 Now I got a live stream message, so that's good. All right, guys, it's good to go now. I'm sorry about that. I'm going to. Yeah. Three, two, one, you're in. Welcome everybody back here to the mountainy seagulls theater center at the Graduate Center CUNY in New York City in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. It's a great day for us at the Seagull Center. It's the start of our spring 2023 season. And we are continuing our seagull talks that became our contribution in the time of Corona to the landscape, the field of theater and performance today I have with me two great workers in the theater it's a choreographer Michael clean, who is with us and and researcher and theater artist Corey Tamler, and both of them are with us because we produced a book together I think it's a very important book, also very beautifully done. And the book is called a permanent parliament notes on social choreography so I welcome both of you here, just a few words before we start, we are really honored to be back on hull round and we welcome everybody listening to us here on our seagull talk in the time of Corona we had over 200 talks, most probably was our film festival on theater and performance during Corona time, and how run for India the New York theater artists for Ukraine we had over 200,000 listeners and it turned out that we were the most active theater center worldwide and it's a great tradition and luckily, performances have started again they are now so many many talks, and, and we are thrilled to be again, a part of the fabric of theater that is so urgently needed, but we have to ask what to do now, it's now the new times we live in and we are developing new forms and this is something we think this conversation today is a contribution to it. Michael and Corey worked together we hosted a workshop at the Segal Center about Michael's work and, but let's first introduce both of you. Corey, where are you right now and what time is it. It's 536 in the early evening I'm in Berlin, where I've been living since the fall of 2021. And yeah spring is coming slowly, very slowly as it does in Berlin. How about you Michael. I'm sitting here in my office at Duke University North Carolina same time as New York. A little bit jet lag just came back from grace yesterday. So if I look a little bit absent mind that stare into the void stick with me. Tell us a bit about yourself not everybody knows you and your work tell us a little bit what you do. I'm a choreographer, have been sort of choreographer for the last 30 years, working with initially as a sort of independent choreographer for many years working also with ballet Frankfurt with William Forsyte. And moving here to Duke University as a professor for dance for the practice of dance and starting the laboratory for social choreography about two years ago now at the Keenan Institute for ethics. I'm concerned with sort of expensive choreography for many years now, and the practice of expanding both what dance and choreography could mean in society. Fantastic thank you and Corey. I am these days I would call myself a writer and performance maker. I am coming from a theater background. I moved from kind of my earlier earlier days in as a playwright and director into also kind of more expanded practices and participatory and collaboratively created work. With a collective in Maine in a long water bodies in Maine so that's been a really important kind of central ongoing collaboration the last eight years or so. And. Yep, also do some translation. And this is that's the thing I wanted to say I'm also of course in the, I knew there was something else that's why I failed off. I'm in, I'm a PhD candidate in the program and theater and performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. So I am also, I'm also a performance scholar and come kind of came to this book as as a form of kind of marrying theory and practice in writing. Yeah. Yeah, so tell us about how, how did the idea of how did it start for the book. Well, as Frank mentioned, as you mentioned Frank we had a, a, we had a session of Parliament, which is the piece of social choreography that the book engages with at the Segal Center I think it was in December 2018. Although the roots of it are a few years before that. When Michael and I met at the new museum for contemporary art, which is also in New York City. And I was doing a fellowship there in performance curation with Travis Chamberlain and Michael. The project, along with Steve, his dramaturg Steve Fock, together with the Martha Graham Company, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and other, and also bringing in some other people from from around the city. And it is, it was a participant also like a piece of well Parliament actually was part of it was a sort of a sort of deeper layer was part of this work. I didn't know that at the time I wasn't familiar with Parliament. It was part of the way in which Michael was working with the dancers who are part of Graham Company at the time and any anyway I was sort of part of that project as sort of curatorial support and production support during this fellowship. I interviewed Michael I interviewed Steve. And was was part of the sort of day long performance event itself as well and got to know their work that way. And I ended up writing about it. About a year later maybe there's a there's a short article that then was published. So we sort of started like we started that that kind of emerged out of that relationship kind of emerged out of out of that first encounter at the new museum and then we stayed in touch over the coming years and Michael came to and we're talking about how to bring how to make Parliament happen in New York. That didn't totally answer your I can keep. It's the beginning of our relationship and the very very beginnings of sort of writing with some of Michael's work but is not about then the book itself, how the book itself started. So that is an important project it in a way falls and into that category of socially engaged art, or it is called this term social choreography which is very important and we will talk about it later it's something that happens in these spaces between the group and the black box something also clear Bishop writes and cares so much about Michael, someone who has never seen Parliament who doesn't really know this kind of radical notion, how you reinvented what choreography is about what a dance is about. Tell us a bit what it is. What it is, is like an artificial or a sensory deprivation chamber for humans to stick to come together, and over the course of a number of hours usually it's four to six hours sometimes it's a bit shorter. Without any furniture in the space without any kind of sound you know music as such or sound without you don't have your devices on you you don't have anything to play with an object as such other than your clothes. And you spent without language for hours let's say just observing yourself observing the other. And then there's very simple kind of propositions that are shared within the very beginning of it that lasts about 1015 minutes how to think about the situation how to kind of expand the situation and how to negotiate relationships outside of social code so you don't use any of the established really negotiation outside of language over four hours you can do whatever you want it's not participatory in a traditional way you're not being forced by anybody to participate but everybody's in it there's no out that's one it's one space. Even if you sleep through the four hours you're in it and you're going to affect others so it's a space where you really become aware that you know of affecting and being affected the entire time of this recursive relationship we're in the social. Yeah, so just to make it even clear for our audience traditionally in theater spaces you buy a ticket you sit in your seat and you see what master artists are doing with a master director choreographer did in the parliament idea is a big space and empty space everybody comes in sites, some as it happened at the season also Martha Graham dancers with door and like Michael's work so they're people are all together in a space over a period of time. Start, at least that's what happened with us flying back on their backs, but you have a couple of rules or you give a couple of not rules you give a couple of suggestions, what to do, tell us a bit about it. I don't necessarily share them out I mean I think they're in the book as well. But it's they're very simple they're sort of so so simple that it took a long time to come up with such simple rules that create such a complex field at the end when you when you run it. And mainly about observing yourself observing the other lies it stand move as a thought body like do not kind of try to distinguish, you know, a body that things or a thinker that moves, try to just keep in movement, while you're thinking. A few others like do not be creative do not have ideas, and that that throws a lot of people off this notion of there's no need here to to feel like need to do anything to be anything. Things will unfold the more you're just attuned with your senses. The more things will unfold by themselves. The instructions are in the book but that was that was, they are and they aren't that was also a discussion for us in in putting the book together should, how much should these this set of instructions be in in the book. And you could sit there and sort of transcribe the 10 or 20 minutes that it takes to deliver these instructions. And this, of course we didn't do. And so, so the book sort of has one version, because Michael always draws does this kind of big drawing, along with the score sort of draws it out on the floor. And so this exists as ephemera from each one of the versions of parliament so we have a, we have the image of that drawing of the instructions from from the seagull that's reproduced in the room. And then, and then we talk about what the instructions were but without trying to reproduce them in a way where you would then think I can I can just take these and do it. Tell us a bit Corey how you participated. How, how was it for you again for the audience you come in a room if you participate let's say the armory in New York would do it maybe 100 or 200 people would be let in they would be lying I guess in the beginning on the floor and they would do it themselves. And the humans next to him and the space over a very long time is a radical in his approach the choreographer removes himself he's not even in the room it's an absence, actually of an author of a of the director of a game, a game leader. So but how was it for you as a person tell us a little bit what happened for you when you did it the first time. So I've only done it once. And we do what the version that I participated in was at kind of the lower limit of the amount of time that it really makes sense to do Parliament. I think it was just three it was three hours. And that was that was the time that we had. And in those situations. So Michael was not part of it. He did totally leave the room, which is not to say that he doesn't ever participate. I can also talk about that but in this case it was he what he said to me was, it doesn't make sense for me to be part of it because then there will be, there will be an author because you have those that beginning that the beginning of that what Parliament is what the effect is that it has on you this that takes this kind of this void and this confusion and you, you're sort of lost in this set of instructions that are too big to. This is now was my experience of it that I that the set of instructions seemed at first really too big for me to hold it in my head. And so you feel lost for at least the first 45 minutes or so. Someone who you then knew was the choreographer, or the person who had created this work were to then be in the room and those in that first bit of confusion, you would be drawn to that person to sort of automatically the way that we look for leadership in situations where we're confused that person would then, whether they wanted to or not become the author of the piece. And so without without having that person there, then my experience of it as much as I can. You know, remember thinking, sort of projecting myself back was this state of initial sort of emptiness and the sort of emptiness of the possibility of the space but because of. I felt I was able to feel quite secure in it and sort of wait for, for what was going to emerge. So, and then, and then something emerged. The book kind of tries to describe some sense of what that is but it's really the sense of something emerging that you can't, you also can't hold on to when you're not in Parliament anymore like my my experience of the whole event was also something kind of mind blowing essentially that that leaves you with an experience afterwards. But that's that a sort of feeling a sort of like embodied feeling afterwards like leaving a sauna and being just being in this kind of warm glow for the next hour or two. The moment sort of had an afterglow for the next week or two that then that then dissipates slowly and you can't remember anymore quite what it was or you can't, you maybe you can remember it but you can't access it. No, it's quite, it was quite amazing experience and this you talk in the book about the kind of social nakedness that we are just there as a person in a space but some magic happens between people in Parliament is one of the quotes. So, tell us a little bit, what is the philosophy behind social choreography as I see it like the great man Ray the American artist who started out as a brilliant landscape painter fantastic one but he said I can no longer work this way and moved them into photography installations collages abstract paintings because he felt it's a truer expression of the time he lived in my what is the philosophy why did you stop you work with foresight where you know has the dances on the stage, a brilliant a master a great master of the 20th century. And you made that jump why why do you do it what is the philosophy. I think I mean I've been sort of concerned with this kind of expansion of choreography looking, even when I was very young in my when I was 19 or 20 and studying in London was concerned with this notion of everything moves everything has sort of some sort of patterns and proportionalities of patterns amongst it and I saw movement everywhere didn't necessarily contain two bodies or human bodies or the human experience. So it's always curious about this even though I was kind of trained and then sort of I guess the career path takes you into dance theater and experimental dance avant garde than I did contemporary ballets and all kinds of work before expanding into more visual arts work. But I think at the core of it is that the realization that I was society is already choreographed to such a high degree that usually is at the unconscious level like we're just because we come in with a base reality of the patterning of being patterned as a as a human through, you know, being baked within the system. But once you see that either through deconstruction or through other kind of just, you know, thorough observation you notice that everything is patterned and everything has a sort of and made up to some degree or most of it in our social sphere is sort of made up and entrenched and then becomes sort of reality for us. So this choreography of, and these things change I mean the older you get you notice how things actually changed in society as well, even though those those concepts that you thought were solid actually totally fluid. And I was always interested in in choreography that that sort of plays on dairy does saying that politics is setting people in artificial relations. And I thought, well, that's what choreographers do all the time just in front of a mirror and that didn't make sense to me this kind of frivolous politics, or propaganda really because most of the time, choreographers are just reproducing the order of the state to some degree or the dominant orders. So I was interested in, in this, how can we access the social ordering, the unconscious and interfere with it or kind of meet, meet each other there. Like, like, see, is there a way to, to, to immerse ourselves in this, where the where part of the creation is still fluid, rather than sort of, and I'm using moussills word there, the Frisica Chopfons can is still kind of a yeah, it's still sort of a what humans are volcanic volcanic or like there's still a magma of social relations. And to get there you have to kind of abandon a lot of the social conventions and norms and and almost create a void. And that's what parliament is parliament is really avoid that opens up time and space you lose time you lose space by being there. And then things start patterning again between people but they are they're patterned around some, what I can only describe or as a mammalian sensibility like some other sensibility takes over it's very real it's very dare you feel very sane. Like it doesn't feel like you're playing it doesn't feel like you're just crazy or, or doing weird things you just feel like you're doing these things you really want to do. But the brutal thing of parliament I feel like is, once you do all that and you feel actually really good. Yeah, it's over. And you faced with this very cold wind of civilization again. And you can feel it differently these winds that before you have blank that you have sort of live learn to live and parliament also kind of creates a shock to the system because he can feel those winds again I think. And I am especially I'm interested in it and I think it's so important because it's a political work in its simplicity in its radical simplicity audience members are in the center. The performers the actors I know you mentioned you know bright educational place in this beautiful collection actually of books you suggest that people should engage with. So but the idea is to act to observe as you say to ponder the sediments as something happens in it. And you wrote in the books a system we live in is so powerful and all encompassing that thinking outside it seems impossible. The idea of imagination without training only produces old solution so that your idea really is with this parliament to create a space where we connect in a new way. How does social choreography the word choreography come in it I know you encourage people maybe to follow also movements or invent do movements. So why is it choreography how I would you define that, even the word social choreography. I mean for me that that is really the basis of that there is already all these you know movements, they're already occurring they're already like we already so deeply structured. When I come into a classroom, even in the studio, everybody goes straight into a circle the distance of me to my students is twice as much as the distance between the individual students simply because I've got authority. And all these invisible constructs that space and timers and, and kind of a great the certain kind of hierarchies in spaces. And, and so that this this is already at play. And if we, if we are not careful we're just replicating that on on stage or wherever we put our own creations, whether it's a it's a educational system or it's a stage for me that's all kind of one thing. All these patterns replicated everywhere. And, and so taking this choreography as the as the that is already in place as the actual surface of one's own investigation of one's own intervention that's really what social choreography is and then see where you grow if you if you create a certain kind of otherness or inject otherness into into these social fabrics into these matrixes. I mean it's stunning. And maybe also a question for for Corey, you quote James Hillman, the great psychoanalyst who denounced psychotherapy. He said psychotherapy is actually teaching people to cope with a deeply broken system to just, you know, get along with it and make way and find it. And then he's felt it's wrong. Do you feel, Corey, that, you know, the choreography we see let's say the New York City Ballet of the companies that come and visit, did they get it wrong is that teaching people to just cope with the system we live in, and they are not really asking them to be part of a change a change they want to see. And I think it's, it's, it's also a Brechtian idea. Yeah, we already you already briefly mentioned the Lea Stukke. That's what what I think of when you ask that question is is Brecht's criticism of criticism of the notion of catharsis in in the theater in performance. That's the idea that you should that you should that art. What art should do is kind of create this, this place for us as audience members to come experience a cathartic moment. And we have to interact with the characters or cry with the characters on stage and and say, oh, isn't, isn't that so true life is so life is so tragic there's nothing we can do about it let's all have a good cry and then, and the emotions are released and we go home and we don't do anything about it that's Brecht's argument to. That's also sort of a model that that's a model of theater as coping mechanism. I think we have lots of models of the arts, potentially as coping mechanisms, or which which also can be ways of understanding kind of our, our, our built reality or understanding civilization or understanding our social reality as it is now reflecting that back to us. And then we can kind of recognize ourselves in the mirror, not our heads, have that sort of satisfaction of recognition and then go about our lives feeling recognized and that's not what that social choreography really tries to unsettle that parliament tries to unsettle that there are other art forms that also consciously tried to unsettle that or other approaches to our thinking that tried to unsettle that but yeah I'm absolutely in in that camp that that it's coping is not really what we need if we cope we don't, we don't change anything. Or we have to walk up we certainly have to walk a tightrope between coping enough that we don't totally fall apart and become useless to ourselves and one another. But, but we also have to find ways then to to not just brush everything under the rug. And Michael we we have that time of Corona behind us and we talked here a lot about it and has that influenced you has it reinforced it we have new questions new. Did it change you. Well, obviously it was difficult in some ways because this is all based around which I haven't which we haven't mentioned yet touch. A lot of it is touch in Parliament that is negotiated touch that doesn't arise from just a kind of coded handshake or that and it's extremely hard to actually touch other human beings without codes but it's also easier than we think. So it's a kind of an interesting state that one has to be in and Corona kind of eradicate that. The top of is the old parliaments I mean just to think of a few hundred people together in a space breathing and touching is not it wasn't a great idea for that time. So, we went on and, and part of it. I felt like in Parliament it's, it's, it's like the basis of my work that is now happening is sort of everything builds on parliaments I did the next work so I just decided to create a trilogy out of it with the next work being amendment, which is called object relations and rather than just human to human also human to non human relations. And then the last work that is premiering in a few weeks here at Duke is called constitution and that is again something that is already much more constituted but there's order already present first Parliament is really no, you know, no perceivable order present it's almost just avoid of order that that makes the order than happening. So, the work has really started and I can feel it now that the Parliament is really at the core of many of my thinking and Corona is really sort of manifested the necessity for that. It was like a wait for it to be over but it was a for my own artistic kind of process it was a was very valuable in a sense of actually analyzing and sort of thinking out of it and I think the book kind of was created during that time as well. Tell us about how often has it happened where in the world and how are different reactions from the audiences. I don't know how often it has happened I mean it happened quite often I know that I mean just had one here Duke again and we have now an annual Duke Parliament at Duke University which is interesting where there's a lot of participation by Duke professors and students and the community. There's also kind of a wild fire parliament like people just do parliaments I taught in impulse in Vienna last summer and they, there was a couple of women from the Ukraine said oh we've done Parliament now for over a year or a couple of years in the Ukraine and I'm like, I never knew and they were like oh you know we're doing it all over the Ukraine. And, and I said but did you learn it and they said in Italy and I've never heard of Parliament in Italy. But so these things and then they in Italy they came from France so that there is a sort of like an underground network of people who just do it, which is great I think it's an open source it's meant to be an open source thing, but you have to have done it at least once to host one, I think. And then there's sort of the official more official parliaments that that I host or, you know, people that that I worked with host, and they are happening. They were originally commissioned by the Minaki Museum in Athens I'd ran there 10 years ago I think almost in 2014. And then a number of parliaments there was a big one here in the museum Duke University and National Museum. We've done parliaments really all over in small ways you know if they're close sometimes they're close they don't have audience. Coming through like the way we talk about it the way the book has been written out of was all close parliaments like we're just hermetically sealed, but there's also this, this variation where there's actually an audience coming through it and intermingling with the, with the people who do parliament and then being absorbed and you don't quite know who's in parliament who's not. And in a museum situation you would have 1000 people coming through parliament whereas there's just a small people you know small amount of people that actually briefed to the rules of it. And that's these are different but they're also not that different they still work pretty similar. Strangely enough. You mentioned Greece you also just came back how important was Greece you also talk about the rooftops or the outside events that how important was that. And is that connected to that democratic idea on the forms of theater we all still carry with us. Yes, but not explicitly I would say I mean it happens I moved to Greece in 2012. I moved to a Greek woman, and we moved there from Ireland. And in 2012, there was a lot of trouble a lot of protests going on in Greece and I embedded myself into the protests to sort of understand the choreography of protesting. And I thought that was thoroughly stuck the way people just had their positions and nothing really moved outside of their positions. It was a performing of a kind of pretend civil war at all times. And I felt like it needed a kind of different kind of work to engage the political process at this stage and so I was in conversation with the Minak binaki museum and they then commissioned the project parliament out of this experience of being embedded in the protests. Now, how that is often of course by living in grace and doing the first parliament even before the official opening on a rooftop on either island in grace with with locals and some performers friends, just to try it out. It's undoubtedly influenced by grace and the entire kind of quality of thought, the quality of life. Yeah. So, yeah, it is and I'm still kind of strongly connected I've strong connections to Greece. And coming back to you as a researcher. There are no photos there are no tapes of course of the happening so it only happens in that moment when people are there. How do you see it in the, you know, the history of the teachings and the performance art in theater art what what lines do you see where does that fit in. Yeah, I mean we I don't know that I have an amazing answer ready to go for that for that question. I think I'll just, I'll go in a different in a different direction that you that that that where I thought you were going to maybe start asking which which has to do with. I don't know what it means to have a book about something that is kind of a stable somewhat stable object. About a work that is that is ephemeral, of course, that's also that that's also sort of ongoing and has and has this sort of secrets, not or I don't know about Michael this this network of other of other parliaments that we that nobody even knows are happening or that sort of bubble up at one point or another. And yeah for for me I was interested in pulling together something that that would or at least our our our starting place was in thinking about like what kind of what kind of writing could you even do about this kind of work that would make sense. I don't really want to write criticism. It doesn't fall within those. It doesn't it doesn't fall within kind of the standard aesthetic categories that criticism, then usually follows and evaluates. And you don't really want to write a handbook or a description, a sort of descriptive version of it because a handbook couldn't really couldn't really tell you how to do it. It would then sort of fall flat and we wanted to try to to attempt, at least in part to understand what a kind of parliament like a parliamentary experience. What kind of parliamentary experience might be possible for for someone sitting and reading a book. It became an interesting challenge to think about because parliament is explicitly nonverbal outside of language and a book the number one thing we have to work with is language. But in putting it together I tried to work with just the with with a disorientation that hopefully is that intends to be a comfortable kind of disorientation that you open this that you open this object, I have it here. And you have to you have to kind of engage with it on its own terms. You have to turn it there are there are parts there are parts that run this way there are parts that run this way so it's kind of it becomes an interactive thing from the beginning. And there are contributions from a lot of other people who have done parliament. Just generally like one or two page contributions those sort of interrupt the flow of it. There are a lot of sort of things that interrupt the flow or redirect the flow we don't start with an explanation of what parliament is we don't start in that kind of traditional way and so the book I think asks you or that's part of the intent is it asks you to kind of immerse yourself in it immerse in the experience of going through it and and shed some of your expectations about readership about scholarship about authorship and to kind of reorient yourself in within its logic. And the designer became also by the way an incredibly important part of actualizing that idea raffle kosakosky. Yeah, there was a like I there they're basically like, at some point what I had put together what were five different types of texts. And, and I not being a designer couldn't really imagine I knew that these these five different different types of texts, one of which was kind of the theoretical sort of theoretical descriptive core of the book. Another which was excerpts from a from several long interviews or long conversations that Michael and I had. And another which is the contributions from from people have participated in parliament. Another which is the framework of ideas that's kind of an annotated bibliography that's at the end, and then some, some, some visual contributions also from from people and things from Michael's archive there's a lot of sort of different pieces, and raffle figured out how to then translate that into into an object that you that you kind of had to move through physically. And yeah, can I just say, I think the book, what it does so brilliantly is is that it's not a book hasn't turned out as a book as a boutness, you know it's not about parliament as such it's about the departure from parliament and the into the world like what, what, how does that possibly translate into our into our world or how could it, like what kind of philosophies or what kind of thoughts does it trigger off. And sort of, it's an extension of how we, I remember Steve Falker is a dramaturg I work with a lot. Very closely, when we, for a while when we did after show talks, you know, like we did or after performance talks when we did for example choreography for blackboards in New York, 10 years ago, 12 years ago. There was this, we consciously decided we don't want to make we want to have the experience of the work, and then talk about real things. Like with everybody who's in it, then we just talk about Occupy Wall Street or, you know, we choose a topic each day and we talk about that. And we don't actually talk about what happened in in, you know, in the sense of making it about making the experience drive the discussion of, of, you know, talking from the experience of that work. And so the book does sort of the similar thing I think it sort of looks at the experience and drives forward thoughts around how to meet this, you know, historical time. And, and what to do and how to how to move now, literally how to move how to create relations how to be in the world. And, and, yeah, and that's what I really enjoyed about the work about this actual, you know, the book, coming out chorus of the book, and how it, how it actually reads, which is sort of almost counterintuitive you know you think like this shouldn't read well, but it reads really well once you read it. I'm excited by that because it sort of felt like this shouldn't read well all these strands you know you're used to kind of postmodern, you know, text architecture, and you're already tired by before you pick it up. It doesn't do that. It's actually, it sinks in, gives you a sense of movement from within. No, it's, it's nice thing truly in its form and content represents the very idea of the parliament you can also you can access it from any page you can hold it from different sides it's an open form and your work in the way invited. There's a choreography someone said you know, a good typographer is actually a choreographer of text and images on the page you know that's what's graphic design typography is all about and you kind of represented that I think it's a great achievement in this. I want to talk a bit more about the idea of the absence of the author the there's these famous, you know, post structuralist or post structuralist thinking the dairy does with the author is no longer there there is no center but we so rarely see it done. And that's a great idea the French philosopher of the spectator as emancipated spectator was taken serious, not someone you teach. And that might be the big difference to bright I don't think you try to teach anything to anyone you take them serious and you say, What are your ideas, what are your movements, how do you relate to that person and a quarry mentioned in her, writing, you know, people fall in love or break up and fall in love again or whatever something really happens in that space in that time. So, Michael you also mentioned that Japanese, if I said right there the absence of the master artist, but the participants will leave you would go one of our listeners would go to that parliament you are inside you are in that room it's about you. Tell us a little bit about the idea why do you think that is more important, so let's see a beautiful calligraphy done by a foresight, a phabra, a balance sheet, whatever what why. Well, I mean, I don't want to sort of criticize, you know, foresight or somebody who's like a diameter has been a diameter in my life. I think the foresight as it also experimented with these other kind of ones. So that's also important to notice the depot and Frankfurt that great place you have Steve, you know. And so, you know, for me, the stage is not the stage as such as a black box just doesn't hold up anymore. I mean, that's just a person, I don't know if it's personal but in my analytical ability, I have concluded that it is an a mental model that doesn't solve us anymore because the frame that has established it is so strong is is already an expression of a particular way of thinking that I think is deeply connected to, and we can go on to make the list from Christianity to all kinds of forming patterns that form that kind of idea that there is a black box or a void that can be filled in, you know, by some genius. So for me, that doesn't hold quite hold up, I can still enjoy it. That's, that's, you know, that's the interesting bit. I mean, I can enjoy it and sometimes I feel like I should do this again or or something like that. But the truth of the matter is I don't think that's what what I was a society needs. I don't think that's what the planet needs. I don't think I think what we need is a radical opening and changing a new sense of radical play to come up with the ideas the sensibilities to live in a, you know, in a different kind of world to construct a different kind of world for us in which we can live sustainably and I think that task is set it's obvious. If we don't want to vanish. We have to come up with different solutions I'm not obviously not the first to say that. But we have to face the answers we all know the answers we all know that these things don't hold up they haven't produced the answers they haven't produced the kind of technologies. I think the point is how do we now go and face and really kind of try to do something else. And this is a trying to do something else and it seems to to work well, in a sense of, it really does something to yourself, more than me. I think it's the parliament because it does that to myself as well. When I when I'm working in it it gives me a different kinds of sensibility of being in the world that I can carry on and carry past the event. So it's a, it's a, it's a personal cultivation of a different kind of perception. One of something that does something that really draws me to it as well it did from the beginning is that as a participatory work, it doesn't really work like most participatory work or sort of it also shows that actually participatory work is is really, really unable to let go of the idea of an author, perhaps more so in some cases than than traditional proscenium work, because a lot of a lot of performing artists who make participatory work artists from various fields to make participatory work are so afraid of creating something that gets out of control. They're they're kind of afraid of what people can do. And so there's all of this participatory work that has an incredibly tight hold on what it allows the on what it allows the audience when it allows the visitors to do as participants and it's you can sort of sense the fear of the author of this work. And Parliament does not have that fear that it's it is really handed over then to to everyone who is in that space, or or who happens to walk through that space to to make what Parliament is it sort of trusts itself and trusts people to do it, do what they need to do, and what they will do is a major museum and I'm not going to name any names but just retreated from Parliament, you know, like on the last stage of actually presenting it, because it couldn't accept that touch is regulated, and the danger of touch within a public situation that you cannot let humans kind of, you know, give them the responsibility of actually acting, and that it needs to be regulated from the top and if it can't be cannot be regulated as an artwork so it cannot be presented by public major institution. And that was the logic, even though within the, you know, at this point when we talked about it first a thousand people probably went through. I assume it's much many more people now thousands of people that walk through Parliament or experience environment, and so far there was not one complaint and of course I'm not going to what they're always psychopaths out there you cannot guard you cannot. But the fact is when people are aware, when they are attuned, and when they are attuning. So many things negotiate and touch negotiates beautifully, in fact, it's one of human superpowers and that's also coming maybe from grace, and you know developing in from grace where touches very differently kind of experienced as a in society as it would be in the US. And there is a lot of the magic of the work is that we as mammals know exactly how to touch each other. And if somebody breaks that role you will see even in Parliament you'll see the rest of the group coming into Parliament. Like it's and there's a kind of immune system at play, a civic immune system that's Jeffrey Gomer's term, a civic immune system play that automatically protects some members. And that's even that is amazing to to experience. To feel like that there's not a randomness within it it's actually quite. We are quite well organized in many levels as a as organisms. So it is an extraordinary example of a democratic of democratic art contemporary in a way democratic direct democracy art of voice idea. It's for the people by the people with the people in a way and you also trust them and you say what you discover you will discover on your own and it will stay with you as you said and, and it is true I did it and it did. I also have the idea which I like you know there should be a permanent parliament like jury duty shoot people should do it like once once a month for as a psychological sauna or whatever or political reawakening the great German time of break Karl Valentin actually tried at his time to petition the Munich mayors and said people should be forced to go to theater and should get it like a parking ticket and they don't go because he said it who would go to school if you're not forced to go to school nobody would and the same should be and should be also here for you. And Cory, did it change your work is your work now different after you participated in parliament. My work is different through and with Parliament and through and with this longer term. It's a whole relationship with social choreography and coming coming to be aware of of social choreography. So it's, it's more than it's more than this one session participating in Parliament but that is a huge part of it of course because there is a level on which this you you don't you. You can understand it simply by talking about it you can sort of describe the effect in a way but or and you can describe the intentions and there is there is theory connected to it and different and theories and approaches connected to it but but having having the experience from the inside of them what that's like is a completely different thing. Or was was certainly crucial to me in also. Yeah, you know, seeing seeing what's possible there and seeing that the things that we talked about are are actually possible and a lot of the time I think. One of the things that it does is help me to return to to some kind of belief in what what in the power of in the power of the arts, I even hate how cheesy that sounds. But the problem is that the reason it sounds cheesy is because most of our attempts to to really do something. Artistically, these days are pretty cheesy or sort of stuck. And this is a Parliament is an example of not being stuck in that. So it reminds me that there are that there are things in these practices that are really worth returning to thinking with writing about trying out trying over and over. So Michael, if someone would like to participate in Parliament because I agree with both of you it doesn't fit in a book it doesn't fit in a video on a picture you can really write about you have to be experienced it which actually is a hallmark of the art where can people experience Parliament now. Well, I'm planning. Well, it's in planning a major of some some no contest, you know this close exactly what's going on but I'm working on a major exhibition like a three months exhibition of Parliament that will be running at a museum for three months nonstop. So you would have thousands of citizens going through. And that would really be the idea that the exhibition itself is Parliament entirely. And I'm hosting smaller, you know, just, we're just finishing, you know, ready to produce one and Columbia University. We kind of making smaller parliaments. And as we go along if you will find them on on our, you know, if you subscribe to our mailing list and social choreography laboratory for social choreography at Duke University, just subscribe will will notify you whenever there's one coming out that we actually oversee. And, and so there's a lot of things in the making. There's not an immediate big one coming up in the next few months I think but I'm pretty sure that's also because we're doing other projects coming out of it. Yeah, anyway, maybe you have to also come back to the Segal and do another one so stick to the permanent Parliament idea. And I think it is really worth an experience great for Duke University you know also kind of being a house of new ideas that emerged and is connected also to a university doesn't happen often enough that they also laboratories for the future and and I think this definitely coming to an end thank you again I again I encourage everybody have a look also at this truly beautiful book beautifully designed and put together and as a as a little memory machine of a parliament what it is and could be. Tell us roughly what are you working on now what are you, what are you doing maybe Corey you start a bit. Um, I am working on, I mean, I'm relatively sort of, I'm still I'm still somewhat new in Berlin, I said at the beginning I moved here in the fall of 2021 so I'm working on some research continued research around in particular work with water bodies and trying to meet. Trying to meet my watershed here in Berlin and figure out how that connects with with the watersheds that I know and work with in Wabanaki mean Michael. I'm working on numerous things through my lab. One is this work called Constitution that will premiere on the 17th of April here at Duke at the Rubenstein Art Center, and that's going to be also an immersive experience of a different kind so anybody who's around. And I'm working on a bigger production for the Athens Festival with the ensemble and in army which is an inclusive ensemble in Greece. And it's going to premiere this summer called the utopians, which is also a theater play by Robert Musi record the schwerma is like, so we, so we don't do a theater play we do a situate a site the choreographic site, but it's has some parallels going. And then we also involved in this next cultural institution research me and Corey actually with Steve folk. And others where we discuss what the next cultural institution could look like what a blueprint could look like that is not a theater and not an opera house not a museum, but actually choreography on the level of institutions and institutionalize this processes. So that's what we're involved in at the moment. Fantastic I think these are all the new ideas we really need we need to try out to save us to save the planet also, you know to give an impulse to the theater and shackler in his famous Dionysus and 69 actually also audience members. And it starts on the floor and it starts out like this but then it moves into the play which at the time was the right thing and the great thing to do, but now we we moved on and and perhaps you these three five six hours experiences you choreograph as instruction to the art and I also want to put that in. And this is an art form which is in the visual arts a bit more also known often as an instruction based on where the artist takes a step back is no longer in the center of it but puts the people in and I think this is something what we really need to pay close attention to experience ourselves. For the times we live in and the times that are coming so it's a great contribution like also a choreographic sites as a description for your new work that's fantastic so thank you both of you. Thank you Duke and from Berlin for joining us it's a beginning of our season and I think this makes a big contribution to what we are looking for the new forms of theater of performance we need for the new times we live in and that everything is different even so it's the same but everything is different and we have to represent it on the stages in the places in the parks outside and inside where we are. So our next programs thank you all for listening we're having our live opening of the single center of a brecht on brecht and Muller on Muller we collaged a works from these great thinkers of theater who also we feel have something to say for the times we live in and I hope you will stay with us thanks for howl round see and Vijay for hosting us, the great Talia Rosenthal who joined the single center helped to make this happen. Again, both of you thank you and I hope to see you both soon and also to our audience members and to see you soon come to the CD center stay in touch and let us know what you are doing what you would like to see us doing and thank you so much for your translation Michael and Corey of getting this really beautiful book done so much is being presented, and it should be documented much more visual artists which much better we also at the seat I have to learn to do it better but you put so much work and time into it is a fantastic example, exactly how it should be. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye bye.