intimate walk with Marko / sleeping with Marko and Antonio

Marko makes me question my project. He seems concerned about what I really want out of it. And I am disappointed in myself that I cannot give him an answer. I see him as someone very sensitive and receptive. To him intimacy can be observing ants together. Or hugging a tree and complaining to that tree all of life's sorrows. We got lost in the forest for a short while. This felt quite intimate. We also talked a lot. About relationships and the usual intimate stuff. We laughed together and I found him beautiful. Sometimes there is a quality quite hard an determined about him. And then again he can be completely innocent and childlike. I know that I don't show my emotions easily. I know I have a complex about wanting to be more intimate with people and more emotional. I started this project to provide me with a safe frame in which I can push my boundaries. Marko asks very direct and simple questions:
"Why don't you just tell people you want to be intimate with them instead of using the excuse of a project? What is it you really want?" I am very impressed, maybe even overwhelmed by his persistence in asking these questions. I think he is genuinely concerned about my sanity and well-being. But also about the way I treat people involved in my project.
Last night I slept with Antonio and Marko in one big double bed. At first I did two intimate performances for them which were quite silly an naive. I will definitely have to rethink how to objectively test intimacy in performance. After some relevant dialog about the ethical and very basic human implications of my project, we got physically intimate in a very tender and careful way. I was surprised that it felt so natural and comfortable. There were moments though when I did think about my responsibility in proposing this project to them, about how far I am willing to let this go and about the degree of intimacy experienced in the moment. So I was the rat and the scientist simultaneously (that is Antonio's metaphor).
In the morning at eight I left to do my yoga and laughing meditation alone. I was conscious it was a way of escaping. After opening a lot towards others in an intimate way I tend to run back to discipline. I think it is my way of dealing with ambiguous feelings of guilt and confusion. I engaged myself vigorously in yoga and laughing to get a handle on my loss of perspective and control. Marko expects me to be clear with my intentions. Like Jean-Baptiste he distrusts ambiguity. In our talks he keeps coming back to the human basics of what I set out to do. He doesn't like calling it a project. What would be his function in this project? Is he just a tool for my research? I really appreciate his questions and concern. I feel both flattered and anxious about it.

intimate walk with Min

With Min I did the sleeping project last January in Amsterdam. So I already felt quite intimately connected to her. We held hands on our walk. It was a slow, languid walk. We talked about feeling connected to the universe, to nature, to the landscape around us. This is a kind of intimacy too. On our walk I felt a bit nostalgic and lazy. I told Min that to me it feels very natural and comforting to be with her. I felt a bit foggy with my thoughts. No big, pressing issues arose out of our conversation. It felt more like the universe was smiling at us and saying that it's o.k. to feel like that: a bit lazy and heavy and nostalgic. It was a rather uneventful walk. I should have written about it right after it happened. Two days have passed since my walk with Min. And I remember more a general feeling of feeling safe and protected. With Min I felt I could just be who I was in that moment. I felt a big acceptance and no need to prove or test or create anything. I didn't even feel the need to be especially alert and aware to notice intimacy in case it would manifest itself. I think it was simply there all along. And it felt very normal and good.

intimate walk with Jean-Baptiste

On my intimate walk with Jean-Baptiste we imagined that intimacy was all around us like the wind and it was a question of being ready for it and allowing it to settle on us. We were talking a lot theoretically which created a lot of windy thoughts. I was mainly listening and feeling bashful. During the whole walk I felt intimacy was in the air. From the very beginning at PAF I had developed a crush on Jean-Baptiste and when I like someone I usually wish to find the perfect moment to confess my feelings. Yet I was hesitant. I wasn’t completely sure I was ready to bear the consequences of such a confession. It became quite clear that Jean-Baptiste likes clarity in relationships. He isn’t much into ambiguity and playing games. Although if he decides to he can be a great flirt. He said it himself. When I feel attracted to somebody and at the same think that person is very intelligent and wise I tend to become quite shy and quiet. I told Jean-Baptiste I was more in a listening mood. And he was in a sharing mood. I thought to myself that I could learn a lot from him. He seems to be quite grounded and know where to set his boundaries. I respect him a lot for that. He has gotten hurt in the past playing these ambiguous games. It made me question once more my real intentions of doing this intimacy project. Do I want to stay very objective and scientific in my approach? Is it more about circling around intimacy, playing with the notion of it without really going there? Or am I willing and available enough to let go of control, to lose myself in the project and get really intimate? Can I be really intimate while staying an observer of my research? I realized that I was already quite confused. We hiked up a muddy path in the forest. Eventually there was a kind of hill with a nice view over a field. We decided to sit down. Jean-Baptiste told me about the relationship he has been in for two years, about the psychoanalysis his parents forced him to do and the new somatic therapy he started recently. I wasn't sure if hearing him talk about his boyfriend made me feel disappointed or relieved. We sat there on this little hill overlooking the field and I felt quite comfortable and also a bit melancholic all of a sudden. I still hadn't really said very much during our walk. I felt bashful and confused but also strangely happy to just be there with him. We shared some nice moments of silence and then I would smile because of an intimate thought popping up. He wanted to know why I was smiling. I couldn't put it into words. Somehow I expected of myself to share more with him, to be more honest with him. But I also enjoyed to keep this silent ambiguity, to feel a kind of intimate tension in the air without having to put words on it. At the end of our walk we both agreed that the time we spent sitting on that hill was the most intimate moment of the walk. Maybe by sitting we allowed intimacy to settle down after all.

intimate walk with Pieter

With Pieter I went for a walk one warm afternoon thru the woods to the maison bleue.
Pieter told me about his becoming more intimate with his parents. Driving in a car with his father he felt a strong connection and intimacy which made real conversation possible.
This was the first time Pieter felt he could really talk to his father.
He also told me about an experience with a girl he had been hanging out with at the Mediamarkt. He wanted to buy a toaster and she went along with him. In the end they spent three hours at Mediamarkt without buying anything. Pieter felt very intimately connected to her. Spending time with her felt completely natural and comfortable. So intimacy is possible even in the supermarket!
I realized that when alone in a car with my father I often feel very uncomfortable because we don't have much to say to each other or it seems there would be a lot of unresolved things to talk about but we don't do it. Pieter asked me if I would like to talk about these unresolved things on stage. I said why not. I already talk about it with my psychologist. And I think I would like to talk about them on stage as well. Or take a workshop about father son relationships with Martin Nachbar. I feel that the stage or a workshop or the psychologist give me a frame that make me more safe to talk about very intimate and difficult things.
Finally Pieter and I arrived in a small village. We went to the church and took some intimate pictures. I think it was inside the church that I felt most intimate with Pieter. Even though I don't believe in Jesus I still experience a feeling of awe and respect inside a church. I got excited and felt funny about taking these silly pictures with Pieter inside the church. It felt slightly inappropriate, if I was a believer it could even be blasphemous. So this feeling of doing something forbidden, of crossing a boundary and getting a kick out of it made me feel intimately connected to Pieter.

sleeping with Tiago

Last night I spent my first intimate night here at PAF with Tiago, a Portuguese performing arts critic. It's the first time in the sleeping project that I went to somebody else's bed rather than inviting the person into my own bed. It's because I thought Tiago had a bigger bed. But then I found out it's actually the same size as mine. He lives on the renovated corridor next door to Jan Ritsema and has his own private bathroom with a big bathtub.
Tiago showed interest in my project and then told me about a similar project a Portuguese friend did in Portugal. This friend went to meet strangers in their homes and in the city and sold these meetings as performances. I said that my project wasn't a performance but a research project.
Tiago talked a lot at first. I think we were both a bit shy. I tend to be quiet and say very little when I get shy. And I had a feeling that talking a lot was Tiago's way to hide or deal with his own shyness. He sat on his bed and I listened in lotus position on a little armchair next to the desk. He asked me what I was actually researching in my project. I said that I'm interested in how we negotiate intimate space - for example the fact that I was sitting on this low armchair and he was up on his bed lecturing down to me. It was like he was performing for me. Then he invited me to come sit on his bed.
We discussed about which side of the bed we prefer to sleep on. I ended up sleeping on the side next to the door so I could escape if I needed to. Tiago slept against the wall. Tiago usually sleeps naked. But he didn't want to make me feel uncomfortable and kept his boxers on. I usually sleep with the window open, but Tiago was too uncomfortable with the cold wind so we kept it closed. We did the spooning position and Tiago told me some really genuine things about how happy he was to be here spending his holiday with the Sweet and Tender people. I was really touched when he told me about his favorite moment here at PAF. It was when he fell off the bike and did a somersault into a field. It made him feel alive.
I was still talking about some short affairs and love stories I had had in my life when I noticed Tiago was already sleeping. I think it took me a while to fall asleep. Tiago was spooning me and his hand rested just below my rib cage on my side. I realized that I am really not used to feeling a warm hand in this place. But I left it there.

searching for intimacy at PAF

During one month I am in a residency here at PAF (Performing Arts Forum) in France together with the Sweet and Tender Collaboration people. I thought this would be great place to resume the sleeping project and to find new strategies to search for intimacy.
In the first week at PAF I went for an intimate walk with Thelma and Hajime in the beautiful forests and meadows surrounding the monastery. This walk in itself was an intimate experience. We talked about intimacy and what it means to us. For Thelma intimacy has a lot to do with body temperature and smell. She told us about her relationship with her husband who has brain cancer. Since he became ill their intimacy has undergone a lot of change. His body temperature sank and their skinship* feels very different. For me intimacy is about feeling safe and trusting the other person. Together we came up with a number of strategies to track down intimacy. :
-intimate walks: going for an intimate walk with somebody in search of intimacy
-sleeping project: sleeping with somebody for one night in one bed
-intimate skype conversation: what about virtual intimacy? After spending the night with somebody I want to have a skype conversation with that person to evaluate the intimacy shared during the night and to see if a similar kind of intimacy is possible on the web.
-intimate actions: I want to post a portrait series of one-minute intimate actions recorded on video. I ask people what to them is an intimate action they normally wouldn't share with other people.
-intimate dinner: Thelma and Valentina want to organize an intimate dinner during which the awareness and temporality of intimacy is explored through a score.
-intimacy in performance: we are going to perform three different improvised, intimate dances: 1) spectator watches from a window of the monastery with a monocular. performers dance in a distant meadow. 2) one-on-one performance in private room with eye contact 3) one-one-one performance in private room without eye contact.
After each performance the spectator will fill in a survey evaluating the degree of intimacy experienced.

*skinship is a term for physical/emotional intimacy through the skin between a mother and her child used a lot in Korea and Japan

searching for intimacy / sleeping project

This is my intimacy blog. I have started a project to search for intimacy. I am afraid of intimacy. And at the same time attracted to it.
I have never had a relationship for example. Last winter I started the sleeping project in Amsterdam. In the sleeping project the idea is to sleep with different people in a bed for one night. In Amsterdam I did this with some friends. Later I would like to try it with strangers as well.
While growing up I never invited friends to sleep over at my place like other kids. It's difficult for me to fall asleep in the presence of other people. My motivation to do the sleeping project is to challenge myself and to overcome my fear of intimacy. How does this foreign body next to me - its smell, its temperature, its energy, its comfort or discomfort - affect me? How do we negotiate this intimate space together? What kind of rituals do we perform for each other in order to feel more safe and comfortable to fall asleep?
My basic question is:
Is intimacy something that can be willfully induced? Or is it an ephemeral phenomenon that suddenly happens when we don't look for it? What are the parameters we can set up to allow for intimacy to flourish?

Is intimacy an endangered species? Is it a fragile plant?