Ana Laura Lozza

…a remainder within a remainder… that is this sheet. It is also a detour, a bifurcation, it is many fragments. It is also another survival strategy from those which allowed us to keep walking during 2020… a remainder within a remainder ... that is flat - I like this word in English because it holds so many other words that speak of this year; it is flat and plain as the ground can be, as the space of this page displayed on the screen can be. It is flat and unchanging as the financial stock market, as other commerces. Another image uploaded on the internet forever? Deflated and exhausted as a battery can be, as myself writing these words on December 25th, 2020, can be; stretched out as in the phrase "they lay flat on the floor so that the enemies would not see them", "they lay flat on the floor so that..." as I imagine many did during this year. They stretched out on the floor of the kitchen, the living room, the balcony, the sidewalk, the bathroom, the prison cell, the bedroom, or somewhere and spent hours laying as stretched out as possible. As to no be visible -for a while- by whatever was happening and have some time to think, to imagine other things, and to lose and find themselves at the same time in the sensation of the flesh, in the sensation of the body that can only fall and continues to fall while at the same time receives constant support from the ground.

…a remainder within a remainder… It seems almost like a new year’s resolution. What is left from this year? And what is left for whom? Who is left here after this year and who is no longer here? I can speak only for myself, here I am. My grandmother died. Not of COVID-19 and at the same time she did. She could not stand the isolation, she could not stand herself anymore, and out of rage and anger -and with prior warning that the world, the government and my mother were killing her-, she died. I don't know if I will miss her. I do know that many are missing and mourning their losses. And I know that this continues. But some temporal structures organize us and it seems that the arrival of the end of 2020 places a semicolon. And a small breath of fresh air.

she-who-is-there

she-who-is-there is the one who offers, offers her body, offers a surface, a form, a structure, a gesture. she offers a situation that can be for herself, in herself, for others or in relation to others. she receives another body, its warmth, its smell, and sometimes she also receives its weight. she-who-is could define the course of things, but that power is only potential. she cannot do it alone, she needs the others.

…a remainder within a remainder…. it is connected, united, or invokes remnants of other nearby projects. It stems from "The rest of dance" and is contained by "The fragility of (in)significant things" (both projects developed in collaboration with Bárbara H.). "The fragility..." is an investigation we started in 2018 where we set out to generate a space in which choreographic practice would be the way to explore questions about and around bodies and their relationship to the residual. With this project, which is still ongoing, we seek to engage bodily with the notions of remains and residues -matter, bodies, objects, stories, affects, images- under the desire to entwine new ethical and poetic relations between the visible and the invisible and between the ephemeral and what remains: from what position do we speak of something as residue? What is the effect and affect of the remains? How, where and when is what remains of a performative action perceived? "The rest of dance", on the other hand, is a choreographic project that we developed during 2020. Paradoxically, this performance explores the residual in the encounter between two or more bodies in a moment where bodies were forced to keep a minimum distance of 2 meters. We became an island and worked on the qualities of the time of the encounter and the moment of departure. We defined roles to play with each other. And somehow unexpectedly this also started to expand to the encounter with other materialities.

although she has the power of intention - which can sometimes be confused with an idea of physical autonomy - as soon as she enters into proximity with the others she begins to depend on them. she-who-enters sometimes believes in magic. she fantasizes that she can enter in ways that defy the laws of physics. sometimes it is simply a misinterpretation of the starting conditions and she approaches the others with too much intention, too much drive or force resulting in her almost immediate expulsion. sometimes magic happens and the encounter occurs in a way she could not have anticipated.

Making reference to the residual implies a political act in relation to the formulation of meaning and value we give to things: what do we include and what do we leave out in our artistic practices? Is failure a residue? Fall flat as in failing. Now I write a long and vague list of words and phrases that I gathered on papers that have been lying on the floor for several days and are already gathering dust: suspend time. wait. delay. persist. preserve. stay. keep afloat. time that seems not to pass. time that seems to be hidden. time that seems not to be enough. hope. anticipation. longing. desire. promise of satisfaction. metaphors of a material. condition of vulnerability. a mountain and a hole. something delicate and brutal. which momentum? leaving. leaving. leaving. leaving. the interpenetration of bodies. quarantining together. fragile architectures. scales. holes. looks. hands. being late in the future of the other. the inclination. a glass that falls and breaks. someone throws a glass and it breaks. where the hands rest. anticipating a future. a third space that only exists every time it is named. a vomit. an organ outside of a body.

Now, as I go through the second confinement of 2020, this research unfolds within the space-time of my home, which I will have to leave soon. To this end I am reliving the forms, modes, possibilities and desires of "The fragility..." and "The rest of dance" from the remnants of things and practices that remained and lingered around me over the last ten months. The images next to these words are themselves remnants of other images. I am involved in the task of inventing an archive of the remains of what was not, in order to think and imagine the residual as a reserve of something that can become; as a non-commodifiable possibility; as a present for a future to come... to invoke it or not in a possible next encounter.

Ana Laura Lozza