Instant Narrative

INSTANT NARRATIVE is a practice, which is about producing a narrative or concept (a fiction, a poem, a short story) to a practice, action, situation, in an instant, while it is happening; no time to calculate, no time to struggle, no time to waver back and forth.

It follows the idea of a fiction being as real, a description being as valid when it has been produced instantly, without a process of deep reflection, deliberative thoughts or elaborate design. Or, the other way around: It takes into account that narratives and concepts are constructed arrangements. They are imagined, constructed and (except to a certain extent or proportion, that is derived of pre-existing aspects) arbitrary.

When narratives or concepts are developed, built, composed, there is a lot of thinking going on in relation to what a certain process or an analysis of a specific aspect the world could tell us, in order to come up with the right concept or description. As if we read it out of something that is already existing and telling us what’s the right arrangement and content to reflect it. Like a code that needs to be encrypted. We go through cycles of reflection and grind what we consider reality.

That’s one way to look at it and to work with.

The practice of INSTANT NARRATIVE tries to add another procedure, which is less about extensive reflection and more about intensive being in the moment – trying to get it instantly on the paper. It is about listening to the “being in the world” and relying on a special kind of “impossible to be wrong”. In that relation, reflection is understood as an intense connection with the here and now, with the very process of the moment of the people in the space. No circles of recurring reconsideration, but a stream of now and yes and do and imagine and delve into and write and dare and put it out there.

We can try to describe what we’re doing (what we’re about to do, what we’re aiming at) as precise as possible and then do it. Often, we experience it as a reciprocal process, in which we first envision (describe) then do and keep the doing and describing in a process of continuous evolution of deed and description. With this practice I want to add another practice that could open another sphere and another effective reciprocal relationship of creation, description and narration.

Here an example from the workshop „Practicing Choreography“ by Reut Shemesh (August 2023):

With Martha in the Sand

Sandy, Candy and their kitty-cat-rabbits have a meal of frozen flesh inhaling the communal experience of a mutual will

and enjoy a juicy joyful beautifully arranged desert of medieval sculptures

taking a group photo they are pop lock jumping through the green gras plain pretending it was yesterday and all the bright future still ahead

do you hear the melody over there

wake up!

welcome to the mall of corporeal sadness

the hungry village of catharsis and worship invites you to take a walk in the imaginary universe of voices hands and cuts

let’s go shopping in the cacophonic noise of silence

split   1, 2, 3…   yes

move   explosion         scratch along the glass

uplift twitch float

            see the cashier over there slowly going up

            a cart drifting towards the window up the wall

            all those colorful balls sucking up the gravitation hanging patiently in the air

while down on the ground a new era is proclaimed and constituted with procedures of symmetries and real physical alibis contained in a group pose arrangement photo

say “Martha”             klick             flash

just one            true fata morgana

take a rest in the warm sand and wait for the next cycle to come

INSTANT NARRATIVE to the task “mutual orgasmic group catharsis, medieval sculptures, voice / worship”, in the workshop “Practicing Choreography” Reut Shemesh Aug. 2023

INSTANT NARRATIVE emerged as my writing (describing, conceptualizing) practice in the frame of Reut Shemesh’s workshop series “Practicing Choreography”.