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Writing Dancing & Loving

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Writing Dancing & Loving

Poems & images from archiving Toronto's Summer Love-In Festival 2023

Darian Razdar
Oct 13, 2023
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Writing Dancing & Loving

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It’s officially autumn in Toronto. With it, I’m reflecting back on my long hot summer. Some of that length and heat I spent traveling through New York state. Back in Toronto, I was invited to archive the Summer Love-In Festival, which was presented in partnership with my pals at Oversize.Load this year. In this post, I want to share a bit about my experience & its creations.

When the festival’s organizers asked me to archive, they left the door open for me to to choose how I’d do it. In the 2021 iteration, friend and artist Stephen Jackman-Torkoff used video, dance & poetic narration to make their archive of love. I highly recommend watching their video, which you can do here!

My tools of choice, of course, were poetry and photography. During the festival, I sat in on 7 dance workshops and a performance, took over 800 photos and wrote 40+ pages of poems. With poetry in particular, I find creating in conversation between artforms particularly generative. I got a little crush on ekphrasis.

In these poems, I got to experiment with not only writing movement but also with a new (hortizonal!) poetic form. Inspired by the egalitarian, polyvocal/polymodal/polyeverything nature of this community festival, I felt that the poem’s typical vertical coloumn wouldn’t do. I had to approach my poems sideways. The horizontal line break was my answer.


On another note::: Creative interpretation is important. The Love-In’s decision to invite archivists to record using their unique gifts is important. That is, rather than have an archivist ‘objectively’ represent present situations for future posterity, the Love-In’s archival vision is much more capacious. They got me asking, Why can’t an archive be a poem, a dance, a question, a feeling?

Like in my mapping practice, where I question the hemogenozing objectiveness of map-making with artistic interventions, I want to use creative methods to question what it means to archive. As an archivist, I had the chance to evidence the archival process for the interpretive act it is.

Previously, I’ve personally struggled with the archival turn in the arts. Archives seem so dusty, so imperial. Inserting excluded voices into archives felt flat. This experience opened up, for me for the first time, a most unexpected pathway into the archival.

Here’s my offering: a selection of poem excerpts, interspersed with photographs.


tight box	 body	  ,	,,,,,,,		,,		 so many poss - 
	
ibili 			-ties  			-ties 			-tease

still
tight gaze 			not self
boxed but			boxed, yes
with hole			spin, groove
					
one				two
				one			two
							one 			two 			
										one
									
							one’s own			, yes
							group move			, yes
							
freeze.
“Give us a chorus!”

				“We are the chorus?”
				
					notice 				noise
					,,,,,,,,,,,,			        ,,,,
					,,,,				        ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,, , ,,,,,,,,
					,,				        ,
					build up			        makes you
					warm				really
					makes you			wanna dance
					makes you			really
					wanna				sweat

Raving		the contemporary somatic
             not specific	not one 	technique	but beautiful 	space
change of weight, subtle
                       or pressure, subtle		like you’re laying 	on someone new.

              Is this a party?
                                                                         It’s 10 AM
so this must be an after. Yes, 
                                                                         after! The turn of a head on
                                                                         the lap of a stranger
who is		  the floor.

Pacing one’s self 		is helpful	slowing down		locating a 	passion.
Accessibility points. 			Look					it points!

Passion	ate movement. 	Show me: 	passion 		move.

Pretend 	passion moves		less talking, less 	audition	           Who do we move for?		Convey your passion vision			we’ll move		an approach
a 360 degree view.	 		Story	a passion	ate dance		more so, a feel		                          as above		 so below.	

of mouths				a whistle		a breath		too
as a yawn sings		a sigh of joy		as a gulp sings		a quick relief

you found it itching in your throat 	you spit it out		onto the floor		and that joy	

yes	has roots 	too	they tickle at your feet		a field of sighs and yawns	of 

finally		enough time	finally 		enough space		how the field is long like

the pose and 		the fall		the field longs		and please	field		yield

to pleasure	yield		please		yield		please	yield			pleased			yield

                          serious
a body						high
						rolling				           tiniest
tears		the body	juice		I love knowing
		fell heavy				in the windowless room
everything melts 		What remains?
			word soup		in the bowl of the body		overflows
it’s prone			calves and arms	shake		that’s what we are 		
               Caress the floor			with fore
head		smooth skin touch			cold 		hard 
                                               floor		warm
and lift

          more space			more 		space	360 degree diligent		aware again		more time			open	openopenope		n 	the idea	ever present listening 		live	search for movement for	word 	move toward the detonation		the de tonation		the de	notation 		of body, listen
the moment of 	stop, a phrase
moving toward expansion 	out and			around and 	not		afraid
playing with the vocabule 		the diction of 			connection, not necessarily
same direction.

Open	please		stop	I’m waiting		you’re all	clumping		me I’m waiting		myself		a reach		another		direction	hold low 	and back	hold low	and back	the clump	formed		body	a mass		of body		a connection		diction		for vocabulary		of movement	of movement		a stillness	de	tonation	de	notation	a tone		atone		a tome. 

Degrees widen the evidentiary	force of angles		 curve	 force	the thing	don’t force the 	no	thing, the 	joint	less spine	the sacrum syncopation 	the fluid rush		between		opposite points	access points		the whole unclamped	the curve	a slip, a fall	expansion is 		entropic dance
the stars and systems				slow		a stillness	
another		de		notation				an 	end.


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