Siân Williams ⇒ Kelly Best

I’ve been thinking about weaving for a while now, how each individual thread wraps itself under and over the other to make one large piece of fabric; something solid made of many parts. I’ve been thinking about the fullness and the strength of that and how Anni Albers described weaving as “many sided”, and how she thought of it as nomadic architecture.

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When you think about it, it always comes back to weaving. Everything in life is woven together. Life, a network of support, absolute interdependence, one giant piece of fabric. It’s not a particularly well-woven textile. Frayed threads expelled to the margins and patterns that should lead them back to unity and solidarity are purposefully misaligned to arrive at deadends, at isolation. Is wear and tear an aesthetic choice? Or a frank reflection on reality?

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I’ve been thinking about soft structures, and watching my mother make clothes; cutting out patterns on the floor then slowly gathering those flat, lifeless pieces together to make a three dimensional whole that fitted around a body and became animated.

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The conversation was about skin. About how much volume skin would take up if it was removed from the body. We decided it would be more than you think. Look at your hand. Keep it still. The surface of each finger alone would be three, maybe four times the amount of the area that you can see with your eyes. Inanimate, flat wall hangings. That was the starting point. Eyes flatten things. It’s the brain that adds the extra dimension.

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I’ve been thinking about movement, and the movement of a hanging object as a reaction to something or someone passing it; about how that could be a moment when you realise that your presence in a space changes things. I’ve been thinking about proximity, and the relationship between things, and maybe I’ve been thinking about intimacy too. I’ve been thinking about watching a performer in a Trajell Harrell show and how closely I was standing next to them, and how intently I was watching them, and how strange it seemed for that to feel normal.

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It was about the end of March, early April. Impossibly I find myself back there. I’m here too. Here being now and there being then. It’s August and I’m in the same place, just different times. I’m moving between the two which is strange because I’m lying on my bed. Back then I was standing. Standing was my choice. I remember how normal it felt to choose to stand and how strange it was that everyone else was sitting down. Perhaps they already understood the intimacy potential of standing and realised the chairs would act as protectors. But I did not need protection. And certainly not from a chair!

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I’ve been thinking about materials and about process. I’ve been thinking about process as transformation and how I felt it was important to not be seduced by a material but to try and transform it in some way. I thought about getting to know a material intimately; what it feels like, how it sounds, is it malleable or is it rigid? I’ve been thinking about understanding the limits of your medium and how that can open up space for imagination.

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About thinking and about process I’ve been materials. But as I try not thinking about process and transformation I’ve been seduced by how important to a process it felt to transform it and in some way was material. To know it sounds intimately rigid, or how it feels like it is getting malleable, I thought; what is it about a material? I’ve been up for understanding about the limits of your thinking space and how imagination can open that medium.

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I’ve been thinking about six people in a park in Cardiff playing a game in which they could go anywhere but they always had to know where the others were. I’ve been thinking about the shapes as we spread out, the rhythms of movement that happened in waves; first quickly, then slowing down as we paused to check on each other. I’ve been thinking about secret collective acts and about how no-one else in the park knew what we were doing. I’ve been thinking about how our awareness connected us, like an invisible elastic band keeping us together, and about how I could almost feel the tension and resistance as we moved.

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The game was about to begin. Everyone was in position. Even the ‘non-players’ were in position, though they did not yet understand how their bodies formed part of this game. These ‘non-players’ claimed variable mobile boundaries, areas of void that could not be accessed by the players. The players could not yet understand this, their collective secret demanding their absolute attention for the entirety of the game and indeed long after the players thought it had ended. The ending. Where was that exactly? It was pretty hard to locate, but not as complex as tracing the beginning.

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She asked me if it was about fish. I said no, but I can see why you might think that. There is an aesthetic connection; of glistening scales to glistening foil where one thing overlaps the other to form a surface. But I think it has more to do with the rippling, collective movement of a school of fish, shifting and changing together as a group. Did you know that in a murmuration each starling is aware of seven others around it? And each one of those is aware of another seven, and so on and so on until the entire flock is connected and every movement, every change of direction or speed could be said to come from one bird but also from none.

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The surface of a question has chameleonic qualities. You know it is a question, but it is often disguised, shrouded in a blink and a wink, a sparkle and shimmer. Surfaces. Did you know that seven is the sum of any two opposite sides on a standard six-sided die? That makes chance very connected. Say you are playing a game that involves rolling a die and you need a six, but instead you roll a one. It’s like chance is fucking with you. Seven holds all the power and you never even knew, because seven is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

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I’ve been thinking about being led to that park with my eyes shut and about how the sounds around me became so much more voluminous when I had no sight to ground them. I’ve been thinking about the tiny gestures my companion gave as she guided me; her fingers pressing into my waist when we started or stopped, the funny shuffling steps we took to warn of an approaching curb or step, the settling of her body against mine as we waited to cross the road.

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That the sound felt solid was about as close as it was possible to get to it physically before it was gone. I’d never thought of sound in that way before. Sound as weight. A physical object. Perhaps more a thing, thing being more vague than object. Off topic, I wish more things came submerged in vagueness so we could pull them out and redefine them using our own criteria and in our own time. Back on topic, if it is physical then it must have weight to it. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it is without form or doesn’t occupy space. In a spoken context, sound is ejected out of the mouth, momentarily propelled forward, it is flying not falling. Falling, falling, falling, falling and hits the ground. Sometimes it stays there, unable to penetrate the surface. Usually it disappears as quickly as it’s expelled. Gone, but not before passing through a membrane of memory where, if lucky it might be registered, catalogued and remain. And wait. And wait. And wait, at least until a newer version replaces it or it falls down the back of the shelf.

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I’ve been thinking about Pauline Oliveros and her Deep Listening practice. I’ve been thinking about standing in a circle improvising with our breath. I’ve been thinking about the rhythms and the textures that made and about how the sounds overlapped and wove into each other. I’ve been thinking about the structure and the softness, that might feel like opposites, meeting together to make one whole.

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Stand in a circle. Stand in a line. What’s wrong with a triangle or a square? Or even a Heptagon? Yes! Stand in a heptagon. Improvise. Breathe. Breathe again. Heptagon is technically more correct. If there is no distance between our bodies, then we can form a circle. Gaps create points and points mean there is no chance of establishing a circle. Circles are pointless. Pointless. Ha. Say it out loud. Circles are pointless.

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I’ve been thinking about intimacy again, about proximity, and about shared space. I’ve been thinking about the shape of someone else’s body next to my own and about how sometimes, even if we are not touching, I can still feel them in some way. I’ve been thinking about our awareness of each other, and about the subtle shifts and changes when someone enters or exits a room. I’ve been thinking about how some people hold presence whilst others blend into the background. I’ve been thinking about what it means when those things are taken away and we no longer have proximity and we no longer have shared space. I’ve been thinking about what might come to fill that void.

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The journey towards the organ on the far side of this room is slower than before. Everything about this scene, the baron mud red brick walls, a lack of anything soft or forgiving and the steadfast teak floor is primed for the amplified CLOMP that will come when my boots make contact with the wood. But my journey continues in perfect silence as if the two surfaces never touch. These muted connections continue even with a heavy measured drag of the stool. I take my seat, ensuring to position myself appropriately and with respect. Spreading my fingers above the organ I’m suddenly aware of the scale of the possible connections. Touching the surface, my digits depress. It’s softer than it looks, maybe even slightly moist. The silence continues. Every single point of pressure should carry a train of signals, a runaway pulse at an undetectable speed to generate a specific action or a result. Only stillness awaits at the platform. I try a different sequence, but the organ does not respond. The wires of communication are severed, forcibly redundant and unable to deliver their messages. Are we prepared for this level of betrayal? Motor learning is now extinct and the organ no longer has control over my movement. Matter triumphs over mind, and fingers, unable to detach themselves, fuse with the external layer of the organ.

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I’ve been thinking about listening; about how we listen not just with our ears but with our bodies, though our skin, through touch, and with all of our senses. I’ve been thinking about listening as something that doesn’t just happen in the here and now but as something that happens across time and through generations. I’ve been thinking about listening as memory and about memory as collective. I’ve been thinking about listening as gathering, as interpreting, as transforming and as something that is active not passive. I’ve been thinking about listening as both intimacy and solidarity.

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When I lie down, that’s when it happens. It’s not always immediate but it is guaranteed to happen then. In fact, it only happens then. But it gets even more specific than that. If I turn left there is no reaction. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Rien! But if I turn right, well, it’s only a matter of time. I used to think it was a natural occurrence. A bodily function of sorts, triggered directly by the act of rotating my body a full 45 degrees. But since speaking to you I started suspecting it was more inexplicable than that, a phenomenon closer to the supernatural than scientific. A sound that only I can hear, communication just for me. A sound produced from within the very device that exists to hear it. Thoughts are soundless words. But this noise is not thought. This noise is just noise. A noise that is intimately mine.