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LIVING ROOM
with Juha Penttilä (2021)
- - - Fieldnotes, excerpts - - -

"We are all stardust. We are also household dust."
-- 20.07.2021
fieldnotes -- excerpts
I am dust
Spread over
Surfaces
Gathered
In corners
Clouds of
Hair, skin, food
Settled and
Moving
Shapeshifting
Never
Vanishing
27. June 2021
I feel the bright sun and the cold, hard wall.
The silky green hangs from my body, my body with gravity.
Cracks in my skin leak the past,
veins rise from my flesh, enter the space beyond my edge,
new blood flows from my middle-aged body.
Such a clean corner,
between floor and wall, between glass, wood and concrete.
Smudged with my cells, coated in time.
I breathe in and out with the plants.
The leaves cast their stencils of night, framing the movement of the earth.
Moving me, moving us, carried on its orbit.
And what of this orbiting being, between wall, window and light?
Cycling, recycling...
Becoming
Disappearing to (ree)merge...
“You may not believe in magic but something very strange is happening at this very moment. Your head has dissolved into thin air and I can see the rhododendrons through your stomach. It’s not that you are dead or anything dramatic like that, it is simply that you are fading away and I can’t even remember your name.”
– Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet
...in the most insignificant flaws: stains, smudges and blemishes - the whole sky is revealed.
The floor is flawed, my pelvic floor, sky.
The wind, oh. The window.
Oh, the wind through the window.
Slow transformations in the weather of this room.
Weather of this house.
Weather of my home, weather of my body.
Weathering things.
Weather-ling.
Dangling.
1.-8. July 2021
Light of the low sun
Cats just being
Observing
Embodying their being-ness.
Playful,
restful,
pleasurable.
Inhabiting a habitat.
Becoming Cat
The Fabric of Being.
9. July 2021
What is contained in this clump of dust in this room?
The floor is cold and hard against my skin, my skull.
I close my eyes and let in the distant sounds of birds, traffic, dogs barking. I could be anywhere… already. Nowhere.
The embrace of cold water, moving, floating here on my living floor, out at sea.
“Using the Ceiling” ('Using the Sky' - Deborah Hay).
The place of dance in my room.
Poetics of space and perception.
Words arise between my body and the living room.
The whole living world of this room.
Ceiling
see-ling
hear-ling, here-ling, there-ling
where-ling, whir-ling
feel-ing
be-ling
taste-ling
thoguht-ling
dark-ling
corner-ling
shadow-ling
light-ling
death-ling
All the dust that has ever been and ever will be.
“Where did I lose you, my crumpled fantasies?” -- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, p.77
12. July 2021
Celing, see-ling cont.
Sea-ling: A tiny piece of ocean floating above my body (not solid, but slow motion).
Concrete ocean, imperceptible to my naked eye, weathering in the same atmosphere we breathe together.
Light dancing between us.
Room Moon Landing
Slivers of plant-shaped night
cast by the living things
dangling between wall and sunlight
“Retreat and expansion, simplicity and magnificence.” -- Bachelard, p.85

17. July 2021
My warm-up took me halfway out the livingroom window. There I saw a dead bird that must have died from hitting the window. Peaceful living image, lying on the earth. My bones hang from their sockets, flesh draped across the tulip chair... Hanging here, hanging out. Ode to the bird who lost its life against the window pane. A transition between worlds. Living inside while death is resting outside the window. Can you see all that is moving?
19. July 2021
Death has been present this past week. Strange that the Living Room connects this. The death of Jan, the dead bird. The process is always present, a reminder that living is not a fixed state. Always transforming, trans-forming. Trans-becoming. Trans-being.
20. July 2021
Reverse blanket wrap. The turquoise monster consuming me whole. A dear partner. A close company. Companionship. Consumed. Turquoise together. Dust is released, and so is my mucus exploding through my sinuses. Sneezing. Explosions, Bursts. Dustbursts. We are all stardust.
We are also household dust.
"Turn to dust"
"The dust settles"
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust"
"Dusting cloth"
"In-dust-tree"
"Covered in dust"
"Duster"
"Dust yourself off"
"Dustpan"
"Dust collector"
Moon Landing
31. July 2021
Watery pool of light captured and contained in the round of the moon. Fallen, trans-portaled to the Living Room wall. Moon landing inside this house. Slow arc. Steadily shifting from right to left - it's the circle staying still and this house moving with the slow roll of the earth, hitching a ride like a wave around the orbit while the moon takes a rest on the Living Room wall.

Concept: Georgie Goater and Juha Penttilä
Choreography & performance: Georgie Goater
Videography & Editing: Juha Penttilä & Goater
Support: Samuel Huber, Arts Promotion Centre Finland


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