Solar Associates

I came across a reference to E. Behnke and the phenomenology of the body. She came up with the term the "lucidly lived" body as an alternative to the modes of inhabiting the body that had previously been part of phenomenological study which are: "passed over in silence" (Sartre), an "operatively functioning body anonymously and pre-reflectively geared in with the world" (Maurice Merleau-Ponty), a "non-conscious but absently available body schema" (Gallagher, 1986). The study of the 'lucidly lived body' uses the paradigm of kinaesthetic consciousness rather than visual experience. I think this term is useful in communicating the very personal studies I've been undertaking.

I am a student of body languages, postures and gestures that I co-opt as much as I can. I want to find out if, by moving in the same ways as another person, I will experience corresponding psychological states to theirs.

I skill and de-skill, re-skill myself again, and again, and again. In capoeira contemporanea – the style I most consistently practice, Capoeira Angola, Dance afro, using gym equipment, daily gestures, Baile funk, free dancing at parties and walking. I notice, learn, adopt, practice, repeat and embody movements. I feel them altering my posture. I know they are shifting my consciousness.

I watch women in the streets, continually, from the day I arrive in Rio, so as to learn the codes and the body language. I adopt native clothing, shoes and hair style. I slow my walk down, I adopt a way of walking with head slightly bowed, I stop looking around at what is going on and feign lack of interest . One day I think I notice women taking smaller steps than I am used to.

I emulate an afro Brazilian master of capoeira, Mestre Cobra Mansa (this nickname means tame snake). He is 49 years old from a Rio, working class back ground. He has been playing capoeira since he was 14. I watch and repeat his movements, again and again, day after day. Do I become him? Do I embody any of his life experience, the life experience that is written into his body? Do I co-opt his struggles, the struggles of his forefathers? His ancestors? He sways vigorously side to side, back and forth, his hands dipping into the air in front of him as if drumming it with his fingertips, his dreadlocks flying. I watch him, trying to get a sense of the feel of the movement and go with the feeling, trying to match the visual information with my own sense of this set of movements. My moves and his are mostly mismatched, I keep watching, feeling and trying.

An other afro Brazilian capoeira master, Lua Santana, who lives in a cave, crosses the room, low to the floor, stepping with hands and feet like a kind of lizard. I get low to the ground and follow him. He doubles back again and again in different animal postures that somehow are always also capoeira movements.

I sleep on the ground with no mattress and don't sit on a chair for 10 days.

A tiny girl from bom fim, a village south of Salvador Bahia, steps and sways her hips in a furious samba. Again I try to match her movements.

I emerge from a lake after swimming consciously, sensing the water on my skin and the movements and changes in my body, for a second I am the young black woman with braided hair, noticed on the beach the day before, as I throw my wet hair over my shoulders I am her throwing her braids over her own shoulders.

A girl of 11 years old who lives in a favela in Rio teaches me how to dance baile funk. She says in a quiet voice 'put your hands on your knees, now move your right hip in a circle.' Another time I copy her as she stands in front of me and says while demonstrating 'up, up, down, down, forward backwards backwards forwards 'and she moves her hips in the pattern she describes.

Ailene, dance afro teacher, skips ahead of me down the room flinging her arms to one side and flicking up her foreleg before stamping it down. I skip behind her trying to emulate her. She comes back and stamps down the room again and again continually flowing, one time holding one arm as a mirror and stroking her hair with the other, alternating sides in the dance of an orixa.(a goddess of candomble - afro-brazilian religion)

A young woman at Morro dos Prazeres gives me a lesson in how to walk. She says , "you are very stiff in your shoulders you hold your shoulders, let them go ('deixar'), now drop your hip each time you take a step, that's it", and she holds my hand and walks with me down the hill.

I adopt this walk in my day to day life, I begin to feel more relaxed and less self-conscious.

I go to the gym with Marcia. On the first day I do the series of yoga stretches which I do every morning, movements I have been doing since I was 16 years old. Then I practice capoeira movements - ginga, different kicks, dodges and back flips, bridges escapes - and the guy who works in the gym keeps coming to ask me when I will use the gym equipment.

I train capoeira with a small informal group at atelier favela Largo de Gimareas. The class is mixed so I'm often training and playing with small boys. We mirror each other and try to perfect a movement taught by the master. We spin, laugh and tumble in the roda.

I receive a lesson in how to climb onto a moving tram from local boys. I dangle off the side and try to jump off, run along and jump back on. I feel scared and my body feels stiff and slow.

On day two at the gym I do my yoga and capoeira routine and try the gym machines. I feel like I'm willingly submitting myself to becoming a piece of mundane factory machinery.

Day three at the gym. I run on the treadmill and use the machines. I realise the potential for precision they have. I could choose and sculpt any muscle I wanted to. I feel robotic, working my body this way feels like a dangerous submission to mechanisation of the self.

I teach yoga movements to Marcia, a white middle class film maker. We stand facing a mirror in her gym she copies my movements.

I abandon the gym, and instead walk for 2 hours every morning along the Praia do Flemengo

On 16th April 2009 The first Rio Street Training session was attended by 11 people, a perfect sized group. They were:

Actor Luiz from Spain
Artist Julia Kouneski, Minnesota USA
her boyfriend Mitchell, Minnesota USA
Dancer and performer Negrah, Santa Teresa, Rio
Head of the Morro dos Prazeres Community association Eliza Brandao, Morro dos Prazeres, Santa Teresa, Rio
her seven year old daughter Eva
her friend Alex
Cintia and Edilene who also work at the resident's association started at Morro dos Prazeres
Artists Ducha and Cata Chlapowski Santa Teresa, Rio
Lottie Child, Brick Lane, London UK

The session was documented by Marcia Derriak Laranjeiras, Rio.

I felt the first Rio Street Training session was a roaring success with lots of positive written feedback and warm feelings shared. Two artist here in Rio, Ducha and Cata, want to do more sessions and two artists based in Minnesota want to take it over there.

I introduced Street Training, described its roots in the University of Openness faculty of Physical Education. I showed the Street Training website, described Street Training commissions and collaborations with the Tate gallery and the South London Gallery, London. And recent commission in Peckham (blogged nicely here).

Then I initiated a conversation about safety and joy in the streets of Rio. Cintia a young woman, told us she feels extremely shy when she walks in the streets so she never walks alone. She says she is not afraid - it's 'vergonha', which really means shame. She says she feels better these days - since she goes out more often she feels more comfortable. Eliza says you have to walk with confidence or people will sense your fear. Edilene says the same. She says fear attracts danger and this starts with your thoughts. She tries to have good thoughts when she walks in the streets. Negrah says if you know a place well it becomes less dangerous, although something bad can always happen. If you have seen a place at all hours of the day and night, and know who is around and what might happen, it makes a big difference. Mitchel has recently arrived in Rio from the USA and he feels very different when he walks in the streets. He says everyone knows he is a stranger - which is a very strong sensation, but doesn't feel dangerous. He says he is amazed by the topography of the streets: the pavements rise and fall and swirl around holes, tree roots and all kinds of things, and the way you walk needs to respond to that. Everyone says at some point that they look around them to see who is about when they walk.

We leave the office of the residents' association, and walk past the 'community security' - a young man with a rifle slung around his shoulders. We head down the steep hill and wait for the bus. While waiting we are making tiny chocolate and banana biscuit sandwiches, climbing on the roof of the bus stop, and playing a game with two balls - throwing them over the advertising at the bus stop. I head towards a traffic cone to use as a mega phone, but remember it's marking the police sentry at the entrance of the Favela. The police can't enter the favela so they stand guard 24 hrs outside. I change my mind and join the shelter climbing, which I think was watched by the police, I'm not sure.

All eleven of us travelled by crowded bus with a massive joke argument ensuing between a drunk guy with a little girl on his lap and his 'friend' sitting five rows back from them. We get off the bus at Largo de Guimaraes and walk up the steps of the beautiful old Largo das Lettras, where we do some prep and team building activities. As darkness falls we are leading each other blind around the garden and terrace. A friend, Roberto, was watching me wandering eyes closed, lead by 7 year-old Eva. He then decides to join the group. In discussion of the eyes closed activity people said it sensitized them and they began to trust each other.

And into the night, we walked together into the streets of Santa Teresa. We started interacting with everything by drawing on it in chalk, I used a traffic cone as a mega phone to sing a love song. The man in the picture shop was amused. Eva and Alex drew on the lamp posts, the pavement - everything, everything. People started to walk dancingly, climb the railings by the road, jump off things and then. ....Julia found two wooden boards, lay them purposefully on the ground. Some one drew an arrow and a kind of cartwheel performance began. People took turns to jump and spin on the boards. We 'sculpted' ourselves in inverted positions and gently manipulated each other into slow motion backwards flips. Heading off again, Alex found a moth or butterfly on the road and drew a home around it to keep it safe. The home was as far as I tell in the shape of a penis, or maybe a mushroom. He then found a piece of paper and made a plane. The night was cool and breezy as he let the plane fly. A gust took it in a breathtaking swoop sending it gliding off sharply to the left, into a property, Ducha climbed over the wall to retrieve it.

At the Curvello where people wait for the tram or bonde there was a man who some how began making very authentic animal sounds. We gathered around him amazed and laughing a lot. The tram lines became the focus. Some one took pieces of discarded cardboard, placed them on the rails and pushed them along with their feet. Lots of people tried this dry skiing. Then balls were rolled along the rails, the game interrupted once in a while as trams or buses went past at high speed. We speculated about what would happen if you put a 5 centavo piece on the track. Then we were picking up newspaper lying on the ground, holding it above our heads and running fast downhill till we let it fly off behind us. Mitchel found an abandoned umbrella, climbed up some steps at the base of a ladeira and jumped off using it as a parachute. Eva wanted to try, it was a huge drop for such a little girl. We arrived in Lapa at the Arcos where homeless people live and have fires. The light from the lamps is a special tinge of orange. We lifted Eva above our heads and carried her in procession through the crowded streets - Eva shouting 'amor!'. Luiz picks Alex up and carries him on his shoulders we all walk past surprised people shouting 'amor e liberdade!'. We arrived at bar Gomes and together sat around a table to eat and drink.

The activities from this session will go into the Rio training manual and this is the guy have commissioned to make it and make wood cut for the cover. I think he and I should write a cordel together - they are sung, so I would make a melody for it and sing it. I'm wondering how to incorporate singing into the next session. Singing under railway arches is a fave technique which would work nicely.

 Things moved pretty fast - and in a logical and consolidating way I think. I'm now making a training video taught by kids from the favela called morro do prazeres - they teach you how to dance carioca funk . It's the result of a wonderful totally physical encounter with loads of little black girls in tight lycra, who gate crashed a party I was dancing at in a record store in Lapa. I now go to visit their mums and hang out quite often. The kids are crazy for the funk, and the dancing is so explosive - and to my protestant-conditioned mind really rather wild. I'm trying to set up regular dance lessons for tourists in the sports pitch at Prazeres (the favela). The woman I know there is as sound as they come. She is the head of the community association and deals with everything people need with - light, post, water...

I'm researching the links between urban and rural behaviours at the moment, exploring behaviours that people from the 'campo' have when they arrive here in Rio and start to become 'naturalised', to  adapt and conform. I'm working with Marcia Derraik, an award-winning documentary maker from Antenna. She is very knowledgeable and also very spontaneous helping me to create and navigate situations as we film in the streets. We also work with a guy called Lucas who does most of the filming and provides us with a masculine presence which feels essential and allows us the space to work we with a seriousness that two women working alone would not be perceived as having - here where authority in public space and public life is predominently male. Filming on Monday went really well. A guy from the northeast with particular country canniness showed us all kinds of tricks for the Rio streets, e.g. there are loads of fruit trees with weird and wonderful (to me) fruit i have never seen. Walgima took some and using one of the iconic and ubiquitous little white marble cubed cobbles from the famous Rio pavements he set about cracking open the seeds and extracting delicious almonds that I'm sure not many cariocas would consider eating. This is a great example of the rich skills and knowledge gained over millennia in the countryside as a result of symbiosis with the environment that are immediately discarded on arrival in big cities to merge with the city's codes and currents and in response to the need to integrate, conform and get on with the urgent business of making a living, avoid violence and corruption. I want to know more about this need I sense people have to blend in. For example in Rio you don't get the tribes; goths, punks, fashion victims etc people dress in quite similar ways and to my unaccustomed eyes it is hard to tell who is rich and who is poor by the way they dress.

This shows one of many mind maps I've been making. I made it in Sao Paulo. It has self-containment at its centre - one of the personal precepts I'm using for this trip. I feel it's key, I've come back to it again with insights from living the last month in my body, living outdoors, close to nature and close to people in Bahia. Self-containment for me today is feeling my body, the energy of some part of it at all times, so that what's going on inside is at least as important as what is going on outside. Sometimes a resonance between inside and outside takes place, making the feeling of energy in my body stronger and indistinguishable from the energy of what or whoever i am feeling with. - e.g. the samba drums, a song or a hug. I've been participating in rodas de samba at capoeirando Mestre Suasuna's training event of capoeira in Bahia. The roda de samba (roda means circle or wheel) works like this: we crowd around the musicians - the drummers and pandeiro player and singer. When someone is moved to do so, they step or jump into the roda and a person of the opposite sex (very rarely the same sex) dances with them in their very own way using samba steps that they have probably been using ever since they could first stand up. I was surprised to see the girls and women who danced being so restrained. Unlike the famous - romanticised, sexualised - samba I had come as a tourist to consume, and as a capoerista to attempt to adopt (understanding and adopting Brazilian culture is considered by many to be an element of being a good capoerista) what i was seeing here was dignified, almost restrained. It looked very internalised to me: very self contained. Not expressive in the way i was expecting. Not transmitting sexual availability. Now I think i know why. I think it's because they are feeling the sensuality, but not projecting it. I think I was seeing girls dance for pleasure; for feeling the pleasure of their bodies move, the pleasure of feeling the rhythm, and of being watched - but not dancing to display the feelings, just dancing and feeling the feelings.

This shows the feet of the people who later converge to clap hands BAP BAP BAP and power into the night to the sound of three virtuoso atabaque players and pandeiros - "bate palmas minha gente a roda va commecer" - "clap hands my people a roda is about to start.."