Kineo | Mine Söyler

Body, Ghostly Dialogues

Body, Ghostly Dialogues

The program series titled “Body, Ghostly Dialogues” was prepared as an invitation to those who make contact, to the exhibition practice, or to the presented event to experience them by focusing on the concept of the body. It aims to create environments of encounters where body-oriented works and their traces within the fiction, along with “imaginary” or “ghostly” dialogues, are made visible and questioned. It is possible to describe the proposition as a personal field of research to be established by visitors concerning their own bodies, their body perceptions, kinesphere awareness, and the space, spatial elements, or another person included in this kinesphere. The invited works and the studies included within the scope of parallel programs carry their own contexts into the construction of discourse and, within the scope of the proposition of ghostly dialogues, explore new perspectives on questioning the body. It is considered important to establish sociological, political, anatomical, and ecological inquiries about the body; to understand the body not from an anthropocentric perspective but as an organism that moves, perceives through sensations, and integrates with the mind; and to observe the dialogues a person establishes with themselves and their environment in the rhythms of everyday life. (Excerpt from the exhibition text, 2022).

The paragraph above was developed in the second term of Open Dialogue İstanbul’s “Contemporary Art and Curatorship”series. The related work came to life in different phases, at different times, and in different venues. The ideas that developed the discourse transformed in their own journeys over time, constructing new possibilities. Some of the programs were hosted by Akbank Sanat’s dance studio, and at the end of this process, a feature-length video production took place. Afterwards, in 2024, it was included in the exhibition “Intentions 2” held at Akbank Sanat and continued to generate various performances and public programs parallel to the exhibition. Today, I continue to develop programs under the same overarching title I still use. In the form supported by the European Union’s Civil Thought program for the last two years, efforts continue to provide a ground for individual and collective works through ARP-LAB (Off-Beat Rhythm Platform Laboratory Study), which focuses on the ecologies of body and movement.

Within the ARP-LAB collaboration I program, I continue to develop the path I built for my individual productions with the discourse of “Body, Ghostly Dialogues”, designing various programs and content in order to multiply encounter spaces through body- and movement-based works and to create new channels of dialogue with different communities. At its core, I wish to articulate a few words about what the intentions of these programs were, how the discourse was founded, and why it continues today with different collaborations, as a kind of small invitation for those who meet or wish to meet on the ground of body- and movement-focused practices.

Within the civil sphere and in the context of my doctoral research, I navigate between discourse and practice with the understanding that movement is a fundamental right. My activities continue to develop the discourse of a “movement right” academically, on a ground where I examine the position of the body as a social and political subject within current urban designs, its vital practices, and existing disruptions. The activities that are the projections of these works in the civil sphere and within social dialogues are what I am trying to open to discussion with “body, ghostly dialogues”. In short, I am engaged in efforts to establish areas to gather more frequently around these focuses, to talk, read, listen, watch, and above all, to move together, and to sustain already established spaces.

The body establishes its becoming within a patterned universe and takes form through its physiological and anatomical dialogues within itself, its reactions to its environment, and the effects coming from the environment. It observes and experiences the universe, culture, space, dynamics it inhabits, and ultimately its own body, which is its home. Life cycles are shaped by the possibilities and limitations established by all these dialogues. But how familiar are the dialogues in these cycles? Who structures them? What might it mean for them to be familiar or unfamiliar? Could there be things we have forgotten about being ourselves? How many layers are there in making contact and touching? Isn’t establishing dialogue itself a layer of touching the world, like breathing? Why is the movement of my body spoken of as different from the movement of the environment? What is the scale of movement in the body? If the body were to be addressed as a research subject, where should one begin? How many stories have been constructed upon it? What could happen if the body meets expression?

Works based at times on dialogue and at times on sensing are constructed as processes to be experienced together with the participants and observers, and through the patterns of events realized within the program, it is aimed to bring to the agenda the imaginary, blurry, forgotten, untold, or, in the course of habits, no longer present dialogues of the body. The space is prepared as a playground that proposes to draw the visitor’s body into a process of research concerning its own self-perception. It is considered important to be able to establish a ground where individuals can dialogue with each other, with the artists who proposed to the space, with the space itself, and ultimately with themselves. The dialogue channels established with the body as the space one possesses and with the environment as the shared space are fermented together with the works and studies invited to the programs. From this point, the ground of interpersonal dialogue within the framework of the concept of body is observed.

Raising awareness on the perception of movement, the architecture of the body, and the anatomy of space constitutes the main axis of the plural spaces constructed as a field of research. Movement, the mechanical alignment of movement, body perception, kinesphere awareness, social, political, and ecological discussions about the body, the habit of dialoguing with the body, and the mind–body relationship appear in our society and era as perceptions and inquiries that are increasingly vanishing, being forgotten, perhaps not yet due, or made to be forgotten. The main aim in the fiction of the programs is to enable small encounters with these points, with established norms and the immobile bodies, uncommunicative dialogues, and stagnant societies caused by these norms. The body constitutes the main concept of the encounter spaces where the programs take place, and the proposition of ghost dialogues is used as a reference to the imaginary representations and implicit conditions of dialogue grounds concerning the sociological, political, ecological, anatomical, and everyday rhythms of the body.

Flows are constructed with works that will allow perceiving the body and space from different perspectives, and different methods and approaches are invited into exhibition and event spaces. The fictions are researched sometimes by watching the movement of another body in motion, sometimes by inviting simple movement-based experiments, sometimes by engaging in studies focused on the structure, anatomy, topography, and architecture of the body as a moving mechanism, sometimes by focusing on the body with the concepts of chimera and puppet in a playground, sometimes by looking at the body’s journey in historical processes and discussing these concepts, by writing down thoughts, by creating opportunities to listen to other perspectives, and sometimes by turning to the structured and natural environment with various instructions. It aims to develop the ability to establish bodily and mental awareness channels while moving. With the encounters the programs try to establish, it is considered important to invite the body into conscious kinesthetic perception.

Because play helps to establish dialogue, to activate action and imagination, and to develop different levels of awareness. In short, through the programs developed in the context of body, ghostly dialogues, it is aimed to construct various fields of experience in order to propose the reflex of thinking with the body; experiments continue in various places, with various collaborations. At times, research continues in the texture of a laboratory; at other times, sharing spaces are formed, and active meeting spaces are established.

Why?

“In the last 25 years, we have witnessed the development of many disciplines focusing on the body and the creative potential of bodily movements. One way or another, all aim at recalling body/mind integrity and/or reconstructing the continuity of body, mind, and spirit” (M.E. Garcia, M. Plevin, 2002). At this point, of course, many approaches have been produced. There are examples shaped according to local culture and preferred to be preserved as such, or those that have developed a systematic language on a universal level; some have been developed with the terminologies of psychology and neuroscience, some with the terminologies of dance and movement research, some with an artistic perspective, and some from the intersections of art and science… To summarize them briefly as “approaching the same essence with different voices” would not be wrong, I think. In our country, too, there are experts, practitioners, educators, and artists in many different fields, and the works continue through multiple channels (at universities, private studios, etc.).

Exploring different perspectives on the common denominator “body” through dialogues that can be established within the scope of works or events invited into an exhibition space, and the contributions that ideas and discourses from different infrastructures can bring to the field, is exciting. An encounter space for somatic studies is being built, and by inviting visitors into a play; watching others, themselves, or their silhouettes; sensing the structure and movement mechanics of the body; acting, speaking, writing; stepping into different dimensions of movement in their own rhythms; and thus drawing attention to the body and the positions of the body within social and historical constructions, an approach is being woven. For some time now, my efforts and those of the teams I relate to have been in this direction. In the first phase of the program, a fiction was prepared with works positioned in a physical space in different contexts and with processes patterned from the existing space into the city, where participants determined their own routes. Today, experiments continue through new possibilities.

The possibility of building a life that continues with the presence of self-awareness is today widely addressed and studied in the context of urban studies, civil sphere studies, and contemporary art practices. Developing a self-consciousness can begin with relating to the nature of the body one possesses and examining what the normative assumptions are and how they have been patterned over time. This consciousness can then extend outward to the environment, to the places lived in, to the relationships established, and, on a much more holistic scale, to the nature in which we live. By sensing our own nature and truth, reaching balance through the paths opened by these perspectives, or exploring new balances; through bodies that observe, sense, question, and research, a project with the imagination of life patterns to be established has developed and continues to develop. The purpose of addressing these intentions in a text was to establish a call for works that could also be done together and questions that could be asked together.

Marcia Plevin, one of the founders of the Creative Movement approach, summarizes this understanding as follows: “Through body/mind awareness, a person can become more accepting of themselves, come closer to themselves. In this way, a greater integration occurs that develops both personal creativity and the person’s relationship with their environment” (Plevin et al., 2006). I believe that establishing experiences that bring a person closer to the pleasure of experiencing themselves and their environment through movement contributes to this integrative wholeness. According to somatic studies, “this happiness experience, which is an expression of health, subsequently serves to strengthen the individual’s integrity and balance” (Plevin et al., 2006). Frey Faust, founder of the Axis Syllabus archive, expresses it as “… after training our perceptions, our best teacher and guide is our own body …” This archive, “transferring knowledge acquired from scientific research into dance and movement studies,” began to form in the late 1990s through the work of dancer and choreographer Frey Faust and today continues to provide a ground for interdisciplinary research. The notion that our “own body” is the best teacher and the observation language that extends from there to the environment also has an important place in the proposition of “body, ghostly dialogues.”

To Distance Oneself from the Body/To Be Distant from the Body

A phenomenon, an entity familiar to everyone, both concrete and, depending on its context, quite abstract—a substance, the body, essentially owned by all, albeit with various differences. A phenomenon, an entity whose functioning, physiology, reactions, desires, and cycles we are all commonly familiar with. Therefore, can we approach it as a concept that can be met on common grounds and debated about without extra effort?

“The most characteristic feature of our early infancy is the direct relationship established with the vitality of the body. But as we grow, we acquire new skills necessary for our development; we learn to speak, to think, to meet the increasing demands of our environment, which moves us away from experiencing how our body feels. Our conscious movements separate from our deepest impulses. Even our mode of perception changes, and our capacity to resonate with the world as we did in early times recedes. This profoundly affects how we perceive the body; we no longer perceive it as a whole but in parts.” (Garcia et al., 2006, p. 12).

For a long time, one of the methods useful for perceiving the world has been thinking in parts, examining in parts. Likewise, what is used within the body… But what if the story is established by the interrelatedness of these parts? How should one understand, tell, and transmit this? The body itself possesses this narrative within its own internal dialogues. Could the experience and observation of movement be among the best methods of transmission?

“When we were young, when we looked at a plane in the sky, the whole body was looking at it (try it). When we bent down to look at an insect, the whole body bent; but over time, with a restricted movement of the neck, only the eyes looked. When we reached for something, only the arm reached. When we walked, only the legs walked. That bodily flow, the holistic action of the entire organism, was divided into fragmented movements. That beautiful flow of energy, that state of connectedness, was lost.” (Whitehouse, 2003, p. 34).

These are the observations I have encountered for years in my individual research, in workshops I have joined and organized, in performance works, and in the slices of daily life’s flow I have observed. Beyond personal experiences, focusing on and questioning the notion that “there is a progressively developing withdrawal in our perception of the body…” was an acceptance I wanted to concentrate on. Especially with the new rhythms woven together with the post-pandemic and “age of communication” conditions we are experiencing now, it would not be wrong to say that opening this acceptance to discussion holds value.

Moshe Feldenkrais, who founded the Feldenkrais Method, which is based on physics, biomechanics, and an empirical understanding of learning and human development, emphasizes that we move according to our perceived self-image. Therefore, it is possible to say that by developing our ways of perceiving the body, our ways of using and structuring its movement, perception, and awareness, we can bring them to very different dimensions. Here, by development, what is meant is not establishing what is better or best, but recognizing different perspectives and being able to establish a more holistic state of consciousness.

“It is obvious that we cannot imagine returning to feel and express ourselves as we did in childhood. (…) At this stage of human culture, this magical integration is only possible with the further development of our consciousness.” (Garcia et al., 2006, p. 12). Therefore, for the reasons mentioned above, I believe it is important to create encounters that include body practices and to contribute to the formation of this consciousness. The programs developed with the discourse of “Body, Ghostly Dialogues” can perhaps be described as a platform where studies that can create awareness of the body are brought together. Various experiments have been conducted, are being conducted, and are planned to be conducted…

With the intention of creating pathways for experiences that can transform movement and thought, and with the wish to move together in abundance…