Class: Week Five

Lots covered this week. I'm expecting some of you to supplement my notes, but here's a rough outline of what we did. I'll probably post this in sections.

I began by reminding you that I'm expecting you to post material to this website at least once a week, maybe more. This site will prove to be a very useful resource when it comes to thinking through Suspect Culture's process, and the group's collective negotiation of their work, when you have to write your essay. It's in everyone's interests that everyone posts stuff to the site.

We began with a research presentation on Homesickness.

• Psychologists prefer to call it 'separation anxiety' [This is a much more inclusive term, and would also cover a mother's sense of loss when a child moves out of the family home. However, we also noted that it lacked the key reference to 'home' which seemed too important to skip]
• 35% of new university students suffer some degree of homesickness.
• 5-15% of them find it a frightening experience.
• In a few of them, it will go on to develop into depression.

There are some suggested ways of controlling homesickness:

• Take belongings with you from home
• Eat your favourite foods
• Keep good contact with friends from home
• Recognize that other people will be feeling the same as you and talk to them
• Bear in mind that you are allowed to feel homesick.

A sense of anti-climax can trigger it. [This seems like an interesting creative trigger.] One's distance from home can intensify it - if you really can't pop home, it strikes more acutely.

I asked the group where in the body they felt homesickness. Here are some of the answers:

• Heavy around the chest, heavy across here, and sometimes it reaches into my tummy.
• Something in the back of your throat.
• It's like a normal kind of sickness.
• You breathe like you're crying all the time. My friend said this and I think it is perfect. You can't take a normal breath in a new country; so what for should you cry? What for?
• It's like a headache.
• It's like that crying thing but kinda like empty.
• You don't have a place you can refer to. Our tradition is what is common to us.
• You can see it in other people because their eyes they feel tired and empty. There's a kind of sadness in their eyes.
• In my first week here I got a cold and it's not over yet and I haven't gotten a cold for three years.

What triggers homesickness?

• Looking at photographs
• Anything that refers to where I come from
• I feel it all the time
• When I ring my parents, right after you hang up.
• When people just have their parents call them on their mobile. And mail because it's expensing to send packages and stuff.
• I get really close to feeling homesick if there's a gap. On Sunday, I woke up with nothing to do and I had to think okay get busy.
• I was walking around and feeling 'aaaaah'.
• I didn't have friends I could just phone and be like 'hi!'
• I woke up with a bad dream and usually my corridor is really busy - we're very sociable - but it was completely deserted cos everyone had gone out. And I was in my corridor and I really needed a hug. I just felt really lonely.

The connection between the homesick person and home: if we could see it what would it look like?

• Don't they say (people who sees auras I mean) that it's a red line, like a ribbon, and the thicker it is the more you miss them.
• Like an umbilical cord.
• Like a chain of people holding hands -maybe I haven't understood what you mean, but that's what I think of.
• Black lines, connecting, like string.
• Like a thin piece of elastic. When I was younger I used to follow my mum around and she used to say it's like I was on a bit of elastic.
• Very white, very bright. So it's like a line that's loose but very strong. So I'm not constrained.
• A green light.
• [A bit like a retractable dog lead]
• It doesn't pull you.
• It's like a slinky, it can always go back. But yeah if you pull it too much it won't really go back, it's not going to be the same.
• Moving mentally too - I mean it can be different if you're moving only half an hour away but with a fiancé.

Do we think places have auras of the people who've lived there.

• I always think that about theatres. There's always an atmosphere. Like everyone leaves a bit of themselves.
• Yes, because when you've got a group of actors and it's your space - cos sometimes when they perform in the place they rehearsed it it's very powerful - but then they move on and another group comes in. It's a malleable space.
• It's memory
• In showrooms they scatter toothbrushes and magazines.
• It's like if you've been in a room when someone's died. Like you don't want to move anything or touch anything. It's still attached to you (them).

Then we did an exercise of shooting looks around the space. It was interesting to see how you improved and became more focused. Not sure it is something that'll end up in the show.

We then repeated the migration dance. We tried it at various speeds and then with music: 'Feel Like Going Home' by Charlie Rich. This (rather random) choice seemed very strong; it particularly made the people who were standing still seem very powerful - it animated them, gave them a purpose. The mournful/soulful quality of the song seemed just right.

Liminal Spaces

There was a lot of wonderful material in this presentation and I hope it'll be blogged separately, so I'll restrict myself to noting a few lovely ideas.

• Liminal places overlap with what the French sociologist Marc Augé calls 'non-places'. These are places without personal vectors, without a substantial history of use, without having been shaped by being lived in. Airport terminals, stations, bars, cashpoints, etc. They reflect a 'struggle to find your place'.
• Living now, we end up feeling lost in a world of McDonalds and 24-hour news. It's too heavy to consider.
• What happens when we travel? What happens when we live in these transitional spaces? Space capsules, prisons, universities.
• Liminal spaces have a distinct language codes: instructions, texts that create a link with you, maps and signs. Think of text language used over the phone.
• Think of the way seeing a McDonalds can for some be a potent sign that 'I'm home'. Think of Groundhog Day in an airport.
• Liminal spaces have an impact on identity: the passport locates you as an individual unique identity, while the airport constitutes you anoymously as a passenger. [This is a very helpful comment in relation to Airport.]
• The stage is also liminal.
• German philosopher Martin Heidegger suggests that the threshold (a liminal function) both divides and unites; it 'calls into being the separation of the between'.
• Everything can be liminal.
• There is a battle between utility and aesthetics in the home.

We had a discussion of public transport and what kinds of transport you like. Here's a selection of the comments:

• I don't really like driving and I love public transportation but I haven't driven in a month and I really miss driving.
• I like cars because iif you're travelling somewhere in a car you can personalise it or listen to your own music and if you're with someone you must know them.
• I hate strangers sitting next to me because I take long long train journeys.
• I like trains because I can make up a new identity.
• He said, 'do you want a beer?' I was small, I said, 'No. But maybe my mum?' She said no, they gave us a Mars and their sneakers and a new iron cross he'd bought in Germany. He said, 'My wife takes everything and you want nothing. Everybody! Give them everything!'
• He said, 'do you want a beer?' and I said 'Yeah, but can I take it for later?'
• I like underground culture. The wind in the tunnels. Same smell as in Boston.

You then did a series of very interesting improvisations, including the snail improvisation which I enjoyed very much and I'm sure we'll be able to incorporate.

Dan Rebellato