On 17th we broadened the open enquiry into understandings of attention by engaging the public on the streets of Berlin. Just south of Tempelhof is Silbersteinstraße, a long cut through between the Berlin’s ring-road (the 100) and the hubbub of Hermannstraße. Silbersteinstraße’s assorted old and new apartments buildings are dotted with eclectic businesses, shops and cafes and the area is yet to be noticeably affected by Berlin’s encroaching gentrification. While the Neukölln district of Berlin is known for its Turkish immigration there are also those of many other origins. Silbersteinstraße 142 is the African Shop, it’s packed with arts and crafts and as we enter the cool of this Aladdin’s cave a stocky, middle aged man emerges from the back whose demeanour tells us he is the owner - his assured body language welcoming of potential custom in this quiet stretch of the street. We establish that he can spare a few minutes for our inquiry and, as with the previous interviewees we ask about attention. What are you paying attention to now? How are you experiencing your attention ? It’s with you, he replies, I want you to be interested in my shop. There’s a slight pause, an initial short circuiting in which we realign our different intentions. But, where is your attention situated? He points to his head – it’s here, it’s all here. He makes a direct equivalence between intelligence and attention and in so doing tells an anecdote about sheep being forced to jump over a stick and when the stick is removed those that follow continue to jump. We ask him to raise his arms to see if it alters attention? No, it doesn’t change, I’m only doing it because you tell me to. He then turns the table on us. Where are you from? Italy; the UK, London. We learn that he is a Berliner, his wife from West Africa and that he lived in London in the 1970s. Where did you live in London? In Hornsey, Woodland Gardens he says. As we discover shared experiences of the area and life in London he enjoys the memories and becomes more relaxed and animated. A barrier between us has dropped and before we leave we reflect that his attention has shifted and is more in his body. Across the street we encounter Ahmet on the pavement who responds openly to our approach, however, as we ask him about attention he remains fixated on his phone. His response to the question: Where do you place your attention? is to repeat the words ‘Yes, yes, autos, gold, rich man, rich city, Dubai, perfume…’. He shows us photos on his phone of his Ferrari Taxi. We try a different tack with the questioning in the hope of moving towards how he experiences attention. Try as we might, there remains a comedic disjunction between our enquiry into the nature of attention and Ahmet’s preoccupation with material wealth. He insistently repeats his references to money, wanting us to share in his enthusiasm. The more we ask him to consider the nature of attention the more photographs and videos he produces signifying monetary wealth. Is this really his answer? From inside the business premises another joins us in the intense heat of the street, and then another, all attempting to help by translating into Arabic or German. As confusion ensues the absurdity of the scene builds - there are now five of us attempting to clarify the word attention in Arabic, English, German and Italian, all talking over, attempting to assist. A street scene develops. There is congenial curiosity, amusement, misunderstanding and these men from the shop are mobile, simultaneously going about their everyday business. The discombobulation of this encounter is disorientating, there is a sense that we could be in another part of the world– perhaps North Africa, or is it Malaysia, where are we? ‘I like any people’ says Ahmet. He shows a photograph of a falcon, ‘How much you think? Fifty three million dollars’. In the melee of coming and going and the heat, all revolving around the question of attention in several languages, the development of a single idea is lost yet serious concerns are present. How do you pay attention? With my brain, to Allah, Ahmet looks up and smiles. Meanwhile the boss tells us he is paying attention to going to the mosque. Ahmet says ‘People with a good heart I like, yes, I like any people.’ There’s a patient forcefulness with which all attempt to help, a concern to get this thing done and the boss decides that attention is the same as achtung. All the while there is another man in the group, wearing a taqiyah, prayer hat, whose presence quietly mediates in the confusion. Vocally he’s least apparent yet most present in his understanding of what is happening in the chaotic group exchange. He mediates between us through kind smiles, listening, and as he helps in trying to unravel the misunderstandings he calms things. It’s time for everyone to move on and as a parting gesture Ahmet sprays our arms with perfume. In this group exchange our attention is consumed in trying to embrace the totality of what is happening in our cosmopolitan exchange, on this street, with traffic noise, in the intense heat of the day, our conversing an accompaniment to the coming and goings of the business and passers-by. Attention is contextualised by concerns. This group encounter has also comedically pointed out the problems of language and semantics. The question of attention receives very different responses as these encounters show. This assemblage is a meta representation for our enquiry into the nature of attention: attention goes where it will, in unexpected places, is situated, and the substance of what occurs in each of the exchanges in our search for the nature of attention takes us to unpredictable and unknown places.
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The time of pandemic and restrictions has required us to rethink assumptions about the very idea of performance. What is this thing we call performance? How does meaningful performance apply to the concerns of now? Can a more environmentally relevant dance be developed? One that is more socially intelligent, more capable of embracing audiences? By questioning how we pay attention at the point of performance, how alive we are to what is actually happening in that moment, we’re rethinking assumptions about how the audience is understood and viewed. This more phenomenological understanding of attention becomes inclusive of audiences, and more experimental forms of engagement need to be explored. The Space project extends the creative process to the involvement of the public, ‘non-dancers’, through experiential sessions in which questions of attention and space are explored by means of embodied work. In tandem, we also turn our attention to the public through additional means of open inquiry.
On the 10th June, a very warm day, Barbara Berti and Simon Rose set off on foot across Berlin’s Templehof, the World War II ex-airfield now an immense, beautiful open space, designated as a park: a haven for wildlife, Berliners and visitors. The aim to spontaneously select individuals and explore: What does attention mean to you? How do you experience attention? The encounter was designed as open to the spectrum of responses and we sought diverse participants. Of course, respondents needed to be available and able to spare the five minutes required for the brief exchange and we’d chosen Tempelhof as it’s commonly used for leisurely activities, as a place to relax.
We approach a man in his thirties. Lying sideways on a rug under the shade, he’d seemed a likely participant but it becomes apparent that he is deeply engaged in studying cardiology, in becoming a doctor. His purpose not relaxation, he was already deeply paying attention to his studies and somewhat bewildered about the purpose and relevance of our questions. However, his decisions regarding attention, space and embodiment offered a source of reflection. With the challenge of learning cardiology he had chosen a prone position in order to give his full attention in the vastness of the tranquil space. While he nonchalantly describes the choice of space as ‘just comfy’ it nevertheless illustrates the ways we find ways to free our bodies and our mind in order to best pay attention in ways that may not necessarily be that conscious.
Our second encounter, with a woman in her thirties, presented a direct connection between attention, the sensorial and the body. With bare shoulders and total-block protection beneath an intense sun she balanced carefully on roller skates and reported how her attention was in the enjoyment of the sun on her skin. These brief encounters presented connections between the body and attention in ways that had not been predicted, providing novel ideas that can inform and assist the manner in which we engage audiences. Deepening audiences’ awareness of attention, as a theme in itself, assumptions about how we ‘place’ audiences could be re-thought. How would it be if audiences were invited to recline on the grass beneath a tree’s shade? Orto experience a performance while they roller skate on a beautiful, warm day, with the sun on their skin? Or, invited to recline on floor cushions in order to best give their attention in the course of a performance that asks those in attendance to investigate their experience of attention? Could this enable the deepening of a more experiential, participatory audience experience of attention and states?
In a forthright manner, our third encounter, a young skateboarding woman, immediately reported the experience of attention as embodied. Perhaps because she was at Tempelhof to engage in her clearly dedicated practice of skateboarding. She tied her experience of attention to temporality – how her attention is dependent upon an ever changing ‘now’, not in a static state. She spoke of her body as a guide for attention with the mind. She described how opening her arms and reaching upwards changed her attention– as she realised there was more to pay attention to ‘here, and here’.
The fourth encounter, with a Spanish flamenco guitarist who was learning German on headphones, also immediately situated attention as temporal. He reflected the musician’s act of playing an instrument, the need for presence in the moment of performance. The experience of ‘now’ as embodied. He made a correspondence between the embodied presence of the raised arms and being in the present where she assigned the future to the head.
The fifth encounter was accompanying his young son and responded by saying that his attention was very wide and when pressed told us that his attention was in ‘taking care’ of his son. He objected to the suggestion that he raise arms in the air (in order to discuss how attention may become altered through this additional embodied aspect – something we did with all participants). However, he offered two poetic images of attention: ‘I pay attention to you, so we flow together’. As a theme of performance and attention this idea of shared attention, ‘flow together’, or attention created together can be fundamentally rich – and contribute to ways of thinking about where attention lies in group interaction – the social purpose of attention. And when asked how he experienced attention he responded ‘as a breeze … you feel it but you cannot see it’. ‘The breeze’ resonates with the previous participants’ ideas of attention as a moving phenomenon.
In these small, initial steps of enquiry each encounter has provided fresh perspectives into the ways we are thinking about attention, these will contribute to the development of the project’s practice. For us, the discussion of attention has become familiar, while for these participants, the very idea of stopping for a moment to reflect upon what attention is was new and at times bewildering. In the process, we are also already asking participants to move into a different ‘space’, one that involves reflection, a different consideration of the body.
We will be repeating this activity in different settings, establishing further diversity in response – seeking new reflections that may bring fresh insights. While the second phase of research will involve participants in embodied activity through which questions regarding attention will be posed by means of somatic practices and some of those encountered on Tempelhof have been invited to participate in these sessions. It will be interesting to discover and compare how participants reflect on attention when engaged in more somatic practice.
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