Daniel Godinez Nivón and Krisztián Gábor Török on Re–Directing: East 2020
- Daniel Godínez Nivon (DGN ): We are facing a very complex year during which we need to foster creative alliances and pave the way for new ties. This is a challenge through which other ways of building intimacy and trust can emerge. In the space of dreams we have found a place of intimacy and trust with others; a bond that we want to resonate with the participants in the residence.
- We wonder how dreams can be shared between people located in different parts of the world. We explore how to create trust over distance and reach the complicity to find ourselves in a dream.
- It was thanks to a dream that we met in Glasgow at the beginning of June 2019, and that started a conversation about art, life and radical educational practices. The resonance in those ideas created a friendship and a desire to share our work with other like-minded people. We would confront our ideas with the beginning of a collaboration that could be shared with others during our time in residence.
- Dreams can be an artistic and symbolic tool through which we can participate in the generation of knowledge and provide a fair space for the exchange of ideas as part of the creation of common experiences. From the beginning, it was always very important for us to build a form of intimacy that can represent the intensities and links expressed during the seminar.
- Krisztián Gábor Török (KGT): Our intention was to bring a new metaphysical space to the seminar through the art of dreams and memories. The use of these different sensibilities was a starting point to create intimacy between the members of a group who would not physically meet with each other during the workshop. The questions we asked ourselves were – how the lack of physical contact facilitates various feelings towards others; and whether it is possible to imagine expanding our social sensibilities following the pandemic, but without relying solely on digital technology.
- Probably unconsciously, we also brought up the way we maintained our friendship and collaboration, despite living on two opposite sides of the ocean. It could possibly be said that this is no longer a challenge given modern communication possibilities. What we really mean here, is how to be present and available for someone who is not physically present in your life. New forms of intimacy were key to keeping our collaboration and blossoming friendship alive.
- DGN: To create a space of intimacy requires trust in any realm of interaction. In this process, we sought to detonate situations that would create a latent reflection allowing the seminar participants to be present despite the distance. The expectation of sharing a dream triggered by a collective experience is an event that will transcend the time of the seminar; it is the collective creation of a meaningful memory.
- The historical protests in Warsaw generated a change in the way we were working and sharing in the seminar sessions. The brutality of the confrontations and the tenderness of the voices and bodies that claimed the streets opened up a space of caring and unprecedented empathy. Social networks were a means of knowing what was happening in the streets, as well as the urgent testimonies to the repression that was being experienced. The pressing reality that exists in Warsaw is part of my context now, and is a struggle that involves my action being there and my support as much as possible.
- KGT: Our practice for the seminar was actually created to try to surpass the online realm. At the same time, we searched for a metaphysical change through our work that would affect the offline realm as well. We used Daniel’s oneiric method during two online and two offline workshops creating a common dreams space. In order to share our experience, together with the participants we recorded a radio piece, where we shared our dream experiences over the last two weeks. Through this creation of a work of collective memory, we further reduced our connection through the online realm by only focusing on the intimacy of the spoken word. The intimate memories shared between the participants during the seminar showed us that the realm of dreams is capable of surpassing the lack of physical contact, the challenges of reading each other’s body language and other limits of the online realm.
- The last couple of weeks of the seminar happened in parallel with the ongoing Women’s Strike in Poland. These changes to our physical reality affected our online presence as well. Our recurring meetings with the group became a point of relief; the intimacies and trust we built up during the first three weeks allowed us to share our feelings and problems with each other. Placing our struggles into the local context in Mexico or in Costa Rica was a way to process and understand our own situation better. It gave us a chance to place our own struggles in a transcontinental network of solidarity and care.
Participants of the seminar are answering two questions: what was their contribution to the seminar and how has taking part in the seminar influenced their perception of the online realm.
Photo: Ania Bystrowska
