Eothen Stearn

Feminist queer artist interested in craft, memory, emotions and modalities of speech. Read more... 

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When and where are we all body?

July 28, 2018

When and where are we all body?

SCRIPT: WE begin with entering a square A square, That used to be a rectangle….. You PUSH your BODY into it Cutting through the liquid. It is warm. A warm square, That now surrounds you There are others inside who you don’t know. You are not bothered. YOU ARE ANNONYMOUS Alone, but amongst others Going Up and Going Down the side of the square. In a line, a lap The others and yourself create ripples and movements And you all have GLISTENING skin. You feel WEIGHTLESS, Timeless, Limitless, Looking up at the ceiling, Moving in a line. BE WITHIN this translucent — inorganic liquid Here we float, Inside of the square The bodies around you are of different builds And of varying skin tones Covered bodies, Revealed bodies, Exposed bodies Pot bellies Squat bodies E-elongated muscular bodies Ripped bodies, Large bodies, Soft bodies Bony bodies Rotating around Those with hidden cleavage Those with nipples on show Going up and back on themselves. Belly buttons Freckles and moles Naked bodies, Bodies wrapped in towels Old bodies young bodies Those with implants And they see each other They move at a different pace Passing one another Creating syncopated rhythms. Figure hugging, Loose, Respectful Modest Religious Some have excess gold chain mail Watches, rings, bands, People with inked bodies Each of their spoken languages disappear into the liquid There are drains And the smell of chlorine There is light falling in golden strands The floor is visible through the liquid Displaying a movable image Try to think about How much liquid IS IN THIS MASS? What is its VOLUME? Why is it always moving? The bodies flow pushing it around Meditating pushing forwards And GOING BACK on themselves? Try to visualized many people are currently inside? We are all wet There is bad art on the walls of things relating to water Of a whale, Of a seahorse And of a boy Along with an out-of- place image of a spider in a frame Spider in the mirror Hayfeaver [LAUNDRETTE] [SPEAK FAST] The dog The dog lead The lead in a hand The dog connected to the lead The tiles they stand on A sense of perspective Graying hair- Frizzy hair- No hair Flip flops on the tiles with toes that have a lot of hair Cylinders One broken wrist Garden furniture inside Tiles that resemble bricks A piece of clothing hangs out of the machine Warmth coming off the machine Boredom Something to do I go nothing to do but I gotta do my Daily ritual A laminated “No smoking sign” A kettle Cups of half drunken tea with scum forming on the tops Rings on the table Puddles of particle-laden liquid left after it evaporates Residue A radio on the table with LILYS, WHITE LILYS That are being inspected by the women with the dog. Lines and circles Bodies and heads Criss-cross pockets Slots and numbers Spider on a mirror, Hayfeaver It is raining outside and the women with the dog is damp. The dog is starting to understand how humans talk And is trying to work out how they broke their wrist? How? Punched the wall in fury last Friday POW! Through the layer of plasterboard Cheap ass walls with little insulation There is a sign on the wall that talks about Prozac and cleaning Strange….. In the room, next-door someone is masturbating in the middle of the day The person with the broken wrist is un-employed at the moment and the last time in the job center were told that “they might be unemployable”. They remember thinking about how increasingly difficult they make it to claim benefits and How the interior of job centers make you feel instantly depressed I heard they called a pub, “The job center” That is the most depressing idea People with a job can go and drink processo at the Job Centre. Grosse. But back to the women…and the dog She is a widow with a PACEMAKER and……a dog The guy that looks a bit shifty back-left Standing at the dryer is a drag Queen Thursday-Sunday but for the rest of the week hides in the anonymity of a regular guy He gets shy When he has to wash his wardrobe ignoring the Hand wash only label of his sequined dress The beat-up radio is playing a station called “Gold”. Each song is sandwiched with an advert. The person with the broken wrist is the only one that wears a watch, although they of all the three in the room have the most free time. They feed the last remaining fish food to the goldfish. There is lint and hair in the crevices of the tiles and Dropped ocher-color- flakes of pollen on the table around the flowers that claimed when brought To last for 7 days along with the opening hours. Certain visitors have the same usage patterns of the space The same carcadial rhythms There is a sudden sent of the perfumes which smells like old spice Who’s driving the bus? Who’s flying the areoplane? What did they eat for breakfast? What shoe size are they? What emotional heartbreak have they suffered? Have they experienced a loss? Do they think about this death every day? When did they last get pins and needles? Have a blood test? Come next to another? Watch the sun set? Wash their glossy hair? Get a blow job? Cook rice? Have a nose bleed?Fulfill a dream? You’ve all got no idea about me. No idea Crow’s feet around your eyes [CLUB] I need to see you ID You enter to Cheap aftershave mixed in with cigarette smoked clothes. An audaciously camp bar tender Tells you to QUE UP FIX UP STAND UP WAKE UP and WHAT DO YOU WANT TONIGHT? Bodies under colored light? You witness an angry keyboardist And a drummer gluing it together And a woman hitting her guitar with a drum stick With an arch of pedals at her feet…. When and where are we all body? When and where are we all body? What are our daily rituals? And where do they take place? What quantifies one? A ritual? I mean. A repetition, a recurrence? A tick, A thread? A commitment? A language? A Practice? When and where are we all body? Everyone had idiosyncrasies Coping mechanisms to the world What about practical desires? And our needs? In sex, in the supermarket, in the launderette? Blood is thicker than water, but we are always searching for the nearest bar What does it mean to wash our clothes next another’s? To share physical space? In a Hamman? In a pool or a pool hall? When swimming? Sweating next to another’s body? Floating near others Where we experience a communal wetness? Is it perhaps a state of mind? Or collective anger even? Or in dormant languages that co-exist and can be stored inside of a body? The exercising of a collective state of mind? Maybe even in learning? Absorbing in the same frame of time? Or is it in belief? In a mosque or a church? A choir that sings together A group that prays for the same thing A collective imagined space Maybe even at feyenoord stadium? In between bodies. And what about communal banality? Like standing in the post office or sitting under a tree When there are other people underneath other trees Is it a matter of releasing chemicals? Endorphins? Dancing in a club, When anomalistic tendencies seep out of our bodies As they move to a beat? Or the opposite perhaps? A reoccurring collectively shared haunted Mental or physical space? Collective trauma even? Are we connected yet alone? Through experience and through our own individuality? What does it mean to be solitary? Can you think of some spaces where you consider yourselves to be “all body?” And placer them from your imagination into this room But honestly…. What does it mean to be alone? Truly alone? What constitutes aloneness? Not speak to anyone for A day A week A month A year? How is this affected with age? And with a state of mental health? Some people deliberately push others away.. Are we with another if we have a god? A dog? A companion? Is a daily co-existence important? We die alone A mindless society pushes us to search for one mate And brands us incomplete without Polyamory is dis-encouraged and frowned upon Questions around jealousy Are we expected to become more alone over time? People are edited In and out of our lives Our urban tribes Sprawling agr-i- cultural realities Expand and decrease In numbers, positions, And alignment to politics Deserted villages And Overpopulated epicentres. Who would you say truly knows ou? And what to you defines A sing-u- lar EN-TITY AND plu-ral- i-ty (plurality) What to you can be defined as an exchange? One thing that can be received by another? A transference of energy from A to BE Lightly we all talk to ourselves But now I’m talking to YOU I really want to collectively think about what it means to be alone? And what it means To be together? Are WE a WE? And within this We Who are they? Collectively we breed inclusion and exclusion What does it mean to bare witness? And be witnessed by another? Our collective memory is taking shape You can now leave the square. (All words and sound, written and performed by artist, (me).)