EN LT
2004-04-30 FAQ Writing on VILMA psyche
VM: Should these texts be real, or should I generate them myself?

FA: No. Bring texts from somewhere. You will generate your new one afterwards.

DN: After showing this example (workshop in Geneva) as far as I understood we have to think over about some texts, some characters from the text maybe?

FA: More like ‘documents’, bring those which you find add up a possible identity, that you will bring together later.

DN: It doesn’t matter, if characters from history, from society, whatever… some kind of real material.

FA: Absolutely. Fiction is real. But it has to be a decision process, it’s not the whole book, but the piece that you think is revealed in the selection. It’s analogous to the footnotes rising up and telling what the text may, or could have been. But we ‘cheat’, because you will collage it anyway, so this pure material you will never see, except as a database.

DN: And this material should be in the relation with the scheme we developed?

FA: The character, and what is missing – the voice. We mentioned, that there is the voice that doesn’t get constituted. Instead just looking at what is that voice, we going through this process. And we are going to decide what is that voice by the idea of the material that comes through here.
Now the process concerns how to bring together certain materials. You as individuals, of course, identify with the material you choose. There should be a sense of character. We do not care anything except of character. Wherever you think finds the link with the sense of the material, sense of character that you believe is part of voice, a contemporary voice which is in the search for this project.

GU: Birute was saying we need these narratives, and they should come from our situations, emotions, so it is subjective.

BK: Biography. I connect identity with some period of time. It can’t happen in just one second. And therefore I see somewhat contradiction. Because the identity issue was topic no.1 throughout the decade and it’s so boring. Therefore it’s so hard to force yourself again. It’s more discussed when there is an unstable situation, some changes going on and so on, in moment of transformation. Then everybody tries to keep your equilibrium and to talk about identity

FA: Identity is boring…? Look…we need to have the structure. I know, there is this feeling, you don’t want to talk about identity because its not trendy, or you don’t want to talk about this or that, because ‘its been done’…. That wouldn’t be a way to set up the structure. We could agree with whatever you want as an outcome, but the outcome is not what we are talking about. We are talking about only the system, the methodology. If you tell me that the reason that there is a lack of the voice through the structural flow of this workshop system, and yet nobody is coming with the way to bring it in, I would say its an interesting characteristic, concerning the subject.
So we try to find the methodology to go through that. If we would say we have to look for the right topic, it would be like the illustration of it. Like if would say: our topic is war and don’t talk about identity because our topic is war… What do you want to do with that subject? We should do the other way around. We want to find a voice, so the voice would come through whatever chaos and mess, and would decide the voice.

BK: I wanted to say, I like this contradiction, like a challenge. Everybody is tired to talk about the identity though everybody is thinking about it all the time.

FA: Last time we spoke about temporality, it was in the middle (of the chart). Isn’t it partly about that, how to keep creating around the moment of flux? And not to try to describe it and stand outside doesn’t work in this case. I want to be in the middle. The thing about the temporality, is that it generated the diagram, the generation was in it somewhere. The sense of movement, this time flux… Let the methodology run. Its like the computer programmer, they write the script first with the basic code and then they would run and de-bug it, and then would run that, etc.. and later write the whole user interface - not before they have the scripts running. So I see it like that, just have to have the script run.

Generally to choose texts seems very easy, but to think of it takes time. I think it should be consequent. And then is the process, so don’t be surprised when we will say now we are going to cut this or that out and it is going to disappear into something else. Don’t say: ‘what? I took these texts, these perfect texts.’ For sure these texts not going to be seen again, they are going to go. Its very important point that there is a sense of that freedom. It’s not a precious artifact, its just some indicator.

VM: do we have to edit these texts all together?

FA: We have to have some form, I don’t know if ‘all together’, that sounds very general.
First you have to do this work as each individual person, then it has to be brought together as a consensual, relational form. The dialogue is important, its not - ok, I’m choosing and I’m free. You yourself have to cut and make into some voice. That’s already some sense of decision-making. So we are going to look and see why the choices are there. And then we are going to find a way for the next phase of voicing to occur. And we have to allow for surprise.