Simone Forti

Interviewed by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer

Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer: improvising in short bursts, and then would see how they worked together. I thought we could focus mainly on you step out and watch. When we were going to do a con- the News Animations, but that we Lehrer-Graiwer: So you’re cert, we would say, and here’s what could begin by talking about your improvising as a group and individu- I would call structure, we would say, history a bit, and your approach als can step out and watch the rest of okay, why don’t you start with this to improvisation. You were intro- the group, and then come back in? and solo it for a while, and then I’ll duced to improvisation through Anna Forti: Yes, but she works with bring in this material. The material Halprin in the late-1950s, and then, different structures, so that a person had names. And I was working a lot soon after, to conceptual practice might go in, and then being in the at the time with animal movement, and a Cagean approach to chance space they might control the image a movement vocabulary I was devel- through Robert Dunn in New York. of what the space is doing with them oping from watching animals in the I wonder how, over the years, you and the environment. And then zoo, and when possible, going to see refined your particular approach, someone else goes in and adds to a collection of Egyptian art, because which is maybe different from those that. And then they both come out. the Egyptians used animals a lot. two main formative sources? So it’s a way of putting the improvisa- Their deities were often half-ani- Simone Forti: I think that tion under a microscope. I don’t tend mal, half-human. I might have a run in a sense I reverted to being more to work like that, but I really liked it and jump that would end up, sud- influenced by Anna in the News when I’ve worked with her, when I’m denly, still, in the position of this little Animations, in that I’m really impro- into some idea and then suddenly: statue I’d seen at the Louvre of the vising. Anna always had us impro- zoom in, or zoom out, or repeat, or god that had the head of a bird. So I vise in relation to something. So jump to another idea. might say, I’m going to do that, and the improvisations were always an Lehrer-Graiwer: Being he’d say, okay, we haven’t tried it yet exploration of something. Especially given direction? with the stuff I’ve been doing with in the, I’ll use the word ‘exercises,’ Forti: Being given direc- the recorder flute — let’s try putting where she would say, we’re going tions but basically being interrupted. those together. So those were struc- to focus on weight, we’re going to Having my flow of movement ideas tures. And the vocabularies in sound focus on negative space, we’re going and verbal ideas interrupted, and and in movement were, for me, to focus on speaking nonsense. So then having to jump to something explorations. it’s not so different when I focus now else, or having to do it again. Rather Lehrer-Graiwer: You’ve on my thoughts, and especially my than distancing me from what I had referred to this as research. Do you unformed thoughts about the world, been doing, it makes me more con- think about your long-term prac- and when I improvise from that. scious of what I’m doing and it stim- tice as private research or cultural Lehrer-Graiwer: I won- ulates the flow of ideas by having research? Or maybe those aren’t very der, with improvisation more gener- these interruptions. different? ally and with the News Animations Lehrer-Graiwer: Well that Forti: Yeah, I don’t see them in particular, is there a rule struc- makes me want to ask about con- as such different things. I think often ture you start with? Or what are the scious and unconscious modes of that if I’m wondering about some- parameters you give yourself? improvisation. But first, you homed thing it’s because a lot of us are won- Forti: I would say more gen- in on the term structure. Does that dering about it. erally with improvisation there’s mean something specific in dance, Lehrer-Graiwer: Okay, to always an area of research, let’s say, or in your practice? I wonder if you go back for a moment to when you that’s already clearly marked, that could describe what that term, struc- were talking about working with Lisa shows the limits of the improvisation. ture, refers to, versus the problem or Nelson and being interrupted, and Structure is something else. When I the idea flow or the research? enjoying that for making you more get a chance, I work with Lisa Nelson Forti: I worked for many present or conscious, I was wonder- and her image lab structure. We’ll years with a musician, Peter Van ing about the relationship between start an improvisation and someone Riper. Our way of working was that improvisation and the unconscious. who’s sitting out may say: zoom in, he would bring to the situation musi- Is that a major subject of thinking or or back up, or run it backwards, or cal things that he had been working exploration for you? repeat. with. I might almost say riffs, or even Forti: I’m happy to think about Lehrer-Graiwer: Can you melodies. it. It’s not something I’ve specifically explain what the image lab is? Lehrer-Graiwer: thought about, but it is interesting. Forti: Yes, Lisa Nelson is Prerecorded? What it brings to mind is the differ- a dancer and is also co-editor of Forti: No no, he played sax- ence between when an improvisation Contact Quarterly, a journal of mov- ophone and a lot of small instru- is really happening, is really work- ing ideas, or of dance and improvi- ments, like thumb piano and some ing, and when you have to work very sation. She’s been working with this wind instruments. But basically he hard and really pull out your skills structure for a long time with many played saxophone. So he would and tell yourself, okay Simone, stop. people as she travels and gives work- bring his materials in, and I would Just stand for a moment. Take in shops. It’s a very structured way of bring my materials in, and then we the space. Take in the sounds in the

space and what’s happening. What movement is relevant, and if so, is or a personal style? I’m thinking ideas do you have that you can get that something to resist or to explore also about how much Judson Dance started with again? Okay, I can look with interest? If this is a form of the Theater, or your peers in Judson, like around for shapes and forms and unconscious in dance and move- Yvonne Rainer, were so concerned at qualities in the space, and try them ment, then how is it different now a crucial point with evacuating a kind on in my body to see if that turns me compared to thirty years ago? of virtuosity or style that could be on. There’s that kind of very con- Forti: I don’t think it’s that dif- associated with persona or personal- scious use of skills. Or you think, ferent now, although it keeps chang- ity. I wonder if that’s something you oh my god, this. And then the path ing. My body has changed. My body resist or are interested in, that is, how opens, followed by that, and then keeps changing. I accumulate certain your own personal style of move- this, and then there’s a sound in riffs and forget others, so the vocab- ment emerges organically through the space, and then you roll on the ulary does change. And there is a improvisation. ground. Sometimes I say it’s as if an vocabulary. But then there are always Forti: I don’t think much angel were to drop the improvisa- some new responses to the moment. about it. However, I know that there tion in your lap and it just happens. And of course even if I do have some are two things that have very much People talk about being a vessel, riffs, they can’t be the same because influenced my movement vocabu- about flow, and I think a part of the they’re not in the same context, they lary, or my style — watching animals, consciousness, let’s say, that we refer didn’t lead up in the same way, it and tai chi. I’ve done a lot of tai chi. to as the subconscious or uncon- doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s hard, if I think you can see me dancing for scious, I think there’s another part I do two improvisation performances thirty seconds, and even in just how of the consciousness that comes in on following nights and the first night I use my knees, there’s a lot of tai chi and maybe takes a lot of things into is really hot and works and I think, oh, in there. That’s my safety structure. consideration. It’s a more open mind I’m going to try that again. Well, you I think that’s what keeps me danc- than the structure of logic, and when don’t remember how it evolved, what ing, too. It’s a postural attitude that the two interact, that’s when things the lead up was, where it was com- works for me, and that you can see. are really happening. ing from. You can’t do that. But there But also the animals. I spent a lot of Lehrer-Graiwer: Continuing could be something in it that you can time going from striding to crawling, from that, I wonder how the feeling, do again. So I know I’m moving dif- without missing a beat of the contra- the sensation and pleasure of impro- ferently over the years, but my pro- lateral movement, and then all the visation has changed over many cess is pretty much the same. way down to the ground with my decades of working? Is there a pal- Lehrer-Graiwer: This is limbs splayed out like a crocodile or a pable sense of an accumulation of related to another question I have, lizard. Okay, now I’m walking. Good. muscle memory and body knowl- which is maybe more conceptual, Now I’m walking and I’m bending edge that starts to happen on its but how does improvisation intersect over. And now my hands are touch- own? Or maybe the idea of automatic with a personal voice in movement, ing the ground. Now I’m crawling. Okay I’m crawling. So I’m not really share. One week someone would moving. And that was much more wondering about style. say, next week I’d like a half hour, or like Surrealist theater. Who’s the Lehrer-Graiwer: Because next week I need two hours, and then playwright who did the Binary Bride? that will happen on its own, anyway? we would try things on each other, There was an English-speaking one Because it’s your body and you’ll or we would read from our journals whose name I always forget. But move in the way that only you move? and someone would say, oh, I’ve we were working with nonsense. I Forti: Well I don’t know. I been thinking about this, and then remember we’d be moving and I’d be mean Pooh Kaye moves a lot like me. we would try it. One woman had us having this conscious experience of We move a lot like each other. The work with the news, because she letting all these unconscious or just minute we saw each other we kind had stopped reading the news and slightly less conscious phrases come of lit up, and then started dancing she wanted to start again but she through my mind, and I’d say, no, together, because we have such simi- wanted to have some approach that that’s an association with what I’m lar spirits in some ways. could take her emotional response doing; no, that’s a play on the color of Lehrer-Graiwer: It came into the whole picture of reading the what I’m doing; no, that’s a — wow! up a moment ago, I was wonder- news. She was not a dancer but she Where did that one come from? And ing if you wanted to say more about had thought that maybe working I’d say that one. We were working the body aging? Is that consciously with movement would help. I really as nonsensically as we could. That’s directing movement research, or responded to what she had us do. how we were using language. We is it a matter of different limits and She had us work with headlines and improvised like that a lot, and then reframed possibilities? she had us work with some of the pic- Anna started making some pieces Forti: I’m working with what tures. I mentioned that my father had with that material. The way we would I’ve got. And it’s always been that. died and that he read three newspa- do that was very interesting. We I kind of enjoy my awkwardness. I pers a day. I felt that it was because would improvise. Then Anna would stylistically enjoy my awkwardness. he knew everything that was going say stop, go back to where John was, There seems something sassy about on that he got us out of Europe very over there. A.A. was crawling across — what the fuck, here it is, let’s keep early, as World War II was breaking. the ground, Simone was crying, and doing it, this is interesting, and if it’s So I also felt I should start reading I was taking off my clothes. Let’s go interesting it doesn’t matter what the news myself, because he’s not back and run it again. And I’d go, I look like. But still, I was amazed protecting us now anymore, and I what, run it again? I can’t possibly when I performed recently with better. But I wasn’t very good at it. I remember, and I’d start crying. And Charlemagne Palestine and he was couldn’t remember the names and I then I’d see A.A. crawl by and think, playing the grand piano and putting couldn’t remember the information. oh yeah, when that happened I fell enormous sound into the space — we But somehow it clicked, as the famil- over. Okay. And then when I fell over had a big space to work in, under the iarity of the newspaper gave me an I looked up and saw John over there pyramid at the Louvre — and I really emotional connection to my father. and I rose. So we were able to rerun took off. I had my big black shoes and I could make maps on the floor with the improvisation, and then we could if I sent my foot forward the momen- the newspapers and start to under- rerun it again and make any changes tum really took them. I was really stand — like okay, Iran has a very that we thought would be interesting. going in circles and tilting this way long coast; it was the Iran/Iraq war at So we’d layer it and layer it until it got and that way and changing trajec- that moment. So Iran had this long set. tory. I still love to get my momentum coast down the Gulf and Iraq has just Lehrer-Graiwer: Was video going. Sometimes I say I feel like an a tiny little finger on the Gulf, and being used at all at Anna’s? old Buick going around a corner. Kuwait is like a console that’s in the Forti: No. Lehrer-Graiwer: Can way. And then I had read somewhere Lehrer-Graiwer: I also you tell me about how the News that the whole Arab Peninsula was wanted to ask about language. You Animations came about? drifting north and that’s what had had mentioned to me before that Forti: I find that often my work sent the Alps up. So that made sense, you have a practice of writing ear- has changed when something basic that all that petroleum was getting lier in the day every time you per- in my life has changed. I had been pressured under there, and that form a News Animation. How does working with Peter Van Riper and petroleum draws blood to itself. So that relate to the actual performance? working with a vocabulary of animal it just clicked. At the time I happened Did that start at the beginning of the movements. We were married, and to be teaching a class at the School of News Animation practice? we broke up. So that collaboration Visual Arts in New York, so when the Forti: I don’t exactly remem- ended. We did a few more concerts students did their student show, and ber, but it has something to do with after that, but basically that wasn’t they each had made their own piece Fred Dewey. Fred at the time was going to be my main form anymore. and all the pieces were different, I director of Beyond Baroque Literary Lehrer-Graiwer: showed my first News Animation Arts Center in L.A. We were friends When was that? in the student show. That’s how it and I was showing him some of Forti: That was in 1981. Then started, long ago. my writing. I had a little cassette in 1983 my father died. During that Lehrer-Graiwer: So that first recorder and I was recording some of period I was depressed. I kept teach- one was soon after 1983? my improvisations in rehearsal and ing, I kept doing stuff, but I didn’t Forti: Yes it must have been transcribing them. And now, when really know what my work was going around ’83 or something like that. I read — I was going to say when I to be. I knew it was going to be some- Lehrer-Graiwer: Had lan- typed up a few of them, because I thing else, but I didn’t know what. guage been a part of your movement write longhand — when I read one So I offered a workshop for people before then? of my transcripts, I can’t quite tell who were transitioning in their work Forti: Anna [Halprin] used lan- if it’s a transcript or if it’s a twenty but didn’t know what it was going guage in her movement. minute writing from before a perfor- to turn out as. I gathered a group of Lehrer-Graiwer: Speaking mance. But somewhere along the five or six of us and we met once a while moving? way I was showing Fred some of my week for four hours and we would Forti: Speaking while writings. He was encouraging me, and a book came out, which he pub- at a high school. He said: keeping the Lehrer-Graiwer: Yeah, it’s lished. Somewhere in there, I think windows shut is for the children. I’m something I’ve thought of when see- from seeing the transcripts, I got opening my window and I’m spend- ing your News Animations. I mean interested in — oh, very important ing all these days when we’re not I think about Zuma News (2014), too was that I came across a book by supposed to go out, painting, paint- where you’re on the beach and the Natalie Goldberg, who was a writer ing, painting, because I have a show newspapers are getting wet and and teaches a lot of writing work- coming up. And then he was also starting to disintegrate and being shops. This was a book with a lot of talking about the disaster. You get a pulled out to sea, and how poignant the exercises from her writing work- sense of the disorientation and pain, that feels now when print media is in shops, I think it’s called Wild Mind. but it’s so fine, like a fine line, because a rear-guard position. We hear that There are a few rules. One, you know of his voice. And I’m talking about newspapers are closing all the time. for how long you’re going to write, how intimate it was to hear his voice. It’s a fading form, in a way. Working whether it’s going to be three min- I find myself just following the lines with newspapers means something utes or sixty minutes. You decide of the chair, which were really quite different now than it would have in ahead of time. You also keep your beautiful, and saying, look at the the ’80s. hand moving the whole time. And curve here, and how wide it is, and Forti: That’s right, because then there’s advice like, don’t mind if I was getting tangled in it too, and it back in the ’80s everyone had a it’s interesting, you can’t tell anyway. was bringing me ideas, because it big stack of newspapers that they You can start with an idea, or a word, invited me to tangle myself into it, planned to recycle, or to take down or I remember, or you can open up which maybe gave me some sense of the stairs. a dictionary and point to a word and the twistedness of the nuclear plant. Lehrer-Graiwer: Less so start there. What’s interesting with So I like to have some object that will now. I’m wondering if there’s a dif- that is that it’s stream of conscious- bring me some things that I would ference within the News Animations ness, but around a point. I think of it not have come to otherwise. of performing live versus perform- as flying a kite, where the stream of Lehrer-Graiwer: And when ing for a camera, for video, and if that consciousness is the wind, but the that object is not a stack of recent feels different or if it changes the way string is what you’ve decided your newspapers, when it is a chair, or you’re working or moving? realm is going to be, if it’s going to pieces of canvas, what keeps it within Forti: Hopefully I get so be the world and news. If it’s going to the category of News Animation? involved in the action that it doesn’t be news it can get into history, fam- What is the parameter of that body matter, but it is different, it is differ- ily, politics, it can get into whatever, of work? Is it you focusing on your ent. Or there’s also working in the but it comes around. Its purpose is thoughts about the world and current studio with no camera and no audi- understanding your unconscious events? ence. I don’t ever work in the studio thoughts about world news, and your Forti: Yeah. I often work with all by myself. But working with peo- conscious thoughts, too. That’s when a woman, Batyah Schachter, who’s ple in the studio, we’re each other’s the kite can stay up, when you have Israeli and lives in a Palestinian vil- audience. I do consider how some- both those things. I started doing lage at the outskirts of Jerusalem. thing will be taken in and I think I some of her writing exercises and I She’s coming to meet me in have developed that ability partly found them very useful as a warm up Stockholm now and we’re going to because I teach a lot. There you’re for my verbal mind. do a News Animation together. We constantly aware of what has actually Lehrer-Graiwer: Your sense often use ten pounds of potatoes. been delivered and what didn’t reach, of language is refined and beau- We’ll map them, or maybe they’re what wasn’t taken in, and then what tiful and poetic, and in the News just something to be manipulating other approach you can take if there’s Animations it clearly relates to the while we’re thinking and talking and something important to deliver. news but also elevates it to a level maybe threatening to throw a potato When I was coming to Minneapolis where it almost verges on prophecy at each other. We’ve often worked and bringing those two half flags, I or memory. It’s very literary, your with potatoes. had this idea of washing the flag in sense of language, more so than Lehrer-Graiwer: But news- the Mississippi, in the river, and I was journalistic in relation to the news. papers are the most common object kind of concerned that there’d be Do the News Animations always in the News Animations? the camera. Then I thought, you can include newspapers? Forti: They used to be more zoom, you can do it. It’s unusual for Forti: No, but I like to have than they are now. me to make a video, although there’s something. I often have something Lehrer-Graiwer: I was won- another one at an oak tree that Pooh I call an arbitrary object. It kind of dering how that’s changed from the was involved with, not with directing interrupts me. It will be out there in ’80s to now, and how that span of or producing, but she got someone space and I’ll suddenly pick it up. For time, with the internet and the sup- to do camera and brought me to this instance, I did a News Animation planting of print media... very old oak tree and had me work at a very small poetry center in San Forti: Maybe that’s part of it, with it. Diego and the only thing I could find that it’s gotten more difficult to get Lehrer-Graiwer: And there as an arbitrary object there was a lit- your stuff from newspapers. They are some videos of News Animations tle chair. But it was a very beautiful don’t have to be current, because from Vermont? little chair, very delicate. One thing it’s more the material than reading Forti: That’s right, that’s right. that came to me to talk about was them. Or even reading them, they’d Lehrer-Graiwer: So they’re this radio program and the voice of be just as good from ten years ago. in the minority, but videos have this Japanese guy who was at the That would be interesting. They can happened over the years. I don’t outskirts of the Fukushima disaster, be anything. They can be advertise- know if this is particular to the News where they weren’t evacuated but ments. But yeah, that’s true, maybe Animations or not, maybe it’s more they were supposed to keep their it’s because of the media. I mean I about moving improvisationally, but windows shut. In his talking you read the news more online now. I how does the environment, the archi- would find out that he’s an art teacher don’t have a TV. tecture or the geography, factor into your preparation or the energy, the or context that you’ve done News consciously recognized in one's own feeling of the performance? Animations in before, in a library, or if self, in one's own body, even gestur- Forti: It factors very much into that was a new context? ally. I think your body feels a lot, like the performance. I will consciously Forti: It was a little different, when your hair stands on end. look at the space, especially at the but a little similar. I’ve done some- Lehrer-Graiwer: You’ve just beginning of a performance, knowing thing at the downtown library, in their gone through the process of working that if I’m looking at the ceiling, you little theater. The audience came into on a retrospective, and there’s a book become aware of the ceiling. You see a library and then into that theater, so that goes with it. I wonder what that me looking. I do this so that the audi- I’m sure the experience of a library experience felt like to you, of method- ence is also aware of the space and remained with them. I feel comfortable ically or systematically going through then I’m always aware of my place- in a library environment, because it’s your life’s work thus far. Now that ment within the larger space. That’s a about study. It’s not about display. you’ve done it, has it reoriented your difficulty with video, because the video Lehrer-Graiwer: How direction moving forward or changed tends to follow you, so you’re always much does it feel like it’s about the way you’re thinking now? in the middle of the space. It looses communication? Forti: I’ve got two thoughts. that architectural placement in space. Forti: A lot. It’s a lot about com- One, that it was kind of a shock to see Lehrer-Graiwer: Do you munication, and there’s also humor, it all together, to get a whole picture have a preference for performing like when you say it’s literary rather like that, and of course I think how indoors or outdoors? than journalistic. It’s certainly not jour- the picture came out also has a lot Forti: I remember I used to nalistic and I would make the most to do with how Sabine [Breitwieser] like to spend time outdoors, maybe terrible journalist imagined. But yes, saw me and what she selected. I even moving outdoors on my own, it’s a lot about communication and this think she did a very beautiful job and then bringing those experiences brings me to what I feel is important with how, for instance, she put the into an indoor space. I’ve done some about it, that again, it’s not journalis- book together, so that photos of See- things outdoors, and some I’ve really tic and I can’t convey any information, Saw (1960) appeared several times loved, but to bring an audience out- but I do make transparent the inter- throughout the timeline, so that the doors, what are you going to do? action between the thoughts that are pieces referred to each other. It made Lehrer-Graiwer: I was curi- not completely formed, that maybe a very interesting picture. But I like ous, and maybe this is similar to how you’re afraid to completely form, and to have dark areas, areas that I hav- newspapers mean something dif- the thoughts that are formed, and that en’t thought about. I was really wor- ferent now than they did in the ’80s, this goes on in all of us, that it opens ried when the light got shone around but seeing you perform at Midway up a window for someone watching all those corners and everything was in the library felt very poignant and and responding to it with their own seen together. I’ve always felt that even loaded, being surrounded by process of conscious and unconscious I have to be careful about being a books, and I wonder if that’s a scene working together. I think that less is fruitcake.