Technique

The technique that we want to discuss is not our approach or the process that we will follow in doing what you want us to do. The technique that this text describes is the know-how that we accumulate in order to process our own inertia and remain in continuous production.

Inertia is easily perceived as a problem. What stops us from doing what we want to? How are we becoming more passive rather than active. What suffocates us rather than emancipates us, what amplifies rather than muffles our voice?

Inertia is not a case of a lack of movement only. It does not betray only a comfort in the current point of stasis. We need an ability to be still as much as we need to keep moving.

Some kind of willingness to remain still is needed. This willingness stems from our urge to familiarise ourselves with the frame fully. Once we are familiar with the frame, we feel we will have a more coherent drive and will be able to figure action more concretely. Movement allows us to survey the landscape and decide the optimal action. But sometimes we do not need to make the optimal decision as much as we need the confidence of performing a definitive action. Sometimes acting in any capacity at all is required. A freeze is not desirable and not acceptable.

Still moving objects oscillate between movement and stillness. Still moving images are like animated frames arresting time into the same instance. What happens when time gets arrested? What happens when time loses its potency? Is it even possible to deal with the exhaustion that time contains in a frontal fashion? Sometimes circumstances morph to suit the stage manager and at other times they morph to suit no one in particular. Disasters are basically unpredictable circumstances which are difficult to manipulate. And disaster have to be embraced even for the possibility of something worthwhile happening at all. Because if things cannot go wrong, they will not even happen. To negotiate with inertia, we need to make peace with the possibility that things will go horribly wrong. We acknowledge the risk, we formulate the chances for the risk to play out in different ways and then we act. How confident and forceful are we? The confidence and force of our behaviour will be the sole determining factor that affects the post-act situation. And these solely depend on how tough a face can we present to the de-stabilising effects of over-whelming risk. Risk formulation is really a dynamic event. The handle that risk offers is slippery. We remain in a fragile and vulnerable state if we remain engaged with the risk formulation enterprise.

The technique that we have started talking about here deals with our capacity of dealing with inertia. And in order to calibrate our need to move and our need to be still on our own, we can escape the trap of inertia. We need to produce confidence and forcefulness, without any reason. No statistic is ever going to point towards a position of strength. We cannot keep an eye on the numbers when we are being constant requested to act.