Conversations and Narrative in the Dark (an open space for discourse)

Gretchen Blegen

Conversations and Narrative in the Dark (an open space for discourse)

On Saturday, February 14th, people will be invited to a space of obscurity in order to converse with one another. In a setting in which one creates discourse without direct expectations of what or how the conversation will go forth, the evening is meant to look at language in regards to happenstance. Some small acts of repetition will take place in order for the conversation to bridge a vague measurement of time, people are encouraged to come and go as they please and throughout the conversation small intervals of silence will seep through.
This project is an experiment. It is influenced by Lefebrve's Rhythmanalysis in which he writes that "the trap of the present" often relies on false representation but is inevitably stimulated by sensory experience. Repetition and movement are two of the key elements that make us follow patterns and in the frame of a conversation I would like to see what 'happenstance' arrives in a setting especially when one is forced into the void of sight - typical of theatrical or performative settings. This experiment confronts the everyday: the act of conversing has taken on a foreign meaning in the frame of our current methods of communication. To reduce and limit our familiarity through darkness is a chance to eliminate the stimuli we are normally exposed to (screens, timelines, images, etc.) and open up our manner of interacting with one another - being faceless but present in another sense.

Gretchen Blegen is a an artist and curator of dance and performance based in Berlin, Germany. Working intensively with book art (namely photography and writing) and with installed placement, her work feeds off of rhythm, language and measure looking at art as praxis. Since 2013 she belongs to the artist collective ausland based in Berlin and continues to nourish daily on experimental grounds of encountering art in a recurring rhythm-analysis.

https://gretchenblegen.xyz/