Conversation between Dana Michel and Kerstin Schroth about YOU CANNOT CAN

Dana, you have been thinking about this performance for several years. Could you share the process with us?

I really like or need for every process that I undertake to unfurl over some kind of extended time. I mean, it feels like whatever amount of time is allotted for something…just imagine that generally I feel like I need the double but really the triple. I just really need to move very slowly in order to absorb everything that I feel I need to absorb in order to feel as though all of me is actually mostly fully involved in whatever it is that I am doing. And any amount of time that I allot for myself is also never even close to being enough. Every day I make a very detailed schedule of how each day could or should go and every day I blast through the estimations. Like, I can’t even estimate the correct amount of time for teeth-brushing because inevitably I’m going to need to stop mid-brush to make a note about something and then go lie down and think about the note. There is always SO MUCH TO SEE DO THINK FEEL HEAR SMELL along the way and hierarchies are not a part of my heartscape. Mkay aaaannnnnyyyyywwwaaayyyyy hehehehhehe, yes, the first time that I remember speaking out loud about this swimming piece was during the week that I premiered CUTLASS SPRING in May 2019. I was meeting with Dries Douibi and Daniel Blanga Gubbay from Kunstenfestival in Brussels because uh huh, that’s where the premiere was happening. And they were like “what are you thinking of for the next piece?” – and of course this felt like a wild question to answer because I was just starting to crawl out of the womb of the thing that was premiering. But actually, I guess it wasn’t so wild and I suppose my answer will be more ripe fruit or will be most likely to spring from the depths of my gut well. Yes, what was fresh fresh and very present at that time was me reflecting on how much it took for me to trust people. Which led me to thinking about how much I trusted myself. Which led me to think that I needed to do something about the low low low trust levels that I was detecting. Which led me to thinking “PROJECT”. And at around the same time in life, my kiddo was taking weekly swim lessons. And I was having a lot of buried pool-environment angst flooding my system every Sunday morning that I brought him to the pool…the wetness, the noises, the temperatures, the “damn it I’m in my forties and I STILL CAN’T SWIM”. Which led me to thinking “PROJECT”. I’m prone to needing to do more than one thing at a time.

I am intrigued by the question you pose in the announcement text for the performance: How safe can you feel in the world if you cannot float in the liquid that makes up a large part of your body? Could you speak more about it?

So yes, oh great…what I left off with in my answer to the previous question feeds directly into my thoughts about this question. Uh huh, so when Dries and Daniel asked about my next creation moves, I remember responding by talking about both of these PROJECTS. I suppose that’s where the merging happened. They felt like a good fit, thinking about trust and thinking about swimming seemed to definitely go together. I basically am pretty much always preoccupied with doing practical things. Maybe in large part because I would perpetually much rather be busy absorbing the minutiae of experiencing. And so I kind of have this tiny little whip of “be practical” in the front of my mind. Uh huh, because the unavoidable thing about life is the trying-to-live part. And I just cannot not be preoccupied with figuring out how to do that in the most practical ways possible because the more practical I am about doing things, the smoother they might go and the quicker I can go back to being busy with simply experiencing. Anyway, it suddenly seemed very impractical indeed to be a person who could not reasonably assure themselves of being able to continue to live if submerged in certain kinds of water conditions without the assistance of others. And yes, you know, once I open a tab – I’m gonna need to open a bunch more tabs. It’s like eating chips. I munched on “ouf, I better learn to swim”. I munched on “ouf, OBVIOUSLY I better learn how to swim, hello? I am a water sign! I am made of water! Not trusting water means not trusting me! Uh oh.” PROJECT.

The performance takes place in local swimming pools. The photos, which we see, for example, on social media and in your press dossier, are very beautiful to look at. They create projections and invite the imagination beforehand. For me, they also create a contrast, a tension, with the subtlety of the performance and the content that you address. What do you think about this?

Hmmmmmm. Yes, So the first thing that comes up for me is to think that this is the danger of descriptive texts and what they are expected to read like. You know, if it were up to me I wouldn’t give one. Well, that’s not totally true. I would much prefer to give texts that give a feeling about something, that maybe just points to an atmosphere of thoughts rather than texts that try to describe what the work is about. When I am working on a piece I am always much happier to be able to offer cloud thoughts rather than a description of what I am aiming to do. I am never sure of what I am aiming to do in an exact sense, so writing about anything that approaches exactitudes is kinda absurd. Because for me the piece isn’t ABOUT. The piece is thinking and dreaming and remembering and proposing out loud. But like, of course I understand the need to give people a few sentences that may somehow clearly and succinctly point to what a work is trying to do or share so that people can determine how they may practically spend their time. When I am picking a movie to watch, yup, I definitely read the description first! But generally I find these descriptions to be quite thin and sad and I find that they mostly tell me nothing. I don’t rely on them to point me in the right direction. Okay, and of course the first thing that draws me in is looking at the picture, the promotional image. That’s what is mostly gonna help me decide whether I should further investigate. Then I have to watch the trailer and I will be able to glean sooooooo much information from that trailer. All that delicious texture and soundscape to help point me in the “right” direction. But I’m not looking for information that will guarantee that the pictures and the words will match. I’m looking for information that tells me that I am about to go on an adventure where I am being offered to get beautifully lost, but that the creators still care that I find MY way through it somehow. I really really really try hard to offer the opportunity for people to create their own way and to just be able to experience what is happening in the moment and to invite along their own memories. In performance, I really try to reflect the non-linearity that is experiencing being alive, you know? There is actually just sooooooo muuuuuuch content shoved inside of these teeny projects because that’s what every moment of being alive feels like – for me anyway! Mkay, footnote: I just looked up the short text description for “Everything Everywhere All at Once”. Yeah, it works – or rather, most of the little paragraphs that I found basically work. They say nothing about the movie but kinda do say something enough to invite me in without telling me what is going to happen while also telling me a strong throughline of what is going to happen. Hahahahahhahaha this sentence that I just wrote! Anyway, this tells me that I still have so much work to do in this piece description construction department. It’s just sooooo hard when there are soooooo many competing desires. And generally what I want to say about the work and what presenting bodies want to say about the work and maybe what each individual coming to see the work wants to read about the work don’t match. How to make it all match? It doesn’t match! It’s an eternal quest, this trying to figure out how to just invite people to be curious, to let go into the swirl of possibility and to not close themselves off into preconceptions or strict sense-making. We are sooooo hungry for sense. It’s practical.