for as long as I could. I lit a cigarette and went out into the balcony where I found my hostess sitting on a chair. We began chatting.
25.
Breathing underwater could be described as a state in which everything beyond our own personal biography seems vague, blurred, and somehow unreal.
26.
When I think about breathing underwater, images come into my mind. Many of these images are connected with my training and work as an architect. They contain the professional knowledge that I have gathered over the years. Some of the other images have to do with my childhood. There was a time when I used to breath underwater without thinking about it. Sometimes I can almost feel it.
27.
It had always seemed to me possible that by means of breathing underwater I could change my ordinary mode of consciousness as to be able to know, from the inside, what the visionary, the medium, even the mystic were talking about.
28.
In order to understand the essence of breathing underwater, consider hydroglyphic writing, which doesn’t picture the facts it describes. And from it came the alphabet.
29.
As always with relations of power, one is faced with complex phenomena which don’t obey the Hegelian form of the dialectic. Mastery and awareness of one’s own body can be acquired only through the effect of an investment of power in the body, thus, to effectively breath underwater.
30.
Breathing underwater, to be sure, does not define a field. It is everywhere. Without it, there would be no society, no institutions, no history. Anyone can specialise in the analysis of it; it is not therefore a specialty. Through experience and more or less spontaneously, each of us can to some degree play the part of the analyst or critic of it; no one refrains from it. Moreover, to play a role in this work, to play a role whatever it may be, one must at the same time be inscribed in the logic of it and, precisely as to perform properly in it, to avoid mistakes and transgressions, one must to some extent be able to analyse it. One must understand its norms and interpret the rules of its functioning.
31.
In principle, breathing underwater has always been reproducible. Actions undertaken by human-beings could always be copied by other human-beings.
32.
Breathing underwater is simple.
33.
Breathing underwater takes place for a variety of reasons.
34.
Breathing underwater could be described as a state in which everything beyond our own personal biography seems vague, blurred, and somehow unreal.
35.
It is like a scale applied to reality.
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