It's starting, okay. Now it's starting. Yeah, it's all right. Now it's current. Right. So, thank you very much, Reza, for having me and have the opportunity to talk about what is my fascination these days and in these last three or four years. years. I mean I've been working with a friend as you see in the video. I come from the theater and he comes from visual arts. So we both in our in a different pathways we started to reject
our own disciplines as a as a production specifically as a discipline that always demands you to produce works of art in the case of theatres make a piece or make a show and i was very tired of that i i started to think why not being a theater maker but without producing a play or producing a piece of theater but just in the process to produce or in the process to do to do it. And he as well, he was very tired of this gallery stuff and have to sell his stuff of sculptures or paintings. So both we met in this point when we tried to figure out how can work
in a process of understanding between different practice and trying to to reanimate kind of performance practice. But very particular because we work normally alone, sometimes some people come to the practice, but normally we work alone, we have this, as you see in some videos, we work in an indoor space, but naturally now we're working in an outdoor space. Yes. And it's very nice in the last part of the world because we work in an environment which is very public and a very middle class here in Lima.
And everybody is with the dogs, with the children and we are part of that. Nobody really pays attention to us. It's just like we are part of the... We're working with ropes and plastics and nobody really pays attention to us. But we think it's alright, it's not bad because we feel part of the environment like that. I mean people are not really scared of what we're doing. Right, something like that. So what I was trying to say is that this practice is very ephemeral because the only thing we have is video recording. It's the only half at the end. And then we have conversations like we have now, because after the practice we normally recall what we're thinking or what we're passing through the practice or what kind of things we can really catch up from the practice.
And so it's very feeble as well because if, for example, now my partner is working very hard in a TV station, so he doesn't have any time because he's editing all day for a program. So we are not really working for two, three weeks now because I can work my own. So we need this practice together. So what we try to do now is kind of create a podcast stuff, you know, we can discuss because we believe that discussing and having conversation is also a kind of performance because we started to develop ideas and actions and thoughts and stuff. So my first thing to communicate with the people, especially with people like you, you come from the philosophy,
is because in the last five years I've been interested in philosophy, because I was wondering if I'm not doing theatre, if I try to think in theatre and visual arts together, we need to kind of concepts that can support us, our practice, because we are not from the theory, the academic part, we come from the practice. So we connect with this network, I don't know if you see the PP document. On the Facebook, yes. I saw the Facebook. The translation, I had to use Google translation. But nevertheless, I got quite a good, you know, kernel of what you guys are up to.
With your practical philosophy and stuff. Yeah, but I sent you a last document, it was the Performance Philosophy Network. It was of professor laura cole in england uk she's a one of the governors of the this is now well when okay i i got well i got a blog yeah is that the blog one yeah my blog but that also was uh in spanish Yeah. So I read that. I actually use just again Google Translate. Yeah, all right. All right. I connect with the... I start to read a lot of Gilles Deleuze in the last 10 years.
So I don't know why, but I found a resonance in the things that I was thinking at the moment about theatre and about why I'm an actor. I'm an actor so I was thinking but I don't want to be an acting just to be a kind of a, well they say in theater you are kind of action or I don't know how to say in English, it's like the executive, like a person who is going to do some duties in stage. So So I started to think about, in Gilles Deleuze I found it kind of resonance when I read the book
Conversations which is just conversations and dialogues and interviews with the thing on the And on the arts, and especially in some arts, they can express themselves by themselves. I mean that it can be expressed by other theorists, but art can be a way of thinking. I mean, a practice could be a way, artistic practice could be a way of thinking. I was reading something about that and that resonates also because he says something like, I mean it's one of my favorite philosophers, I mean I know that you put it in the last Facebook thing about why the French philosophers, no?
You're talking about the loose? Yeah, so I think the loose is very dangerous, I think, I believe that it's not very good at all. Because I feel like trapped sometimes, you feel like trapped in a kind of, I don't think he's cheating you, you know, like he's doing the, I mean at the end you can think everything is possible. But that's one of the first things that I've found very resonant in my work. And then we built this Estado de Encuentro, State of Encuentro stuff, which is a practice now. We have a lot of videos and things we'll be discussing.
And so what we need and especially need because I think I'm trying to connect with philosophers is receive how they, I mean it's difficult to have a video or just a text or webpage because we are not in practice alive which is very different to be in a life practice with. But we are very open to receive opinions and critics or ways or signals that we can really, how we can, because what we want now is just to expand the practice. I mean, trying to work with, sorry?
Yes, yes, I agree, I agree. Okay, I follow. So this is the main thing now is to expand the practice, but they need methods. I mean, the word method is very big for us because it seems like we don't have any method. But the last thing we were thinking is like we have this instant methodology, which is a methodology like constructing one hour and then dissolve. And then the other day is another methodology. I don't know is this is possible but you can but you can also say the same thing exactly about the practice of theory and I think that theory also is a form of practice I mean essentially that I would say that the distinction between theory
and practice is itself you know quite a very fuzzy domain of course you have to do something you know in order to come up with certain kinds of theories you see and then and of course those theories can then also be turned into practice so not only we have different levels of theory we also have different levels of practice and I would say that for a philosopher the transitoriness or or the ephemerality of the theory is as, you know, basically a real important issue as
it is for an artist, an actor, a theater constructor, you know, a set designer, whatever you can think about. Yeah, right, right. I mean, essentially a philosopher, I mean, particularly in philosophy today, you have seen it in the past few years, particularly like literally the so-called trends are just like a stock market. you know every second they go down and completely get annihilated and something else comes up that which doesn't mean that it's better actually it just means
that essentially the kind of society and culture of theory and practice that we are leaving it requires constant basically what you might call to be renewing stuff mm-hmm which is which is bad but not what but when I'm saying it is not bad in essence I mean it in the sense that it is bad in fact in the sense that we have it but there is nothing wrong for for example a philosopher to change his or her mind next morning about his or her piece he
or she has written like a week ago but that should be an informed revision not merely a trend-based revision you see that's the whole point that I think that the ephemerality of trend and the kind of a strain that it puts on theories theories and practitioners is completely wrong-headed however this doesn't mean that we should stifle ourselves with basically abiding by Deleuze until the top apocalypse no the whole point is that you know the task of a philosopher
is to always renegotiate to come up with thoughts that not only criticize what has occurred in the past but also be capable of broadening the scope of what can be said in the future or what can be claimed in the future or what can be thought in the future yeah I mean I mean, that sounds very, very interesting, but we have this, I mean, I would like to ask you if you, coming back to the thing of our practice, or what you see in our practice, if this is possible, for example, with actions, with the performance,
when a man, two men working with a plastic bag doing things. Or a piece of rope. Yeah, a piece of rope. Is it possible to, because we, I started to dub, but is it possible to generate a kind of thinking when you are doing things? things. Or it's just because, for example, when I practice, normally I try to put myself in the attention to my partner, what he's doing, because the thing on the work is doing phrases. We call phrases, actions, but we call phrases. I don't know why, using this linguistic stuff, but everyone has phrases.
and he for example do a phrase with the rope and he give me a phrase that I need to carry on or contradict or discover something new in the rope. But the thing is that you pay attention to that. So what I'm asking myself now is a self-questioning, is it really a kind of thinking or thought through these both people that we are? If it's possible, or just we're doing a kind of... Because there is a lot of improvisation in theatre and in performance art. But we renegade of improvisers. We are not improvising. We are really doing an effort to be in attention with the other.
And it's more about the tensions, for example, in the body, which the plastic or the rope can give you in your own body. And so I ask myself if this is a way of thinking, is it possible to match this with the outlines of performance philosophy network, which is this. How can we do philosophy, for example, without words, without writing a book? Is it possible? Of course, I think it's absolutely possible. I think that what you are calling phrase is that
there are essentially charged concepts, charged concepts. You see, what is actually a charge or a concept, in fact, a concept? It's essentially what you might call to be a capsule where there's content in it and this content is extremely compressed right yes like my camera yeah so so the thing is that two different people you and your partner can actually like a capsule like in fact like a capsule capsule like a drug capsule you can basically open this capsule and see what is inside it right
right yeah you can do that you can do that and that's essentially the beauty of using concepts to build a practice or thought but the thing is that if a concepts cannot be fully unpacked such that other people can also basically get into the game of opening the capsule right it's not a good concept really it is just each concept right and that's you can see this in the in the basically the disease or the illness or the pathology of contents of philosophy today
where I mean I I myself have done that and I have to repent for the rest of my life but essentially that's what jargons are but jargons can also become real concepts sorry jugglers jargon jargon this is juggling is you mean like a technical concept yeah right right like the word rising right right but but the thing is that you you have to understand that you know for a good concept to have
an impact on practice but also theory it should should be capable it should be able or we should be able to unpack it a step by a step historically such that other people can come and use this concept related to other concepts essentially it's more like a game you see it's like a multiplayer game versus like a game of chess and this is I think that's a good philosopher should think like that in the sense that it is so easy for philosophers to come up with
concepts but how can you make a concept engineer a concept that not only refine the previous concepts namely it can be studied in relation to the previous concepts but also it can basically elaborate it as a concept which allows to do us things we couldn't do otherwise think about like this like a simple example as an engineer this is my favorite example the concept of toughness
in metallurgy was a good concept for a very very long time right but the thing is that with the invention of synthetic materials and synthetic metals metallurgists found that the concept is no longer appropriate in the sense that, for example, a tungsten, a carbide tungsten, has a different fundamentally behaves under this concept,
behaves under the concept of toughness, very different than, for example, a molybden steel or some sort of copper or something else. So the thing is that they noticed that the kind of behaviors in the real world that we try to capture by the concept of toughness is no longer working. Essentially, the concept of toughness is not adequate anymore to address the various behaviors of metals and synthetic materials.
So they had to come up with a new concept, which is called Young Modulus or Young Measurements, which allows us to frame the behavior of a piece of metal, whatever it is, at different scales, like crystallographic, nanometric, atomic, molecular, under different strains, different weights. and that's how we can formulate for example this is toughness this is a tough metal this is a brittle that's all there's a hard metal so on so forth hmm so conceptual engineering needs to fundamentally thought not as coming up
with exotic jargon but as concepts which can clarify elaborate previous concepts but also broaden the scope of conceptual thinking and practice down the line Right. So I would like to ask you straight away, what do you, for example, your first impressions of the videos or the stuff that you were doing? I mean, if you related with something or some stuff
that you've seen before I don't know I actually the first thing that I was actually quite you know I appreciate that you brought you know the word the term ephemeral what I thought about these are there are essentially what you might call to be transitory sculptures that the dark basically not only transitory because you know there is no trace of them after some time but also transitory in the sense that they are situated fundamentally within a context that cannot be recreated right so it's like
We have the same thing in science too and many people, you know, dogmatic philosophers of science usually don't appreciate this. They always talk about hypotheses. Right. Hypotheses that can be tested, you know, put into application, right? But they can also be retested because if a hypothesis cannot be retested. now then or reapplied then it is not really a one-eyed offices but the thing is that the idea of testing is fundamentally a vague idea itself it's a vague concept in fact a vague vague vague a vague concept
fuzzy concepts precisely because what if you know like Heraclitus what if for example you set foot in the river and the river flows and hence no matter how much how many times you test it it will actually gives you different results precisely because it's transitory you are setting foot in a world which is revolving and this is this is I think one of the greatest things to think about you know what does it actually mean to think about not only concepts and
hypotheses but also tests and applications in terms of pure transitoriness pure ephemerality right right so you there is a I like this pure transitory transitory and pure ephemerality and and what about the relation, I mean I was thinking as well how we can think together. I mean is it possible the philosopher for example, I mean the very example is Deleuze and Guattari you know make some book together and you can think this is a both
thought but you can see who is Deleuze and who is Guattari very clearly I think. Yes, you can. But in our practice, because we are very different, I mean, yeah, he has this personality, I have my personality, he has my own life, I have my own life, and we encounter, in this state of encounter, what we're trying is, if it's possible, to think together, I mean, to do together, this transitory to Asian melody. Right. In this, how can we, or is it possible? Or is it just a... I would say, you know, after all these years of working with people and with other people
coming from different disciplines, I would say that if you are just a philosopher, it is absolutely impossible. it is actually leads to some sorts of philosophers you have seen numerous examples when philosophers tries to both say bullshit about arts and stuff and the artists also says bullshit about philosophy only work to go forward is that the artist should have a certain level of philosophical vocabulary and the philosopher should not just be a philosopher he should be you know
someone who actually ambitious to create a video game I make a movie basically creates a toy you know an idea which is outside of philosophy and hence once these two kinds come together they should understand that the philosopher and artist is still a very fragile bond and the only way that they can actually cemented and solidify this bond is by both of them to move into a third round
that's only art that's only philosophy perhaps I don't know a piece of fiction which is like the the most rudimentary example or a game basically a technology something something that is what you might call to be a third domain as as opposed to just philosophy or just art. Right. But the thing about thinking together in the way of... Like an example of a sculpture, if we can, with thinking, with thoughts,
we can do a sculpture together, I mean, a sculpture of thought, if I could say. Is it possible that or is it just like as humans we just have this one thought that is impossible to correspond with another one? I think it's possible, but you see it is possible. Right, because this is come to me a kind of politics of thoughts. Because politics, especially here in Peru, is like when you read all these rights and democracy and all the things that we've been writing, it's about philosophy that some people create together, they say together, for the people. yes yes I think it's possible but we cannot yet valorize this idea as if it
is fully actualized it is not fully actualized yet but that's what that does not mean it doesn't exist I would say that it is absolutely based on who and who start a collaboration from philosophy call and and from the artistic end you see do you really think that for example I mean come on think of some is it counterfactual historical example do you think that for example Rembrandt could actually make a collaboration with you know I don't know Richard Feynman the physicist or I don't know you know
can't well of course they can of course they can but is it going to be a good work most probably not but we have seen examples where philosophers writers artists have actually collaborated under the condition that as I mentioned the philosopher already is interested in these kinds of other domains of thinking and artists also is interested in other domains of thinking so they can suspend their biases for the time being and literally create a magnificent piece
Right. Yes, because you, well, it's not particularly we're interested in doing some piece in our work. Well, piece is a very, again, is a very, you know, kind of broad term. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything. Yeah, it could be a life, yeah, a life, even afterlife. can it can be in fact i mean this is isn't it the whole idea that think about giving rise to a new life form a new human that's the greatest piece of art yeah yeah the rights for the new life yeah
new organism yeah yeah sometimes we i mean we we were thinking in the for example when when we talk about materials, the rope, the plastic bag, that they are more alive than us. Sometimes we feel it when we practice with the plastic, with the rope and with the things. We are very basic, things where we can find in the garbage, really. They think that, we think that, and we feel, we basically feel that they are alive, like they even they are very they are better performers than than us because say that they are better performers but I would say that it's essentially the idea are you familiar I don't I have always forget about
her name there is this woman I think she's dead now like died a couple of years ago she was a Brazilian right and she was living on the Rio's landfill the garbage fields right right she made an entire new civilization literally garbage people from by salvaging like things that absolutely don't have any meaning anymore more like literally socially and it was absolutely and she she created this myth this new cosmology of the garbage fields the landfill right that's you know this
is this is what I think that this is like what what it means to make a new world right right right all right I don't know the name the documentary it's a really fantastic one. Yes please, yeah that's a magnificent thing, an example that we can check it. And well the material for example, what do you see when, for example for us has been always a question if we were working with materials, why we people, especially people from the performance art asks us why do you decide how do you choose your materials but the thing is that we don't
choose it really they come they really they choose you most probably yeah yeah yeah normal and they stay for a longer time and and so how can uh because we always have this magnificent with magnanimous thing to thinking in materials and working with big metal stuff you know like but we don't we can carry on this in the park this big metal stuff we need to truck or we need to funding a logistic to transport things but eventually I would like to to ask you if you think we can change materials and we can work with with another
convention with materials in in proportions for example yes yeah I think that you know the concept of toughness yes I mean you see the word we shouldn't say material material is a I would say is a wrong term essentially all of us whether you are a philosopher artist we use or work with materiality and materiality is always about constructing a star or re-invisioning stuff reimagining stuff like you see coming back to that you know example of this landfill in
Rio in Brazil so you know okay for example don't you want to have a pool I I mean think of like haven't you had these dreams of creating the best house for yourself like you have a spring in your garden a fountain a fall a waterfall and all sorts of assortments which are not which cannot be created by an architect right because they are too costly but then this is her point that she goes to and she talks about
different she basically walks through this landfill which is like kilometers long and she points out to this thing you know that because of the nitrogen level because of the garbage are basically packed on each other it releases nitrogen and so there are these kind of basically bubbles like it like a hot spring bubbles forming on the garbage surface and she says that every morning that i came come out of my house which she has herself built i really cherish the site of this spring
and it's close to me you see you can i mean the whole idea is that we just don't always need uh to actually work like an architect to bring materials together what we can reimagine what it is that we can do to reform what we have all of the the crap the dirt that we have there in a goddamn uh basically landfill that's that's that's thinking beyond uh i would say uh you know the terrestrial myopia of encounter with what materiality is you're essentially creating a new
myth new vision like this person comes and builds her house next to a bubbling toxic you know and she says oh look at this this is the best site right yeah I I mean, yeah, this is interesting because we always think we work in the threshold of precarity, of material, of objects, materiality, in the threshold of being something like somebody says,
you're working in being in something like which is it's going to disappear in some moment and this is related with ephemerality and sometimes we we feel that we don't want to disappear of course but sometimes in the practice we feel that we're getting into the point that the we can dissolve ourselves in a practice. So, trying to survive to the ephemerality of the work, we wanted to transmit, I mean, I don't know if you can transmit it, but we wanted to give this to someone else.
How can we imagine, for us is the question, a way of transport? a way of what capsule, as you said, we can imagine to give it to someone else, the capture, the capsule to try what we were trying. Because we believe after four years that this is very human stuff. I mean, he's been in England, he tried the workshop with some people in England, and with dancers basically and and it really has this um people are very interesting to go to this kind of uh like a repertoire of really uh simple and very fragile actions with material with objects
and and be how can we establish a kind of thinking together so now we our question is is it possible to really do because we don't know at the end if the people really capture the essentials of our practice and the thing is how can we build this capsule? I mean if it's possible to say it like that. Well I think that it's essentially the question of method in the sense that The reason that I mentioned rudimentary collaborations as what you might call to be the testing ground was precisely because of this question that you brought up, namely the question of method.
We cannot simply, I mean philosophers and artists cannot simply collaborate. They should start with what you might call to be ideas. So we have a certain set of ideas which are captivating us. From there, we try to basically, at first, we try to compact this idea to a set of, for example, you know, concepts or capsules. And then from there, we start to unpack them into a different domain. Like, for example, you know, I have had, do you know Florian Hecker?
No. No. Florian is a very famous sound engineer, and I have done quite a great deal of work with him. This is how usually our collaboration goes. So Florian throws some ideas at me, I throw some ideas at them, and they are all vague at this point. They are literally, you know we are just basically my apologies to say this we are talking out of our butts and it's just all this looks sexy but then there comes the next stage which is the hard work and we are start to look at the research amount around these kinds of concepts what can be connected with
with them, you know, and stuff. And then we turn this into some sort of what you might call to be a scenario. A scenario where I can do my work, and he can do his work. And at the end of the day, we are sure, as far as we have done the previous stages in a rigorous manner, the end result would be utterly not only fantastic, but also it actually enriches both the practice and both the theory. Right. So what is this moment, for example, the first step
will interest me a lot is when you say there was very vague, that the first moment when you met, when you have the first ideas, just like a regurgitation kind of. Yeah, regurgitation. Yeah, that regurgitation is important for us, for example, in a phase, in some phase, in some level. But then we use this regurgitation of the other to capture something that could be digestive. we follow this absolutely that's why i mentioned the second stage the second stage is that it's a little bit tricky precisely because uh you know what happens is that if you are talking about
your own basically take on on the notions and ideas and the philosopher also uh talks about his own take on the notions or ideas you cannot fully glue them together it would be just again end up to be this kind of mishmash of ideas so that's why you have to both of you have to step outside for example think about a concrete example like we are thinking about this is what i did with florian for gogenheim
essentially we are going to make a piece around a pink ice cube so obviously a pink ice cube looks sexy so we are both going with those here but then pink ice cube is also a term used by wilfred sellers american scientist american philosopher then there are also questions about the perception of color transitoriness of ice because ice is going to melt engineering questions how to make a pink ice cube it's actually quite difficult then there are questions that
what can we supplement to a performance about being ice cube you know what kind of pedestal do we need it you know how are we going to correlate the concepts and ideas of this use of pedestal with this paint ice cube and then at some point you notice that you have a wealth a continent of ramifying connections between all of these things which are not either purely artistic or purely theoretical and then you try to after you discover this whole well of continent you try to kind of like limit it constrain it so it doesn't get
wishy-washy so we make choices and these choices are like trade-offs and by virtue of these choices we kind of compact the idea and idea of the performance such that the performance and the theory itself are neither what you might call to be in response to each other but they are actually integrated parts of one and the same piece hmm right right this is a yeah it's a kind of methodology that you discover together for I think I think
think that any sort of, to be honest with you, any sort of collaboration at this scale between philosophy and art performance whatever, is always about the question of methods and constructing a system. Right, that's we are struggling now. We are struggling to, for me it's difficult for example to put in words. I mean that's the main thing of talking to you. but that but i don't think that this is this should this should not be your concern absolutely not you think so no no no you you can well you you can you can continue your philosophical education
and acquaintance with theory that's that's good that's just essentially makes the ideas more rich. But I don't think that it is your job to put things into words. It's just that as long as you have a vague idea, that's good. A good philosopher can easily tap into the vague idea, create something around it with collaboration with you, as I mentioned in that kind of procedure that I mentioned. Essentially vague ideas you cannot, you see it's like alchemy, you cannot create something without starting with shit essentially. You know
the whole point is that turning shit gold right? So you have to start with the shit, with vague ideas, with, they are vague precisely because they have certain kind of openness, airiness that allows someone else to work with them, to basically plug his or her own ideas to them. Right, yeah, that's sounds good. Something that I would like to, I don't know, No, if he, when you, I mean, I'm sorry that I'm trying to ask you the more I can about the practice,
because we don't really have this, it's difficult for us even to talk with people about practice, specifically with philosophers. Here in Lima, in Peru, it's kind of strange for philosophers to to approach to practice like us and thinking that that we could collaborate together with them even so one of my another question comes to my mind is how can you um when you for example something that we don't talk about what about the physicality of the philosopher what about the the the body I mean is it this is the right thing to say that the you mean my embodiment or human body
human body a human body well philosophers usually you know that is like the last thing on their basically a list of interests. So, sometimes we feel that because our work is very body-orientated sometimes, something that I was thinking is when I work with my friend it's about I have this for example this moment of I sent you I just sent you the link to a
samurai yes oh thanks thanks thanks I got it I got it is a well I just can briefly when something happened to me when I practice is because my training is very physical, I'm a physical theater actor, when I go to the for example a paper I have really vague idea what I'm going to do with the paper but then my muscles or my strength started to discover what the paper needs. And then I follow this, even though I have no idea what is happening. But in some moment, the paper, for example, started to give me to my muscles, to the, for example, the pressure,
or when I throw it, or I try to stretch it out, the giving the kind of conditions for working. And then, and then thoughts comes to my mind, because when I start to see the paper, I mean, I'm thinking all the senses, the body with all the senses, I mean the sight, the hearing, even the sounds, the tactile stuff, even the flavor of the object, they give me a kind of thinking in the material too, because I'm working with another person. So what I'm trying to say is that thinking comes to my mind when I think when when when I realize that I'm working together with
someone else right which is which is I don't know what happened to me like that I mean it's different from my partner he's his approach but for me it's like thinking is the last thing I mean if if I could say to my what I was happening to me in that moment thinking because in the first moment it's just like uh when you somebody trapped you for example with the arms and you don't think you you are really find yourself trapped and you it's like you have a nightmare when you have a nightmare when you feel trapped when you feel like a strength uh strange force traps you and you don't think you try to to wake up and and the problem with that nightmare nightmare attack or i don't say parallel parallel is that you can't do it so it's like
problem is not thinking, it's just about physical things. And in that moment I feel like that, that I'm getting trapped but then thinking is the only solution to get, which is difficult in dreams, thinking. But in the reality I feel like in a dream, for example in a nightmare, when I have a paper, I have my little nightmare with the paper, but then thinking helps me to go out to the other, especially when I'm working with others. That's the problem that I'm afraid to work alone, because if I work alone I probably get trapped in the nightmare. Right, right. I mean the thing is that working alone is always bad, but you can also
think about that you can create your own multiple versions of yourselves. like a schizophrenic person and then you are no longer alone see it's just like that it's just like that hilarious line in the introduction to a thousand plateaus where they say that we are all we are already a crowd you know each of us are already a crowd but I wanted to insist on this physical thing what what do you think is this possible to the muscles for example the muscle in the body which is every organ in our bodies
made of muscles even the eyes you know the earrings absolutely I mean the thing is that there is a wealth of neuroscientific research on the role of certain body gestures with regard to triggering of certain kinds or set of kinds of thinking right or or actually motivate you to think in a certain way why do you think as a cigarette addict and I'm a smoker why do you think that writers always love it's not the taste of cigarette that is good it's just the way that you can move this between your fingers you know it it it triggers you it motivates you
to arrive at certain kinds of cognitive states perhaps not a specific thoughts but cognitive estates you see it does but then I would say that why should we always think about our bodies you know what it what okay as an experimental piece why not to think about other kinds of possible bodies those can precisely because the idea of mind and the body are both underexplored we essentially don't know that much if hardly any about what mind is or what the body is
hmm think of all the sci-fi you know good sci-fi for example you encounter with an alien and this has a completely different body form and also you get the sense that precisely because of of this new body form there are also different cognitive states for this creature right yeah yeah this yeah sometimes we we we thinking uh of for example the activity of uh what we're doing
it. Sometimes it's getting repetitive, for example, with the actions. I've seen my partner doing the same thing as two years ago with a rope. The same action and myself always dropping the same action with the plastic sometimes. For example, I want to orientate the discussion into the pedagogical stuff of what we are doing. For example, with anger and violence, we think that this kind of practice we could kind of, no helping people to get away with anger, but to say anger or happiness if you
want. But to really, how can you share your anger with others without destructing everyone? I mean, is this something that we're thinking in our practice? Kind of sharing. Yeah, you cannot, I would say that you cannot share anger per se, essentially, this is not just anger you can also think about happiness essentially any sorts of emotional estate can only be shared by way of beliefs beliefs beliefs right and they have they have inferential content exactly like those
capsules that I mentioned to you and this inferential contents allow someone to tap into our emotional states otherwise I mean think of you know this kind of like a hilarious thing that if you have a cat you have seen it all day so two cats play with each other it always starts licking each other smelling each other's but and it's lovey-dovey and then suddenly they start to bite each other and hiss at each other precisely because they don't have the capsule they don't have the inferential content of the concept or belief that's the only reason that we can in fact
share our emotions or emotional estate is precisely because we are using a different technology than caps and that's right the idea of belief as encapsulation of certain inferential contents where someone can empathize sympathize gets angry at us it's essentially that is that is actually the first this is the question of ethics to the honesty ethics as a practice yeah and ethics is all about this that there is no such a thing as pure emotional estates because all emotional estates are intersubjective
mm-hmm right yeah yeah basically that's that's what what I thinking intersubjectivity, I mean something that we explore as well between us, between two people. So I would like to ask you if you got some other idea that our practice, our videos, because people are very I mean people from theater and from performance are when I see their videos they say yeah but I get bored because nothing happens
I don't when nothing happens it's just like first of all I honest with you this also again these are the kinds of you know responses that are also levied against philosophers like you know well you know it's just boring well what you know so what it's actually about engineering a fundamentally different set of concepts applications practices new relations between concepts so on so forth and yes the majority of good works are actually boring this ought not
to be the case but nevertheless for a good part it is I would say how about this how about okay give me a time frame because I need to have a time frame or some sort of deadline otherwise i can never finish any piece you and your partner come up with either an a video or an idea and ask me to write like i don't know three paragraph shorter story flash fiction around it
and then you morph it to something else and then I morph it to something else and then go on and on and on until basically there is something concrete at hand that I would say is the only response that I can give you because every response that I can give you in terms of like you know oh this piece is great it's just like you know it's feeble right yeah right yeah yeah yeah We get used to, well, it's kind of a society demands, especially here, especially in my own context, when people need a boost of being champions by the mainstream, by the institution.
For example, when we present our work, I mean our process for funding for example is very difficult because they see our videos and they say something like, yeah, but I mean the cultural line and the cultural thinking here of the institution is if you don't work with social stuff, I mean with social orientated art. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you want to help to, you know, the Afro people from Peru or for the Indians in Peru? I don't want to hear about that. I just hate these kinds of stuff. They reject us immediately because they see two people just working with a rope and they say, yeah, but it's they don't really want to ask us about it.
But the thing is that, you see, this also happens, as I mentioned to you, in literature and philosophy. There is a reason that people say that, okay, come up with a trivial, sexy motif, how small it is, and then basically build a place. on it. Like for example, you know, go to a garbage field, go to, you know, some sort of, I don't know, a slaughterhouse. Do, you know, kind of do the performance there. And
then that would be completely bypass all of these criticisms that they're basically giving you you should always think also about the background the ambient space the ambient space essentially is very important precisely because you see like think about how good directors make movies you know there are two different good directors for example think about a thriller right so first director you know have you gone to Detroit sorry we did right yes the film no no no okay
okay no so so just go for example to some extremely dreary place right right so the ambience you see that's you know essentially it's just like bunch of you know cold places and people are just like so boring and dreary but then you can have some sort of gangster movie there and it actually makes it good precisely because of the contrast between the rarey backgrounds and the foreground action right or you can do something else which I would say that the best directors usually do create a very boring as our inside joke boring as
a as a phrase what you might call it a boring piece against the backdrop which is bustling with ideas it's just like you know for example think about like you know idea you know like for example Thomas Ligotti the horror writer just imagine that you have a Lovecraftian cosmological scenario as your background but then your story actually happens against this background in a very boring and dreary village in some part of the world which actually nothing
happens the story is not about any sort of narrative unfolding it's just that when people look at this there is a cognitive designance that makes it really fantastic for them So it's the context, the ambient that you say that, yeah, we believe that also about that, of doing the thing in different places when normally people are not get used to have this kind of things, I mean, the works, you know, because some performers, performance work is orientated to disrupt people.
Like, I get naked and put in myself, you know, red paint and protest against bullfighting. Oh, God. Oh, Jesus. Please don't. So in that moment, people stop. Stop in the streets and see what's going on. But what we're doing is something that people really don't stop, really, because they really feel like... It's like some people say that we are doing photography. A lot of people say we're doing photography, but we are not doing photography, but they think we're doing photography. Like imagine, I mean, no, that is, I think that, I think one of the things that is still missing in your approach is that you should not only show the actual piece, but also the
people's reaction to it. literally people pass by just imagine that okay we are in Saudi Arabia and basically they are beheading some people pass away pass by you know it's all fine you know it's just like it's just like the order of the day that that's that's essentially you are capturing both side of the story and makes it you know the the ambient problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's very interesting. We're thinking about that because there is a lot of people, couples and stuff. And if, I mean, always say that the dogs and the very, very child, the children, the babies are...
Sorry, just a moment, Risa. Sure, sure, absolutely. Sorry that I have an interruption. Sorry, I was saying something about dogs and babies are very interested in our work because the dogs when they see a rope stops and when they say plastic moving the dogs stops and the babies as well yeah yeah sure sure but the adults adults not because uh for example there was an example there was a baby with the father and the baby say oh daddy is a
plastic uh no no he doesn't say it's plastic say what is that daddy and daddy says it's just a plastic for garbage a plastic right right yeah well that that okay this is this is the whole point. I mean, don't you think that you can make a fundamentally fantastic scenario out of this? Isn't it also the very question of thinking and practice in the sense that people just go on and on living in the world, but there is some freak called Darwin who goes to the garden and inside the garden he sees like these worms soil worms you know
their lowliest life and he says that you know why is that this garden has so many worms and and a child notices it a scientist notices it what not other people and that can be turned into a magnificent narrative reading yeah read Darwin's book on soil worms it is truly one of the most majestic I mean everyone talks about Darwin's descent of man but this is this is where he came from studying soil worms it's just the name like not the book yeah I will send it to one
second oh fantastic yes yes so essentially this this this idea that why is that some people not paying attention and some people do pay attention and what is the consequence of paying attention that can turn into a magnificent odyssey? Yeah, and also we got in this public space we have guards, you know, public guards. They stop as well. They stop because they want to verify what we are subtly pretending to do in this public space. especially if they see a rope and two men and a tree, you know, this is this very cliche image of the tree, the rope and the man.
Right, right, right. Do you do that? Here is basically Darwin's, the title of Darwin's book. You can easily find it online because it's… Right, right. Yeah, on the library. the formation of vegetable mold and it's like this that you know this most trivial happenings in the world once you actually look at how regular people and certain kind of people look at them and unfold the interaction between these two factions can become the basis of something which is quite big,
large, cosmological in fact. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's something that I have the feeling if this cosmological stuff we could, I mean I don't want to sound but this minimum stuff that we're doing is I mean it's about about life as well, about death as well because when I say, when I mentioned this kind of muscle and body, body mind and and thinking and body or it's just like this is the threshold of a kind of
energy i mean the thing that produce together is like a new energy, which is ephemeral, which is very transitory. But this is like dying with rejoice, if I could put it in. Yes, and it's always good. like i have the example of i don't know why they have example in my mind in here in peru we have you know spanish people come in uh in the 15th century and spanish people especially the the priest they used to uh use the the bones of the people who die especially if we're a child and with the bones of the child they construct like sculptures and you can see in some
uh franciscan uh convent in the island no no no that you can i understand yeah i mean this is a very particularly a spanish and italian uh custom yes like kind of uh i have forgotten the name of it uh capuchin capuchin uh convent yeah yeah they put it that you know have you seen it that's is a work of of art with the bones kind of like the bones of jewelry but made of yeah yeah yeah a lot of stuff like that i mean using the body i mean it's like a yes we are not putting in a cage you know we're not putting in a closet and then we we don't use the why not use the body
even in the in the bones i think that's a great example and essentially it comes back to this so you see you don't I mean concepts of death and life but yeah very trivial transitory things and then you start to imply rather than just expressing it employing how it can relate to these big what you might call to be cosmological questions and it's actually like as you say christianity also christian iconography has completely something like that the whole you know the whole uh basically uh tradition of uh
relicology gathering relics of saints you know a piece of clothes which is like what is this you know a piece of hair yeah yeah yeah yeah this is chris i have to go in 10 minutes all right right uh so we have time for 10 minutes yes right so uh i don't know if i would like to to ask you I think we were writing some things you told me you write you read something you read something that we write in Spanish and you translated in in English you do you remember
something that you really well I I read all the links that you send me but both the blog and the Facebook posts I use of course the internet translation because I really don't know a Spanish. Do you remember some of the things that you're reading on the practical philosophy and the idea of you know materiality you know what what does it mean to think of a practical philosopher so on so forth Yeah. Right. So I just don't know. Something which is very stupid, maybe when you see these two people, what is the first?
Because I'm very interested in visual perception. is when I see you here I see a man with a bear with the glasses and I and I see a kind of you're you're from Iran but I see a man from Italy and when you speak English I know see an Italy person but I see a person who lives who is it's Italian descent in in America or whatever so when you see this first our videos when i when i came to the u.s with my wife my wife is american actually right i i went to midwest actually to south virginia and there was this gorgeous girl i i went you know um i i went
to you know uh shop uh some clothes because literally when i was living with my my wife in Malaysia we didn't buy any clothes because you know it's just like it's completely pointless all your clothes will be torn apart by the cruel forces of nature in tropics so I didn't have clothes and I had to go for lectures and stuff so I went to this you know kind of mid-level to high and you know place to buy some clothes and this gorgeous girl came to me who was like checking me out for a long time in the store and she asked me that you
are not from here I said yes I'm not from here and she said where are you from I said I'm from Iran she said that are you from Milan I said, no, Iran, American pronounced Iran. And she loved her interest. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's happened to me when I was in the UK sometimes. And I say, I'm from Peru. But because my pronunciation, they say, oh, you're from Beirut. They say, Beirut. No, I'm from Peru. Beirut. So I would like to ask you for just a brief,
how can you, if we can collaborate if you want at some point? Sure. Come up with an idea, come up with an idea, and please don't get upset if I say that the idea is nonsense. Because I usually do that. Precisely because, and you can also say that, well Reza, this is just way too philosophical. This is essentially starts with a kind of very, you know, loaded interaction. yeah yeah i'll interaction from that yeah we absolutely i i would love to you you i don't know whether you know it i i have
uh i i generally don't like to write about artists what i'm actually interested is that to collaborate with artists right yeah that's fantastic artists that i think that they're doing unusual stuff which are not really they cannot actually sell their art most probably yeah you know uh and that's that's something i really like you know uh i mean and i and to be honest with you you probably know that you might actually read this piece in in the forthcoming collection, how much I hate art world. I want to burn it down with Nepal.
Yeah, I mean we can start that. I try to recover this ephemerality concept, the the transitory concept of sculpture concept, the cosmology, the ethics as well, which is very interesting for me, the ethics of the work, because I think we can allow all the people to come to generate this kind of more multi-disciplinary work. And some other concept that you think we are forgetting from this conversation? No, no, no, I would say that the best thing is that you and your partner start with a very kind of, you know, a very small concept.
Let's not start to work for ambitious. You throw it at me, then I will throw my version at you. we go you know kind of like a tennis back and forth at some point we realize okay we need some other people because the ball made of hair and just throw in right right outside of our basically capacities to handle it alone so our our phrase as we call it we could we could have a video for example a practice of yeah I mean yes when I give you when I give you my my my entrance is
could be a video with a practice of our work one of the things that's okay you you said that you know you're you know basically you're a kind of visual thinker I'm a very when I think about these kinds of stuff I usually think them in terms of cinematic scripts so I would say that if you can send me a piece about an idea which has been formatted like a movie script like backdoor you know you know basically outdoors this time this happening, this is basically in brackets, this is how this should be shaped,
so on and so forth. And that's where I can get a clear idea. Right, that's fantastic. That's fantastic because we can transform things as well, because sometimes we need to move from the space we are encapsulated like this and to expand as well with other thinkers. And well, I just want to thank you very much. Thank you so much. Because it's been a really pleasure to talk to you. I hope hopefully it's not the last one we're going to talk. Please send me some other if you got some other ideas or links to books of things
that we... For example, this comes to your mind about the practice of ephemerality or between like this Brazilian woman. We are very open to receive that and also I will send you to you some things that we certainly do. I will definitely do. Okay, I will think about over the weekend to collect some links for you and I will send them to you definitely. Oh, that would be great. This is very, very thank you and you don't speak nothing in Spanish, huh? Zero. Zero Spanish. All right. So, see you around and see you in this world.
Absolutely, my pleasure. Have a great day, my friend. Right. And there's something I forgot. We're going to put this video in our page of of the State of Encounter page in YouTube for you know for if you want to when it's put it I'm gonna put you to you to to to hear us as well because I would like to take some notes and to my friend to telling that that I'm working I'm working for the for the project. Absolutely. Okay Reza thank you very much again and have a nice day. Here is 11.37 and now you have noon there.