ENCOUNTERS IN THE RIGHT AND LEFT HEMISPHERES:
CONCEPTUAL / OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK
Encounters in the Right and Left Hemispheres is a performance-based project exploring the impact of chance events on the development of a relationship between two people of different generations who barely knew each other previously. It required both Tássya Karasiak and myself to reveal important aspects of our past to one another and to approach our encounters in a frank, honest manner.
The project was composed of four types of video and/or audio encounters:
1/ Action/reaction encounters between Tássya and I that were framed by the following operational protocol:
Chance selection to determine who initiated the first encounter (roles alternating thereafter). The designated person would then choose an action by chance from a selection of ten options composed of relatively banal everyday actions that one might encounter daily in any community – some positive, some negative in aspect.
The other participant, then chooses a reaction by chance from a selection of ten options, half of which were identical to the proposed actions.
The participants were not permitted to communicate their chosen actions to one another.
Action/reaction encounters were performed face-to-face or with one participant situated behind the other. The two configurations represented radically different possibilities concerning the ability of one participant to read or anticipate the action/reaction of the other.
Each encounter began with the participants taking position and remaining perfectly still and focused on the presence of the other person for at least fifteen to twenty seconds before beginning the encounter. Once the Reactor responded to the Initiator’s action, each one was free to stop their participation or to continue the encounter in any manner they chose. The action/reaction cycle stopped when one participant stopped performing. The initial random selection of a reaction was eventually abandoned, the initially chosen action being sufficient to provoke prolonged interaction between us.
No verbal communication was allowed during these encounters.
No actions/reactions that could result in physical or emotional harm to the other participant were permitted.
The potential for incongruity between initial actions and reactions drawn by chance was an integral part of the conceptual process. It constituted a manner in which to approach the notion of misunderstood messaging and to provoke the existence of uncomfortable, confusing situations that were beyond our control.
2/ Socializing between us that was structured and filmed in three specific social settings:
An in depth discussion dedicated to our varied musical tastes.
An afternoon of drinking wine and conversing on multiple topics of interest to us.
A dinner to mark the end of our project.
3/ Encounters (audio and video) with the eventual public that took the following forms:
Testimonies on specific topics related to lingering thoughts and emotions concerning memories of specific events/situations that had marked our lives. In these testimonies, no reference could be made to the names of other persons involved or of the exact nature of the event in question. The goal was simply to address emotional and psychological traces left behind.
Testimonies concerning our feelings on the evolution of the project and our thoughts about one another.
The divulging of secrets.
These encounters were filmed and/or recorded with the person in question alone in the studio to avoid unintentional interference.
4/ Interviews (audio and video) of one another that took the following forms:
Formal video interviews in which each of us was asked to respond to a series of commonly agreed upon questions.
Informal audio and/or video interviews in which we were free to ask any questions to each other.
In the testimonies and interviews, I felt that, in general, it was important for Tássya and I to speak our native languages (Portuguese and English respectively) and that no subtitles or translations of texts be provided in the videos or in this book. At first glance this might appear to be detrimental to the public’s ability to fully understand our encounters and this impression would be correct. It certainly does interfere with the public’s ability to fully grasp what is happening. But what could be more realistic? In day-to-day life, what percentage of any group of observers ever fully understands everything they are seeing or hearing? Whether we realize it or not, we almost always form our opinions about situations based on severely inadequate information. Such is the case here. The public will inevitably derive a variety of divergent truths from the raw material our performances represent. My objective was not to provide a perfect understanding of our encounters, but instead, an imperfect experiencing of them, one that raised personal questions for the public.
AESTHETIC CONSIDERATIONS
All the encounters took place in a small white room of twenty square meters with no decoration of any kind. Two armchairs and a table were available as required. Other than this, the room was empty. Other specific aesthetic requirements were treated as follows:
Only black clothing was permitted to prevent apparel-based distractions.
The notion of cycles of beginnings and endings was central to the project as was the notion of hope, in the sense of our natural tendency to anticipate positive results from any type of voluntary relationship. It was important to me that the chromatic profile of the universe we were creating was capable of reflecting such notions and so I chose a palette based on the colours of sunrises/sunsets. This golden, reddish-yellow palette would characterize the majority of the action/reaction encounters, with the exception of those encounters in which we were blindfolded. For these encounters, I elaborated a faintly coloured, black and white palette.
With the exception of interviews and testimonies, all of the videos were presented in slow motion to facilitate the study of the evolution of facial expressions and gestures, many of which would normally be imperceptible at normal speeds.
It was important that the encounter environment be perceived as constituting an alternative universe. It was also important to me that the public’s perception of this environment not be perfect and that the vulnerability that we both inevitably felt, be perceived to be protected, at least to a certain point by the existence of a semi-opaque curtain. I felt that the existence of this barrier would reinforce the notion of the public as voyeurs, a relationship that I saw as being important to the public’s ability to feel implicated on a deeply personal level by our encounters.
These basic aesthetic qualities were elaborated at the outset of the project, permitting them to impregnate our mindset and our approach to the environment in which we were performing. There was life inside and outside of the universe we were creating, but they were not the same.
PRODUCTION GUIDELINES
Since the stated objective of the project was to provoke the evolution of a relationship by chance over time, it was important that the final presentation of the work respect the integrity of the performances. With the exception of the aesthetic characteristics discussed above, no editing (e.g. cutting/splicing) of the video and audio recordings was permitted and the following guidelines were applied:
No one was behind the camera during the filming of the encounters. The camera was simply a neutral witness.
Videos were presented in their entirety as they were filmed.
All videos and audios were first takes with no reshoots permitted.
This protocol obviously implied that certain encounters appeared flawed in some technical manner (e.g. framing and/or focus problems due to unanticipated movements). It also meant that there were periods during which very little appeared to be happening, as we collected our respective thoughts and feelings about how to proceed during some encounters. Such flaws were simply accepted as being an inevitable consequence of the being faithful to the objectives of the project.
R. Scott MacLeay,
Florianópolis, Brazil, January 6th, 2020