Embodying Art: Exploring New Spaces of Experiencing the World with DAY Collective

Have you ever conversed with someone not with words, but by drawing on your own skin? Tete-a-Tete Triptych, a project by the Amsterdam-based artist duo DAY Collective, explores new ways of communication. DAY Collective consists of Yulia Ratman and Dorota Radzimirska, who I met during their studies at Rietveld Academie Amsterdam. By utilizing the human body as a medium and creating participatory performances and tactile sculptures, the artists investigate the relationships between humans and their environment.

Detail of a participant’s back after a *Tete-a-Tete* performance by DAY Collective, (c) DAY Collective

As human nature implies being embodied, now, more than ever, our (dis)embodied social existence needs to be reflected upon. Tete-a-Tete is a participatory performance that produces a distinct relationality in which the human body becomes the tangible entry point for the understanding of the relationship with oneself, the self and the others. It provides us with an embodied experience of novel ways of relating to each other and to our inner selves, which helps us experience and later on rethink our being in the world within a process of a constant reconfiguration of the societal fabric brought about by technologies.

I sat down with Dorota and Yulia to speak about their project, as well as more broadly about issues, such as embodiment, societal existence, global transformation and the role of their artistic projects within these larger frameworks.

Tell us about your story: who forms DAY Collective, and what is at the core of your art projects?

Dorota Radzimirska: DAY Collective is two of us – Yulia Ratman and Dorota Radzimirska. We met during our studies at Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. After we finished our studies it all organically transformed into working together. What brought us together was the interest in creating conditions for new ways of relating to and with each other and the environment. Using materials consciously too.

Yulia Ratman: Our work is conscious as well as spontaneous with a positive, hopeful way of thinking. At the core of our projects is trying to find new conditions for relations within society. At Rietveld we had interactive performances, but afterwards our focus shifted to participatory performances.

Detail of a *Tete-a-Tete* performance by DAY Collective, (c) DAY Collective

Tell us a bit more about the Tete-a-Tete Triptych Project? What is Tete-a-Tete and what does it mean to converse without words?

YR: Tete-a-Tete Triptych is a participatory performance for only 5 people – two artists and three participants. Anyone can join this experience, which is a conversation through drawing on your own skin. There is only one rule: no words. We don’t stay in silence, of course, because we can laugh and produce other sounds. We just don’t speak.

DR: Also because silence is not something to be imposed but rather a state to open up to. And this rule, ‘no words’, is a medium for opening this silent space, which is a space of being at ease and possessing full focus, of being inwards and outwards at the same time.

YR: The performance happens in three contexts – online, public space and traditional art spaces.

In what ways does this project allow us to experience new ways of being?

DR: We remove something–the most usual way of meeting each other and relating to one another, which is language. Especially with strangers, we need some tools to start a conversation, so there is always a set of questions for small talk, such as, where are you from, what are you doing for work, etc. Those are, of course, necessary. But what if we propose something else and remove the language? In our past projects we played a lot with proximity, we would break these proxemics that are normal in society, where, when you don’t know each other you always keep a distance, and we would create the conditions for physical closeness with someone that you don’t know and explore what happens.

YR: It’s quite amazing how much our brain and then the body are dependent on language. It forms the basis of our culture. As soon as we remove this element, there is a certain cut within this strong tree of culture that divides us in different categories, whether nationality, location, dialect, etc. Then we are simply connected on a very different level. This brings us back to our natural state. ‘No words’ is the only rule and it seems that it is still hard for people to realise that they are free to express themselves without speaking.

DR: From the experiences we collect from the participants and also from our observations during the performance, freedom is very much overwhelming and confronting but in a good way. It also shakes us up, as we are so used to following what is wrong and what is right and hearing the guidance of how to be. Many people experience this ‘figuring out’ moment, or as we call it ‘soft liminal space’. By this we mean a space of fog, where you can get lost and where everything is possible: it is losing the ground, uprooting yourself. It’s a big transition moment. Here, it is a very soft gentle one.

Participant’s during a *Tete-a-Tete* performance by DAY Collective, (c) DAY Collective

YR: Only during the performance do people realize that it is a conversation based on your intuition rather than thinking. This is a breakthrough. And then a breakthrough is the fact of tactility, as in the performance we connect beyond words and beyond reasoning. These two things meet each other. A form of communication is still happening, and here it happens on your skin.

What inspired you to work with the human body and why do you employ the body in your artistic practice?

DR: This interest in the body was already there before we began our studies. Yulia and I believe in the intelligence of the body, which is now returning in the cultural understanding, but it is also very much not present in this modern virtual society. We experience how different and interesting it is to communicate with each other through the body and we find it important to bring it to the surface, and to make others experience that.

YR: It is just extremely exciting to work with the body. As Dorota says, our bodies provide us with a lot of knowledge and I think we tend to forget that nowadays because of technology. It seems that every time there is a certain crisis within society, our concept of the body suffers. Whether it’s because in antiquity people were too excited about the body, or in the Middle Ages people were too scared of their body, and now we are completely forgetting about it because of the virtual world. There are all these crises because of an imbalance between the body and the mind.

DR: Today, the body is very much objectified. From this perspective there is a lot of focus on it too, but we find it very important to ‘subjectify’ it. We aim to do that by breaking the patterns of daily behaviour and letting the body surprise us. One can never fully get away from objectifying but we create the conditions for balancing both.

YR: And connect body and mind, rather than separate them.

Detail of an online *Tete-a-Tete* performance by DAY Collective, (c) DAY Collective

If we accept that human nature means being embodied, how do you address the question of the physical/virtual dichotomy in Tete-a-Tete online?

YR: For us it was very surprising that Tete-a-Tete Triptych gives a very strong feeling of connection between participants in all of its contexts, online as well. It actually all started from the online context.

DR: A lot of it comes down to the specific way we use the online realm. In Tete-a-Tete, it is always a maximum of 3 participants, so people can see each other well throughout. The closed self-view brings more focus to the others, rather than to your own appearance.

YR: We don’t speak and then we become very connected. The connection expands beyond physicality.

DR: We have to mention also the skin as a very important element, as it leads to this embodied communication and connection. Michel Serres says that skin is the organ where all other senses are meeting each other, and it is also one of the most sensitive organs. It is amazing how, when other people are drawing on their skin you can nearly feel what they feel. It leads to connection through tactility and touch, which is something physical and at the same time emotional and mental. We can be physically touched and also emotionally and mentally touched by something or someone. These are all related.

Do you feel that humanity is going through a global transformation? If so, in what ways does your work take place in it?

YR: Yes, a global transformation is very much visible and it is happening all around us. It seems that there is a very strong imbalance between the place of the body and mind. We find it important that such projects as Tete-a-Tete exist: to let you connect with yourself, your body with your mind and others in a very subtle way. It is very intimate, on a micro-scale.

DR: We believe in the power of experiences of small groups of people and working on this micro-level. The conversations during Tete-a-Tete relax us and bring us back to the unity of mind and body and it is interesting to see after the performance that there are so many thoughts coming, but these thoughts come from a clear headspace. In this sense, it is a small moment of clarity and peace.

Very often with mindfulness practices we connect with ourselves and after these personal processes, we come to the other in the outer world. During a Tete-a-Tete conversation, you are actually communicating with the others from the space within.

Participant during a *Tete-a-Tete* performance by DAY Collective, (c) DAY Collective

IB: You say that Tete-a-Tete is a contribution to finding peace within and with the external world. I think its contribution is also in creating space to open up, creating a moment of opportunity.

DR: In the process of Tete-a-Tete the transformation is happening, you experience it, and later this diffractive process brings you to reflection.

YR: Diffraction is beyond judgment and beyond these categorizations. By not using words, we learn totally different information about each other during one hour.

DR: You also look at the body differently in this process, you touch your own body in a way that you normally don’t, and you observe your bodily parts that you normally don’t connect to. The same happens in others. Very often we are surprised how our body leads us, always in relation to others because it is a conversation. You can really find a common flow in it together. This language is unfolding in a moment. Conversation is really there physically.

What will happen with Tete-a-Tete conversation in the future? What plans do you have for the future?

DR: We want to travel around the world with it and offer it to different sectors: hospitals; people with psychological and social issues and the corporate world. The next performances we have planned are for the sociology department at a university and another as a birthday gift to a friend. On our website there will be an option to sign up for online performance once a week. And we are open for collaborations.

DAY Collective’s works were shown among others at Herengracht 401, Lustwarande, Art Rotterdam, Tropenmuseum, Framer Framed and Mediamatic, supported by AFK and Mondrian Funds. To learn more about the Tete-a-Tete Triptych project or to participate in Tete-a-Tete online, check out DAY Collective’s website: daycollective.com.