Since the practices of Cave Forms and Caving are based in quietude and fecundity, they have been unusually generative along the way. This is not only in terms of the plethora of performances and events created out of stillness, but also in the generation of ideas, pedagogy, and materials that can function beyond the art pieces in their original context. All of the facets work in constellation, and enact the potency of Ca’avs. Here are some examples:
As I started to develop the practice of Caving and watched it develop aesthetically thru Cave Forms, I found a set of processes growing that were generalizable for a creative live art project.
Inspiration / Felt Sense > Idea > Experiment > Practice > Practices > Indexing > Performances > Rest
Cave Forms specifically has felt so slow, so deep, so powerful, that we have likened its ride to a whale in the ocean, with most of its experience underwater, and every once in a while coming up and spurting out into the air.
When an art project is given the space, time, and context to grow beyond a singular set of events, then the ideas that emerge can be generalizable, and pedagogical tools and practices.
The more we slowed down in the caves, and the more I made space for slowing in the arc of the piece, the more the arc of the piece emerged as an arc, with nodes along it explicated and named. At some point in this slowing process, it became clear to me that art is odd in the sense that there is so much shared inquiry and research, and then the ideas and growth that come in a project “end’ somehow when the project does, and a new project begins, with what was learned composted to help grow the next one. This is an important process, and from the slowness I felt the importance to extend some of those spaces where one switches to a new vision, and let the ideas simmer, compost, and grow even more. So then, the proposition arose: what if the ideas that grew had space to be cultivated and explicated? The movement operations and scores, the ideas, the practices, they all began to take more form, and could be figured and formulated into something more like a pedagogy, and in this situation, more aptly a caveagogy. Through mapping, through teaching them in various contexts, and assemblages, Cave Forms and Caving began to emerge as approaches for learning, that could be applied to making art, to nourishing life, and to one’s creative evolution. The caveagogy is growing still, slowly.
Some of the most salient aspects of Cave Forms are the ones that can continue beyond the project. Cave Forms has become a set of pedagogical practices, or in its own language, caveagogical skills that can support creative process, practice, and praxis. The basic actions that are the foundational research, such as caving, working with sensation and design, with the inextricable relationship of mover and viewer, with the potency of opening and closing of the cloth, can be used as a set of elements to develop an artistic process, dance, and presencing in art and daily life.
Cave Forms worked with collectivity from many angles. The Cave Coast collective practiced foundationally and explicitly with the inquiry, “what is the dance between authorship and collective imagining?” The Collective was invented as a stream of Cave Forms from the onset to explore what could be learned or developed together that could not grow in personal research. Another basic question that was the basis of this collective stream: how to create social spaces that support the work of the instigator, and at the same time have enough room for people to be in their own creative inquiry and growing, simultaneously?
At base, Cave Forms works with connectivity, exchange, and togetherness. One of the paradoxes of being in a cave or a cloth “cave” is that one is provided personal space, but that space is necessarily in relation (to the cloth, with the environment, in place). The very nature of the aesthetic research of Cave Forms that differentiates it from Caving is that there is an intention to feel more than one side, that one can experience sensation from within and also practice with the quality, understanding, or perception that they are being seen. This came to be called “sensation and design” (thank you karen nelson for the phrase), and it is a basis for many ways in practice and in scores that Cave Forms works with imagining and collectivity.
Also in terms of collective imagining, the concept of three was primary in the project. The Three Treasures — in Taoist practice essence (earth), energy (human), and spirit (sky)— are interconnected aspects of life vitality, and are conceptually and formally the seed for a panoply of trios of Cave Forms (see Codex in middle column). This interconnectivity is best seen in the iconography of the vivid grove site: cave, channel, and constellation, aka earth, humanity, and sky-mind. This tripling provided an imagistic form that is embedded with collectivity from its base.
Art seems to be best when there is space for its reflection.
Art seems to attain (deeper) meaning when there is space dedicated for reflecting, digesting, drawing off of the experience.
Cave performances seemed to gain meaning through the spaces in between, the ways feedback was built into the events (thank you Lisa and tuning scores).
Walks, dances, and journeys seemed to gain meaning magically through space for their reflection. This is one of the seeds of the vivid archive, because once someone has agency to work from their own growing, art begets new art. It is no longer a captured relic, as it is imbued with reflection.
Through developing artistic and archiving processes for Cave Forms, I picked up on resonant creative practices of my peers and colleagues, and experienced the use that comes from giving space for each person/s respective artistic unfolding as part of our collaborations. This lead me in a few salient directions for Cave Forms.
1 > The archiving project became clearly one that would enable each person who participated to follow their own creative stream, thereby inviting the re/generative capacities of artistic growth to be embedded in the reflections of the work. The fecundity of the caves invited vivid expressions to grow, and so too the archiving methods and materials. For example, in making videos for the work, each one was an experimental collaboration that was lead by the maker, creating new artistic forms.
With a Vivid Archive, the material that was originally created finds new meaning through the practice and procedure of open reflection, transducing from one form to another. It’s a direct response to Capital, in the sense that it does not invite directive, lineal time, but rather is imbricated and in collage-time, slowing-down time, and giving-space time. The vivid archive is one which is shared, multiplicitous, and constellated.
2 > One of the primary inquiries that emerged through collective practices of Cave Forms and Cave Coast Collective was this: what is the relation between authorship and collective imagining? And this was related to another question: how can the practice of direction nourish both the research of Cave Forms, as well as the creative inquiries of the respective participants of each event? Even to ask the question, and to provide the incubatorial space of the caves led to people’s experience of agency and creative support.
Through mapping out relations and connectivity, I was able to explicate the deep roots of Taoist alchemical study and Chinese energetics that underlie Cave Forms. Specifically, this showed how the three treasures -- earth, sky, and body-being, (aka essence (jing), life force (qi), and spirit (shen) fueled, nourished, and guided the qualities and tones of the streams of the multiplicitious constellations of Cave Forms.