ghostly presence of light on stage
“When we are walking we are constantly aware of all those things happening in the periphery of our vision” wrote Franscis Alys. I'm rewriting these words while staring at a bamboo forest. The more my eyes focus on the individual detail, like a single tree for instance, the more everything around blends out of focus into a blurry mesh. Still my senses perceive this blurry mesh as more than just noise, visual noise in the background. I distinctly perceive the sun shining through the trees, while the wind gently bounces the trunks back and forth. I experience the constant motion of the trees, and I experience a play of lights and shadows in a similar constant motion. This is a much harder to define, intangible, yet definitely present presence. While I understand the physical reason for what I experience there, in the periphery of my vision, my mind transforms these moving images into the feeling of not being alone. I feel the presence of something or someone. What has been background until now becomes foreground as I centre my attention on it.
Such feelings I often encounter in moments of daydreaming, of reverie, when my mind is wandering off, focusing, staring at a single person, a face, an object or action. Like the body of a moving dancer. Or multiple moving bodies of multiple dancers moving on the stage of a theatre like the trunks of the bamboo trees move within the forest they create together. What I perceive as the forest, is at first glance the culmination of trees, but really is a complexer ensemble of everything I perceive at this moment in time. The soft sensation of moss on the ground, the moisture on the skin and the sunlight shining through the tree-trunks.The presences of those additional elements are maybe easy to define as soulless entities. A decorating ambience. Much harder to be seen as some kind of actors that co-shape my experience of this very moment. Still they act. They are an active part of what I perceive. Their bodies might be abstract. Maybe the closest I could compare them to would be the perception of a ghost.
The Idea of a ghost is a wicked concept. My ghosts are not yours and your ghosts are not mine. I would not be here, now [in my now], writing these words without them and you would not be here, [in your here], reading these words without yours. While those ghosts of mine are in both your and my past, your ghosts that make you read this might be in the future from my now. Still since I think of you right now, your ghosts influence my thinking.
This is one way of describing a ghost. An experience, an idea of something in a future, maybe a memory from a past. Both influence my behavior [now], or how I experience my surroundings. Oftentimes these memories get amplified by the spaces where I perceive them. Like the bamboo forest close to my house, where the trunks move gently in the wind, or on the stage of a theatre where my mind allows itself an openness to what might happen in front of me. Where I perceive not just what is in front of me, but what is happening all around me and all around the centre of my attention. There are ghosts that I can actually see, or hear, feel, perceive with all of my senses. Like the sunlight that moves through the bamboo trees. That is moved by the bamboo trees. That is there, as a perceivable presence. This presence of the light seems to have a consciousness. It is a presence that is active. A presence that seems to be aware of its presence through its movements. Movements that are not random but have a direction. An origine and a destination. In some way they seem to have a purpose. A purpose, that here in the bamboo forest might not be that obvious at first glance, but still feels genuine. In this presence I experience the light as something bodily.
“we never hear the wind in itself, only the wind in the door, the wind in the trees” [1]
My rational mind knows that I perceive the light as a volume because of the dust in the air. Because of tiny particles that reflect the light into a myriad of directions, creating the impression of a tangible volume. What I perceive are shadows that are moving because the objects creating these shadows are moving. Objects like the trunks of the trees or clouds in the sky on a sunny day. I perceive the difference of shades of light and darkness in front of one another due to the perspective from where I watch. Yet it is exactly those physical phenomena that trick my mind into believing that there is something more around me. Something alive that moves around me. Something conscious, something with a will, something with an agenda.
Ghosts are fascinating, as they remind me of something I know or have known while at the same time represent something else, something unknown. This can become somewhat uncanny. The more a presence resembles, reminds me on something I know, the more its presences become “strangely familiar and familiarly strange” [2]
When I see the abstract movement of light next to the abstract movement of a dancer, the familiarity of both their movements can bring me towards this “uncanny valley”[3]. An experience similar to encountering a robot. The more his appearance resembles a human shape the more it provides me with a certain friction.
For sure there is an element of aliveness to a ghost. Ghosts are not just there. They appear, they vanish and they reappear. All the while they are not fully graspable. Light, especially on stages, shares similar fascinating properties with ghosts. Light is there and it is not. It is only visible through a host. Like the body of a performer or the floor of a stage, or at least the dust in the air. As an audience I become aware of light when I start to feel its presence, like if someone is staring at me from across the room, trying to provoke a reaction. I become aware of light when it is changing. When it is moving from one state to another, or from one place to another. When its movement becomes a constant factor of the atmosphere in the room. I become aware of the light when it is interacting. With me as an audience, or with other performers on stage. When an action of either one provokes a reaction.
Following this line of thought one can think [of] light on stage as circumstance and one can think [of] light as an actor. In the sense of someone that acts, that does. Light too, can address its audience. Can communicate with them, not with words but with its presence and through the abstraction in its movement. Just like dance does. Only with a different kind of bodily presence.
“Danser, c’est donc s’adresser. Le travail de la danse est de provoquer un déplacement de la pensée chez le spectateur, d’offrir un horizon” [4]
[“Dancing, thus is to address. The aim of dance is to provoke a shift in the thinking of the audience, to offer a horizon.” translated by me]
How much body is needed to be a performer? Can we separate the human body of the performer from his ‘esprit’, his spirit? Again words from the same pool of names we give to ghosts. How does the presence of this human body change how we look at the consciousness performing? Can we see the human body merely as a tool, an extension, an incarnation, as the host of a ghost. How much does this presence of the human body then differ from another presence, the presence of a body of light?
A great many questions that ultimately lead to the question: Where is the performance happening? Is it happening in the physical bodies of performers on stage [of the human and non-human kind] or in the space between all performers and the audience. Where is this exchange of ideas between you reading this text and me writing it happening? Isn’t the real magic happening in the space inbetween your reading eyes and the ink soaked into the paper in front of you. Isn’t it somewhere in the space inbetween where both our ghosts meet. On the stage there is the same kind of space. The Space between the audience and those on stage…a space inhibited by the light.
references
1 Heidegger, Origin 15-86 - cited from Morton - Hyperobjects, p86
2 hyperobjects - Morten p130
3 hyperobjects - Morten p130
4 ex-corpo - Volmir Cordero, p41
/jan fedinger 2022