Can musings become facts? I shall share them to try.

I have been developing this shared practice with my mother since our residency last August. To me it is necessary to continue developing a process. To nurture it, allow it to grow roots, and in turn, be curious about where it will take me.

I wonder if a process can be a product, forever? If it can be unfazed by the performative and unbound by time? And how can my curiosity live past me?

In sharing this practice with my mom, I am finding an evolving body of work, and I wonder if that can be our ongoing “piece”?

My mom is a doctor, teacher, scientist and I am an artist, teacher, researcher. We have been conversing with our bodies, guided by an unyielding sense of wonder as our trusted mediator, even if we don’t always see eye to eye.

Today our task was to move the scientific by moving our selves i.e our cells. We listened to an excerpt of a RadioLab podcast titled Elements where poets, musicians, journalists, physicists speak about certain elements from the periodic table. We used coloured pencils on paper to reflect and retain our thoughts in symbols, numbers, and words. We then picked 14 elements from our scribbled notes to use as a score for movement improvisation. Hala traced back the origin of the number 14, played with its multiples in different languages, and related it to fertility in the menstrual cycle. Mona played with her interpreted elements and followed their thread of abstracted evolution. In the end we shared our phrases, transmitted them to one another, and exchanged how we got from listening to writing to moving (and beyond). We embodied the life cycles of “scientific” things within us; some that precede us and many that will continue to degenerate past us. So has and so goes this process...

With gratitude and awe,

Mona