Stop-Start: Signals: Children's Centre, Hackney

19.3.2010 11.am


This notion explored in Entropy -above- of using the edge of an attention span, of a breath, of a considered unit of thought or action and to use that limit as the grit in the system from which, after a certain pause, to swing around or back-peddle is a way to build up and sew together units of time, of grasp, of doing and rest that work off of each other where they come together. Information is not in the stuff of these units but in their jointing. Working with the jointing- as a felt intensity or concentration and then a release into free-wheeling off from that contraction creates an awareness of a process of on-going events. Surprisingly it is where the event runs out and lingers or malingers- a stagger or stutter or holding in place even as the process internally revolves- that operations continue to occur. Are we surprised at these operations? We are continually amazed at the physics of how a system slides and crunches over terrain. The dysfunction is only a negation with regards to a single and limited goal. Yet in the run of things it defines what is happening as much as ease of movement. The wobble, crash and interruption surprise us even when we know about it. We anticipate the jolt that we are never entirely ready for because it is a point of crushing and squashing into contact and a going into that texture or a rebounding off from that surface. Surface and depth texture are then qualities of approach. Of a certain motion in the way that parts stick or turn around each other. The differing speeds that are brought into alignment in order to work up an affect are never entirely knowable. That is what keeps the interest, the engagement, the curiosity from things we set in motion but cannot entirely hold.

At the Children's Centre a boy on a tricycle crashes into walls and barriers and other tricycles. A jolt goes through his body, wobbles his head that rocks from the repercussions between his shoulders from side to side. He is seeking out these moments again and again. I begin to work with that, escalating him, and then stopping as if we had hit an invisible frontier. The frontier becomes more rubbery, elastic, sinuous, like glue. It is on the ground. It is the ground. It is in patches of ground that we pass through and that halt the progress, through which we need to move and shove against; this mud and grit and piles of stuff that we are ploughing through. It's a hard task. Feet brace against the ground to gain some traction. I push with all my might from the back. We make ground, cut free from the chewing gum slush and suddenly shoot forward, hurtled on by the volition of this stored up energy, held in check and then dramatically let free. We become a catapult. We play with the contrast of these states and it is the physical description of the gooey mud, chewing gum substance that invades the wheels pulling the spin from them into near stoppage that compels and drives the engagement both in and beyond that substance. It is the voicing out of this stuff somewhere between disgust and fascination that the compulsion and know-how in order to act in various ways emerges as if the constraint bit by bit were being felt out and acted upon. When the boy can actually feel the quality and stuffness of this hindrance he stops and goes with a precision of detail and navigational expertise that is fractionally accurate so that even real hindrances, obstacles, people are met in the anticipation of possible results. Narrow alleyways are maneuvered through- the crash becomes an internally held idea, useable because it is felt. All that actual crashing- all the perceived naughtiness and "horrible little boy" stuff that inspired admonition from nearby adults and was replicated by nearby children is put to use. The jolts now configured and spread so as to acquire power not in the stopping but in the running free from the hindrance- This backwards power, levered against to create passage through the mire of congestion and constraint is useable. The increased momentum that this sudden usurpation in the spin of release allows creates a breeze in that speed. A breathing openness. Other vehicles meet and tag into this game of rush and stop like a signal banter that gathers pace because it is built on short-lived collectivities that then dissipate. Entropy becomes interesting.

Later he looks over to an adjacent playground where older children are running along a strip of road painted like a real road on to the playground tarmac. A signal box is at one end with the familiar red, green and blue lighting system. I say that the red means the sticky chewing gum mud and the green means release from the mud. Orange is mid-way between the hindrance and the run free.

Stop and start. What do these mean? Voices frequently tell a child to stop. Collision; can you stop, stopping? How does a child qualitively tell the difference between a slow halt and a collision? Stop-start is the tangible constraint and release that the body works off. It can not be known as a command in and of itself. Behavior is not a moral issue in this regard. It is ultimately how we find ourselves in relation to the stickiness or smoothness of our surroundings and in how we experience and come to envision these qualities of constraint and release in relation to countless differing circumstances and ultimately in relation to one another. That is at the heart of the signals that only come later as an add-on, as does our languaging; our manner of address. The way we face each other and move and how we come to articulate the one with the other. Our stopping and starting.