The Infra-ordinary Lab project

Reflections by Tereza Violet Stehlíková

Context:
The project builds on my ongoing cross-disciplinary research into how we experience places and spaces, the idea that external environment shapes our emotional and psychic landscape and at the same time becomes an extension of our inner worlds. This powerful embodied dialogue is present when we walk across spaces, encoding understanding into our bodies while in multi-sensory exchange with the environment. But this dimension is lacking to a greater or smaller degree in digital environments, where spaces our virtual, representational, sensorially two-dimensional.

The Infra-ordinary Lab performance has been a direct response to the recent pandemic reality, and the shift towards more abstract, digital interactions. The intention of the performance was to return the participant to the here and now, into their own body, as the most powerful and sophisticated and direct mediator of reality and locus of meaning.

My working hypothesis was that by creating conditions for participants to experience more consciously their embodied connection to a specific environment, a more powerful emotional bond would be established with it. This is something that can potentially have not only an individual, therapeutic benefit, but can also have a more general benefit on an environmental level, i.e. could be considered a method of grounding people within their own environment, so that they develop a more caring attitude towards it.

The Infra-ordinary Lab’s specific intention was to invite participants to connect more deeply with the genius loci of Holešovická Tržnice, originally built as an abattoir, through all their senses. The aim was to establish a more informed, more visceral, embodied but also emotional connection with the site, while also opening a reflective, meditative and internal space which would enable participants to form a more profound relationship to it. This was within the context of the Prague Quadrennial festival which itself invited artists to respond in some way to the experience of the pandemic and question some of the transformation our society has witnessed because of it.

The project consisted of a research phase called Skin Deep Territories, which involved sensory workshops on location (realised with a group of students and others interested in the project), as well as other field trips, conversations, etc. The research phase lasted about 1 year, with the more intense phase lasting about 3 months. This phase, its duration and its physical, intellectual as well as temporal dimension, were very much in line with the general philosophy of the project and Tangible Territory journal – i.e. the presumption that an understanding of a place can be arrived at slowly, through getting to know the location through different times, seasons and senses.

The title of the work, “infra-ordinary” was taken from George Perec’s book Species of Spaces, and in particular a section where the author discusses the infra-ordinary aspects of our everyday existence: i.e. the wonder that lies beneath the thin veneer of the mundane, overlooked, habitual.

The resulting participatory performance was framed as a “laboratory”, which invited visitors to become part of an experiment of reframing perception of everyday reality and situating oneself within it, by the simplest analogue means, a kind of return to childlike playfulness and immediacy, yet informed by other layers of meaning.

Narrative structure

The participant’s journey started at the base of the lab, where a table was displayed, on which discarded fragments of the everyday life, collected by the performers and participants, were exhibited in petri dishes, lending them an altogether unique aura of something precious. This set out the tone for the rest of experience, an audio-walk consisting of stops (or stations), which each participant navigated individually, with the help of headphones and a printed map, which they received at the start of the journey. The intention was to shift, ever so slightly, the habitual way of perceiving and instead reveal the infra-ordinary aspects of the environment and participants’ own bodies and their mysterious mechanics.

The performance combined cinematic devices with more participatory performance elements (these included a narrative, visual and other framing, use of soundtrack to colour the emotional experience), while also allowing each of the participants to dictate the pace of their experience, to stop, pause, even interrupt the experience. The participants have been asked to perform simple physical acts such as lifting an arm, making a telescope form their palm to frame a view etc., with the intention of connecting them with their own bodies as much as the surrounding space.

The walk took the participants into the peripheral areas of the market, as well as into some of the functioning interiors (i.e. food market hall, digital shop), introduced them to some of the historical facts, while also giving them a sense of their own orientation within the larger environment of the city. This was done with the help of 10 audio tracks corresponding to 10 stops. Each of the unique stations offered a particular focus, summarised by these words, which were also invitations: welcome, orient, tune in, dive in, touch, see, imagine, immerse, time travel, breathe.

One of the key concepts explored was the drawing the parallels between the participants’ bodies, the animal bodies and the architectural spaces. The idea of things existing in relation to each other became a vital element within the performance: hence the idea of scale (micro and macro), visual perspective, human and non-human points of view, subjective and objective states, internal and external realities, and past, present and future temporalities, superimposed on top of each other.

The idea was not only to invite people to focus on their various channels of perception, but to also use proactively their sense of imagination, to conjure up the invisible realities of the place: things hidden through material barriers, or temporal dislocation, or those that have not yet taken shape. They were invited to consider imagination as the most powerful tool for augmenting reality.

The performance also included interventions from laboratory assistants (i.e. performers) who offered participants the opportunity to experience part of the journey without a reliance on sight, by entrusting themselves in their hands, blindfolded. This was an intervention that was offered between two stations on the map. At other times participants were offered various simple “framing devices” with coloured filters, to explore their vision.

One of the challenges of the project was the fact that this was no theatre set, these locations were part of a functioning, living city, which was always ready to transform. Paths would become obstructed, containers moved, views obscured. The weather would change and it would bring a storm, wind, rain or extreme heat. Hence openness to uncertainty and contingency was one of the working parameters of the project, which had to be accommodated and even embraced.

Evaluation.

More than a hundred visitors passed through and feedback has been gathered from some of them through interviews and written responses.

The feedback has overall been affirming of the intention of the project and hence marks its success. This included both foreign visitors totally unfamiliar with the location, but also locals, who knew the area extremely well.

There has been a general consensus on the powerful effect of using one’s imagination to conjure up invisible worlds, such as in stop 7, where participants were invited to imagine a subterranean space:

“The tension and incongruity between the everyday normalcy of the tiny street and the story of what lies underground.”

The blindfolded experience has been also rated highly and affirming of the intention of the project:

“Blindfold discovery. In my work I am a leader. It was a wonderful change to put myself in the hands of the guide and be led. It was great to have the variety of sensations, both the man-made plastic barrier tape, the wooden sign and the delicate flutter of the tree leaves and the robust stalks of the plants. So nice to have both worlds sharing focus. “

Or

“Being blindly guided through the space that I had walked through countless times in the days prior allowed me to truly process it in another way. I was able to focus on sound, smell, and touch and connect with the space rather than just use it as a path to get me from one place to the next.”

The meditative tone was further deepened by the pace of the experience, which was very slow in contrast to much of what was happening around. This pace was mainly (but no exclusively) considered to be a strength of the project by many of the participants:

“I was very grateful for the duration of the experience. PQ was an incredible event but it could be difficult to navigate it’s fast-paced energy. The duration of this piece forced me to slow down and truly contemplate every moment of the experience which provided me with the opportunity to truly connect with the environment I was interacting with.”

The decision was made not to shy away from some of the darker aspects of the history (i.e. animal slaughter), while also not giving too much detail. Instead, brief mentions were made, to allow people to fill in the rest. This is one of the responses to that:

“I found it a bit gruesome. “Human” history IS gruesome, and I expect that is done intentionally in order to have the audience feel something before they start to physically feel things. As a society we are out of practice of feeling anything. But I do wonder if that is necessary. It was certainly a welcome relief to walk through the market filled with so much prana near the end. It made me a bit sad to end with the digital store. But that is our current reality; one we all need to face.”

Overall, it can be said that the emotional response of participants corresponded very much to the intended aim of the project: i.e. to establish a meditative, imaginative and embodied relationship to the location, which would offer participants to experience a deeper connection to the place, while also reminding them of their own bodies, situated within the space, as the source of empathy and meaning. This confirmed to me that my artistic research and practice has the potential to communicate subjective experience in a distilled form…enabling participants to establish a more profound connection to a place even over a more condensed space of time, by providing them with specific input while also encouraging their own active agency.

“This experience was incredibly calming and felt very meditative. However, while most mediations work to turn you from the outside world and to your inner self, this piece was able to connect the inner self with the outside world and bring both of those energies together. “

This final comment is indeed a wonderful affirmation in regards to the intention of the performance and the future approaches to creating similar experiences.

To end this, I want to quote another participant, who has written a contribution for the Student Witness section of the Prague Qudrennial, Barbora Smolíková:

“[this] audiowalk offered many powerful moments. The recordings linked stories from the past with visits to places one would otherwise probably have no reason to visit. At the same time, they invited quiet meditation on how we experience the world around us. Time, space, our own imaginations and senses. The contrasts between silence and movement. The living city, the dead city. An intensely intimate experience. “

Artist: Tereza Violet Stehlikova

Collaborative team:

Musicians: Robin Rimbaud – Scanner, Yumi Mashiki
Lab assistants: Katja Vaghi, Amy Neilson Smith, Karel Komorous, Hana Kokšalová, Vincent Klusák, Olga Svobodová, Aslihan Ucer, Becka McFadden
Set and prop design: Babi Targino, Ka3ka3
Map design: Tony Jumr

Thank you to all the wonderful participants for their participation and feedback. To artistic director of PQ Marketa Fantová, PQ performance curator Carolina E Santo and location manager for performance, Jana Starkova and all the others who have helped to make this project happen.