Sharing Library
8 DAYS 8 JOURS 8 collaborators brought the following books to create a temporary shared library for the course of the residency. One may consider that these books are a snapshot representation of what we, as Canadian dance artists, are thinking about in 2019. They are in no particular order.
Why did you bring this book to share? It’s a pep talk for artists trying to keep working in challenging times. There’s lots of practical and helpful information in it that I feel is worth sharing.
Why did you bring this book to share? I'm interested in the interview as a method for discovering people's artistic practices, and the interview format itself functioning as a form of choreographic practice. In this issue I was particularly invested in the interview with artist Ligia Lewis.
Why did you bring this book to share? There is an unforgiving directness in the dialogue that celebrates courage and brutality in the archetypal characters on the road to destruction. This play displays an aspect of humanity that inspires me and gives me courage to be frank and honest with my work.
Why did you bring this book to share? Some of what we know about Simone Forti’s work are because this book documents her early practices. It was published by NSCAD University Press, where I am now an MFA student, and I wanted to try some of the scores together.
Why did you bring this book to share? I'm interested in how established practices or artistic traditions can be traversed through embracing as well as decimating them. The Cunt Norton rewrites canonical poems from the Norton Anthology of Poetry as gender-slippery erotica, and I feel that it's a great example of this interest in my own practice.
Why did you bring this book to share? How can we, as artists and human beings, reinvest the figure of the witch in a powerful and productive way? I like this idea of the contemporary witch, one that pops up in inconvenient spaces/moments, and messes around a little bit.
Why did you bring this book to share? This book is snack sized pieces of wonder and seeing and a large part of my practice is about wonder and seeing and snacks.
Why did you bring this book to share? Another older book about creating and working with scores. The physical book itself has historical value, and I thought we might look at the scores, the scoring method, the documentation, and the book as a choreographic print object.
Why did you bring this book to share? On my 8 hour layover on my way here from Berlin, I purchased this book to help incorporate it into my practice, which revolves around unpacking human bodies in relation to the complexities of space. Since this is a dominantly white space, I think it’s important to offer text to challenge the systemic racism that exists everywhere (including at 8 days) and help us in our process of learning and unlearning.
Why did you bring this book to share? I took this book as it was the smallest one within reach to read on the plane. Originally a slave, he became an important stoic philosopher. He writes about things we don't talk about today.
Why did you bring this book to share? I read this book over and over as part of my practice because the reflections the artist makes on her process of image making, weaving in multiple literary and philosophical references, are embodied or in relation to her body. The auto-theory, which seems fundamentally a feminist mode of making, unfolds at a pace that feels good and helpful to me.
Why did you bring this book to share? A book about facilitating change by partnering with life, it speaks to my theory that maybe we have more than we know and we just need to look for what is already there and activate that - in making, in organizing our communities, in a context like 8 DAYS.
Why did you bring this object to share? I offered use of my camera to the group in the hopes of providing a space to more collectively document 8 DAYS 8 JOURS 8. I also liked the idea of finding random photos on my camera when I got back to my room at night. I've posted a selection of these at Collective Camera.
Why did you bring this book to share? An example of a printed object that I got from some PhD-artist-intellectuals visiting from Europe. I thought the mix of content and aesthetic might create discussion or at least elicit some comments.
Why did you bring this book to share? I am interested in socio-political choreographies which has brought out different levels of fear related to my dance practice. I share this book because I find it's a radical example of someone facing political fear at courageous levels.
Why did you bring this book to share? I brought a Design & Home magazine because I am curious about this thing I do where sometimes I find myself buying a magazine. It's always a design magazine related to the home, but also always on the upper scale, rather than something like Canadian Living. I notice I buy this when I am needing to take life less seriously. I allow my eyes to slide along the pages, taking note when they land on something that is interesting to me. It's like an Interest Scale. I also take note on ideas for the space I am currently living in.
Why did you bring this book to share? Peter A. Levine was recommended at last year’s 8 days by Shannon Cooney as a useful resource for working with trauma and the body, spurring me to bring it for this year’s library. In the process of discovering what is hidden in my body (inherited family trauma, subsumed cultural toxicities), Somatic Experiencing (which this book outlines), has helped me be more sensitive to my body and its changes.
Why did you bring this book to share? RILKE is a poet so known but this book is unexpected. Some poems are words on the page and some jump right off. It's only a bit a day... I read it in the bath.
Why did you bring this book to share? I am interested in how feminists practices and theories help make connections between art making, politics and environment in general. And in particular how even within progressive contexts we often do re-conduct oppressive or sexist systems, because of unconscious bias.
Why did you bring this book to share? Where 8 Days theoretically operates in a non-hierarchical manner, I wondered how the Going Horizontal ideas and/or practices for working together might relate to ours.
Why did you bring this book to share? I offer this book because it’s something that I’ve been wanting to read and I’m happy to have a book on this subject coming out of the Canadian context.
Why did you bring this book to share? I saw Michelle Sylliboy read part of this work a few days before 8 DAYS, and she made a deep impression on me in her teachings about carrying on traditions and the transmission of culture. She was raised on unceded territory in We’koqmaq, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, close to where this residency is taking place, and this beautiful book includes Mi’kmaq (L’nuk) hieroglyphic poetry, that is important in many ways, for me, in its wisdom and resilience.