LAB fOR INTimacy




Lieu de Fabrique/Fabrique de Lieu
to be continued

Just call

Her Still Singing Limbs is a labOrint of interpretation. Even if inevitably we will get lost, still we cry out "Where is the place of the interpreter?" We give ourselves material. Matter in various forms, such as transcriptions of the myth of Echo, or a song we have written, actions set in a dramaturgy, distinct contexts of a given vocabulary... We call these materials 'spaces'. And we invest our bodies in strategies to deal with the inevitable. How do we call these spaces up?
Can we avoid the assumption that this matter is silent? That 'it needs us' to become performative? And if so, what topologies will we discover then? How do we inhabit them? Where is this emptiness that asks out loud to be inhabited?

What is the instant of everyday life? Every word we speak, every gesture, implies so many others left unsaid. How many stories might we not have expanded? And in the moment just before pronouncing, just before we flex, what life can we still unfold? Where do we carry the name of our everyday existence? Is it in the balancing act between what we might be and what we become? Is this sharp fold the interface between subjects?

Back to the labOrint. So we shout into the void and out rushes a jinn. It's only a fantasy, don't panic. Panic is the part reserved for the public. That's where they pass their finger-nail along the fold. That's where the fold seems sharpened to the point of tearing. Where can you, the spectator, go, if you dare to wonder into the threshold? Dare to start the story.

And at the other end of the story there is always an echo. It is the voice of the space we create. The echo counts because it lasts. It also takes time to gather around all the space. It takes time to reach the walls and get back.

How to translate into our LabOrintine language, the so called immediacy of the stage under the light of public gaze. Can we affirm "The stage under public auscultation, pours out an incessant babble"? As such it would be distinct from the intimate performativity of speech. This is why as interpreters we need to listen. Is this how we call up the material we have given ourselves?

How do we make our space in a labOrint? We stretch our arms out in front of us. When we find a wall, we turn. But can we take for granted this strategy? Can we just, - gently if you like-, throw our bodies at the walls. Are its boundaries compatible with those of the labOrint? So if we have an everyday habit with a folded interface, perhaps in our labOrint we should unfold it. And if we unfold stories,- or "spaces" as we called them-, do we in the same operation necessarily fold time onto itself?... "Was the echo before or after?" Back to the future. Fold unfold fold unfold,... where are the boundaries of our bodies?

So call!! Just call!! The voice is interface of bodies and space. It is how we let matter inhabit us. Call, but quietly, listen.

Oh! And how does one get out of a labOrint, live to tell the story? To be sure, one must let go of the walls.
Four artists conspire around the mythological characters of Echo and Narcissus hidden in many contexts: going from everyday to the Communicationsatellite Echo 1 and ‘stereotyped narcistic love’. We centre this material around the status of speech in connection with the body as a flickering signal. Echo’s voice functions as an interface between body and cosmos. How does she reflect the worlds we live in? A space defines the colour of an Echo. A story-space? What happens on the threshold between in and out? Is it a story about the threshold of a story?

a concept poured into a process

how we became
Her Still Singing Limbs

Simon Wiliams
Ellen Vandepitte
Michiel Reynaert
Anne Dekerk


a concept poured into a process


How we became parts, joined to something larger, and brought it the power to move and hold on. We re-enacted our failed attempts. How? How did four blind people meet? Called out for each other? Developed echo-location skills? And kept on failing,immersed in a common beginning. Immersed in the sound of a space, when quietly entering. How we grew to be -Her Still Singing Limbs-, multiplied and exhausted all forms. The form of failure. Failure to call out from the threshold.


where are blogs?
perhaps they are here and now
in fragments, layered

they are a here and now that needs to be called up, like a genie out of an dusty oil-lamp

or appear on the threshold of a prosthetic sense: as search results of any chosen search engine. does your curiosity reach the threshold of a mouse-click

an encyclopedic here and now

In any case, for Her Still Singing Limbs, we like basic forms: a peg & hole game
and crude failure: trying to fit the round peg into the square hole. That's where a blog fits this project.

and what about trying to fit your hand in?

or the whole world?

and everybody can confirm this quote:
a blog is a front, a carefully chosen face, interface; or is it a voice?