Dear Gabriella,
Manchmal habe ich das Gefühl, dass Sie mich besser verstehen, wenn ich Deutsch spreche.
Vielleicht stimmt das aber auch nicht.
Vielleicht braucht die Kommunikation zwischen Menschen keine Worte.
Wir können mit unserem Körper kommunizieren.
Sehen Sie das?
.
I have been observing the body language of someone trying to listen closely.
Often, they bundle their bodies and put their heads down between their legs.
They physically try to avoid their vision being part of their senses — and closing the eyes is simply not enough.
Through the action, I start to imagine our body as a piece of formable clay.
I also realized that when I try to listen to a foreign language, I tend to come closer to the person speaking to me with my ears.
It is as if the closer I am to this person, the better I could decipher what he or she is speaking,
or that the easier I could translate the foreign language into my language.
If I come closer, can I understand them better?
Tonight I attended an artist talk with Asad Raza; he said that language is fluid and it doesn’t have to have a form.
I relate that to the fluidity of the movements of the body.
I am always impressed by how dancers are able to control every part of their muscles and truly feel their existence.
I seldom feel my existence. I am often too deeply engraved and statue in my own thoughts.
Sometimes I even forget to recognize familiar faces. When a thought comes into my mind,
I often lose my words in the middle of a conversation. And more often, I just want to be anonymous. I do not wish to be recognized.
Gabriella, do you think that is a contradiction for wanting to be an artist?
Many years ago in Dia:Beacon, New York, I saw the works of Robert Irwin.
This quote by Donald Woods Winnicott besides it says,
“Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.”.
Das stimmt, Gabriella…
Genau so fühle ich mich als Künstlerin.
(letter never finished)
December 15