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A FRIDAY SCORE ⏰

This week’s score was written originally for the summer solstice and we offer it here to mark the week of the fall equinox.
Read text below and swipe through for original and @jeniwavelength ‘s context when it was created.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

24-Hour Durational Score

Every hour on the hour, write down the temperature, weather conditions, and your current states of being: emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual. Then write down two questions.

After the 24-hour period, review the data and note similarities and differences between different hours. If doing with others, compare notes with other participants. Create dance scores for periods of the day – dawn to midmorning, midmorning to noon, noon to midafternoon, midafternoon to early evening, early evening to dark. Perform the scores.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

Photo courtesy Carolyn Hall: The Field Guide between two analog clocks, one in front with green border, the other in background with teal border

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An update from our iMAP/Ridgewood Reservoir Project

Ridgewood Reservoir for the 21st Century: A Community Partnership Exhibit @ the Queens Museum – GRAND REOPENING!

Wednesday, Sept. 16th – Thursday, Jan. 17th, 2021

We are THRILLED to announce NYC H2O’s exhibit Ridgewood Reservoir for the 21st Century will be opening along with the Queens Museum’s reopening this Wednesday, September 16th! Ridgewood Reservoir for the 21st Century is the story of how the reservoir, built in 1858 to hold the fresh water supply for the once independent city of Brooklyn, now serves different purposes. Today the 50+ acre green oasis on the Brooklyn-Queens border, part of Highland Park, is an ecologically diverse greenspace with a freshwater pond attracting avian life. The exhibition traces the site’s 160-year history from reservoir construction to its present critical role providing access to open space within our crowded city. Within 24 hours of installing this exhaustive exhibit, originally scheduled from April 5th – August 16th, the Queens Museum had to shut its doors due to COVID-19. We are SO excited to announce the reopening, and hope you’ll have a chance to go check it out! For those of you who would rather view the gallery from the comfort of your home, you can still find our virtual gallery of Ridgewood Reservoir for the 21st Century here: VIEW VIRTUAL GALLERY

A FRIDAY SCORE 💦

Past and present coastlines, remembering, and sensing are the focus of today’s offering.
Score can be done at a shoreline, from memory, or virtually.
Text below or swipe for original.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Reimagining a Coastline

Find old historical maps that depict the coastal edge.

Get as close to the water as possible and trace or walk the historical edge.

Draw your image of the coast line with chalk or a stick on the ground or a pen or a pencil on paper. Populate the drawing with depictions of animals, plants, and insects that used to live there.

Walk your physicalization of the historical water’s edge and imagine the texture, moisture, and hardness or softness of the land beneath your feet as it would have been.

Close your eyes and smell both present and past.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFAEF4QM9dk/

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A FRIDAY SCORE 🎧

This week’s score, made in Queens, NY, can exist in any landscape, indoors or outdoors, and can be done solo or with others. What other bodies listen? If with others, please practice safe social distancing 💚
Slightly altered text below. Swipe for original.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Listening and Moving Score for Long Island City

Start standing as close together as is safe in a pair, circle, or cluster. Listen.

Fluidly alternate between moving and listening while gradually moving from the safety and support of the ensemble out into the greater space.

Even when separated spatially from the rest of the group, remain in visual contact with at least one other listening body.

Feel the energetic support to move your body in response to what you hear. Let the tangible, kinetic sense of a listening community manifest in an increased eagerness to move, to explore a bigger kinesphere, to follow louder physical impulses.

Discover how the senses can rest in the power of movement.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEtzLCksAjV/

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A FRIDAY SCORE

This week, on this anniversary and reactivation of the March on Washington, the score asks to consider the liminal, the thresholds, the spaces of transformation.
Text in English below and swipe for Spanish and original.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Liminal Space

Find a liminal space.

Exist in this liminal space.

Explore the boundaries (perceived, stated, transversed) of this liminal space.

Transect the liminal space.

Respect the liminal space.

Define what a liminal space is.

#weeklyscore
#guiadecampoilanding
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEbwoDkMJUr/

A FRIDAY SCORE 🗺

This week we offer a score to map the navigation of your body through time and geography.
Text below and swipe for original.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Navigation and Scale

In your mind‘s eye visualize how you arrived here to this place, based on a time range of your own choosing (since this morning, a week ago, a month, a year).

Draw a quick map of that journey. It can be intuitive, and it doesn’t have to be to scale.

Next, imagine the farthest place you have been from here.

Put yourself there in your mind’s eye, and then travel back toward where you are right now.

What are the major landmarks: rivers, oceans, roads, cities, mountains and other geologic features?

Draw this map.

Is there a way that your body can hold the scale of the map? Can you create choreography for the different scales of your map?

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEJwq1yscnG/

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A FRIDAY SCORE ☘️

This week’s score leads you intimately around what some call ‘weeds.’
See slightly altered text in English below. Swipe for Spanish and original English.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Lawn Score

Choose a lawn. Look at the lawn in its entirety.

Identify several weeds or uninvited plants in the lawn (e.g. plantain, clover, dandelion, crabgrass).

Choose a weed: get close to it. Narrow your focus to the particulars of this weed.

Move to the next closest clump or specimen of your weed, then onto the next at a pace of your choosing.

Continue across and around the lawn, tracking weeds for as long as you want.

Variations:

Change pace.

Follow one weed across the lawn, then another weed back.

With a group of people safely distanced, identify a number of different weeds.

Collect other weeds that you find as you move across the lawn and identify them when you return.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CD4Tb0tMEF3/

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A FRIDAY SCORE 🌀

This week is for wandering. The only suggested parameter is time. Enjoy.
Text below and swipe for original.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Wandering

Select a site. Wander across the site for 25 minutes.

This wander is simple, not technical, up to your own interpretation. You have the upmost freedom to physically move through the landscape with no goal, thereby diverging from the usual way of navigating contemporary social space.

Other than the time limit, the only other possible limit is spatial – boundaries are created in your landscape if you are not permitted to trespass in certain areas.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDlxUbwsG3j/

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A FRIDAY SCORE ⏳

This week we offer arcs through time.
Slightly altered text below, swipe for original.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Narrating Time

Watch the sun pass over the sky.

Watch the growth of a sunflower.

Contemplate and research a 25 year period of urban growth in your city or in a large city that is nearest to you.

Document the time it takes your lungs to fill and empty with air.

Juxtapose these stories.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDUCP1uMbJ8/

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A FRIDAY SCORE 🍄

This week we offer a score to explore the grounds you walk on. slightly altered text in English below, and swipe for Spanish and original English.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Latent Potential

Wait until it rains.

The next morning, find a park a green area near you.

Walk slowly, scanning the ground. Look carefully for mushrooms and other emergent fruiting bodies.

Visualize the mycelial network below your feet.

Walking through your neighborhood or home, take note of any evidence of the infrastructure network below you (fire hydrants, street lights, manhole covers, radiators, meter boxes).

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CDBrIwbsoyE/

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A FRIDAY SCORE 🐁

This week we offer experiencing your surroundings on a different scale.
For outdoors or indoors, alone or with others.
Slightly altered in English below, swipe for original in Spanish and English.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Spacial Behavior of White-Footed Deer Mice

I. Move through the space as a mouse would by observing protective canopy, or cover, overhead. Move from canopy to canopy, avoiding areas with too much open space.

II. Select a sound that you can repeat continuously. Move through the space as a mouse, while making the sound.

When you cross paths with another person or something making a distinctive sound, you may choose to imitate that sound, create a hybrid sound, create a sequence of sounds, or keep your own sound. Continue for some time.

#weeklyscore
#guiadecampoilanding
📷: @gatablanco & George Bailey

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCvqVvCsuDK/

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A FRIDAY SCORE 👁

This week’s score: the power of seeing, stillness, and vectors of motion.
For outside or inside at a window.
Text in English below, swipe for Spanish and English with score background.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Training the Eye

Find a bird in flight.

Follow it with your eyes without moving your head.

Change to another bird.

Repeat until you are finished.

Experiment with different patterns of movement by following other traveling bodies, such as planes in the sky, cars on the highway, boats on a river, an area of water, or a floating object in a lake, pond, or river.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCdlEs3snxg/

A FRIDAY SCORE 🎶

This week’s offering opens your ears to where you are and can be done indoors or outside.
Text in English below and swipe for Spanish and original in English.
Much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Score for Noticing a Symphony

To begin, stand still and take in the sonic elements of your surroundings.

Walk toward areas where the sounds are more musical.

When you arrive, experiment with your physical position and orientation to change the composition of what you hear.

Repeat all steps as desired.

If you wish, draw a map of the sounds you experienced.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCLi3opM_Ra/

A FRIDAY SCORE 🌱

This week we share a score for possible futures.
Read below in English or swipe for original text and context in Spanish and English.
.
*Y hoy*
iLANDing: En movimiento con la ciudad / Moving with the City

26 y 29 de junio/ June 26/29, a las 3 pm EST

RSVP REQUERIDO/REQUIRED.
TO REGISTER/INSCRIBIRSE, email INFO@ILANDART.ORG ¡Gratis!

much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Future Site

Take fifteen minutes to observe and map a site.

Take five minutes to record your response to these questions:

Thinking broadly about ecological succession, what do you see succeeding here?

What is the possible future of this place given current elements?

Share your maps and notes with another and discuss.

#weeklyscore .
📷: @gatablanco

A FRIDAY SCORE

Swipe for protester support throughout the country.
During this week of Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) we offer the option of choosing a score for your own practice during this time of action. The Field Guide is available free through the link in our bio. Do what you need to take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and keep the pressure on to dismantle systemic racism.
With love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

See the full links in the post below:

View this post on Instagram

A FRIDAY SCORE Swipe for protester support throughout the country. During this week of Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) we offer the option of choosing a score for your own practice during this time of action. The Field Guide is available free through the link in our bio. Do what you need to take care of yourselves, take care of each other, and keep the pressure on to dismantle systemic racism. With love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

A post shared by iLAND (@iland_art) on Jun 5, 2020 at 10:52am PDT

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A FRIDAY SCORE 📚

An offering this week for the “between” of things and us.
Slightly altered text below or swipe for original.
much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco
.

Collecting + Discarding

Take a walk in your chosen environment.

As you wander, collect up to five objects that interest you. If you collect more than five objects, select objects to discard so that you have five again.

Take care to notice any gestures associated with collecting and discarding.

Arrange your objects in a display.

Take a picture of your collection. Write down the rationale behind your collection. Repeat and make a new collection. Share your pictures and writings with another if you’d like.

Addition: physically remember the gestures associated with collecting and discarding. String them together one after another. Repeat in a different order.
Share with another, if you like.

#weeklyscore 📷: @gatablanco

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https://www.instagram.com/p/CAxeerPlYdu/

A FRIDAY SCORE 🍃

This week, the seventh, we offer a return to the before … a warming, multi sensory reawakening to continue…
Read slightly altered text below and swipe for original.
much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

Weather Sensing: Warm-up
Pick a small indoor or outdoor site and research it by focusing on one sense at a time:

Using your mouth, first notice its taste as it is, then taste the air. Notice the subtle ways the taste changes over time. Explore your mouth‘s capacity to seek information and initiate movement.

Gather scents from plants, floor, air, materials, clothes. Breathe, smelling on the inhale and exhale.

Feel textures of wood, metal, leaves, concrete, fabric, air, skin. Focus both on sensitive areas of the body (fingertips, eyelids) and less sensitive ones (back, legs, etc.), differentiating moments of discrete touch from moving as one continuous touch.

Listen to sounds close, distant, very distant. Distinguish between distinct sounds and then widen your focus to hear a wash of sound. Notice any vibrations in your body that you can hear through skin and bones.

See under closed lids, lids cracked open, open eyes. See textures. See while naming what you observe; see while not naming what you observe. Use site as motivation for movement.

Write and share your thoughts and questions out loud or with another.

#weeklyscore 📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAfcrplnBMR/

A FRIDAY SCORE 🐾

This week we offer listening and moving between scales of sound, of here to there, of language, of habitat.
There are 3 parts to this full score but only the first, slightly adapted for indoors or outdoors, appears below. Swipe for all three.
much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco

A Collection of Scores from Through Earth, Through Body, Through Speech

Score 1:
Beginning near a window or an urban area, make a 5 minute field recording. Walk between 3 steps or 15 minutes towards the interior of your space or toward a less urban area and make another field recording. Continue this until you have a range of outside-to-inside or urban-to-rural recordings.

Score 2:
Translate an important essay or piece of writing for a mouse.

Score 3:
Translate an important essay or piece of writing for your mom.

Score 4:
Move through the space as a mouse would by observing protective canopy or coverage overhead. Move from canopy to canopy, avoiding areas with too much open space.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

https://www.instagram.com/p/CANaeiKlh2p/

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A FRIDAY SCORE 🕊

This week we invite you to shape-shift with softness, solo or with another.
Swipe for original text or see slightly altered below.
with love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco .

Soften Bubble Preen

PART ONE
I. Caw imperceptibly: do while spreading out through the center of chest and throat. Feel expansion but make no sound while listening.

II. Soften, bubble, and preen: do while exposing different parts of your body to the wind, coolness, or memory of wind.

III. Whistle: whistle into your or another’s skin, hair, eyelids.

IV. Lean incompletely: lean into a surface or each other, but while continually shifting or undermining the lean. Rarely complete the lean. Shelter and seek shelter from your surface or one another.

V. Dig deep wings: search for the root of imagined wings planted in your center, in the depth of your shoulders, your hips, and/or your abdomen.

VI. Whistle again: send the sound into different surfaces around you.

PART TWO
Lower onto or against something.

Soften.

Acknowledge a hardness; locate a heaviness; recognize some opposition.

Soften.

Shape-shift imperceptibly.

Look away for a while.

Look back and see if things have changed perceptibly.

#weeklyscore
📷: @gatablanco

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https://www.instagram.com/p/B_7fJYbFkxY/

A FRIDAY SCORE
Today we have one for slippery Time – moving between past, present, future, and the unknown…
Swipe for text or read below.
With much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco
.
.
Time in Three Trajectories

Select three trajectories to follow through space:

one driven by movement or a sensation you remember;
one driven by responses to the immediate perception of a sensation;
one driven by imagined movement or sensation in the future.

Travel along these trajectories in any order.

When you intersect with another body, change your trajectory.

At some point start moving backward and forward, retracing your steps.

You can choose to be outside of the trajectories at any point.
Any space outside of the trajectories is a space of dissipation or suspension, undoing or unknowing.

View this post on Instagram

A FRIDAY SCORE Today we have one for slippery Time – moving between past, present, future, and the unknown… Swipe for text or read below. With much love, @jeniwavelength & @gatablanco . . Time in Three Trajectories Select three trajectories to follow through space: one driven by movement or a sensation you remember; one driven by responses to the immediate perception of a sensation; one driven by imagined movement or sensation in the future. Travel along these trajectories in any order. When you intersect with another body, change your trajectory. At some point start moving backward and forward, retracing your steps. You can choose to be outside of the trajectories at any point. Any space outside of the trajectories is a space of dissipation or suspension, undoing or unknowing.

A post shared by iLAND (@iland_art) on Apr 24, 2020 at 6:34am PDT

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Thanks so much to Eva Yaa Asantewaa for inviting Jennifer Monson to participate in this incredible series, “Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation.”

Read Jennifer’s response here: https://infinitebody.blogspot.com/2020/04/artists-reach-out-jennifer-monson.html

Check out other artists’ responses as well!

A FRIDAY SCORE
During this time, we’d like to offer a score a week to do solo or share with another. We begin with “before” …

Arriving Score

Take time to consider these questions through writing [share if you would like]

A sense of place – what is one thing you know, observed, or learned about this site/place?

A sense of practice – what are some of the methods of research that you use?

A sense of time and space – how did you arrive at this place (historically, actually, metaphorically)?

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For a full reflection on 2019, read our latest newsletter here.

16 // Leading and Following
For two people, switching between leader and follower

As the leader, take the follower by the hand and walk towards a space and/or object that compels you.

Rest together, observe the space/object. Move on when you both are ready. Switch roles and start again.

Do this several times, taking time to rest. Notice how resting changes the way you absorb the space/object.

If you are in a space with other people, create an encounter with a stranger – either to talk about the space/object or to rest with you. You may do this as a pair or on your own.

OR

Describe your interests and observations directly to the space/object itself.

To complete the score, give something to the space/object that will nurture it for a while.

En Español

16 // Llevar y Seguir:
Para dos personas, cambiando del líder y seguidor. 

Como el líder, lleve al seguidor por la mano y caminé hacia un espacio u objeto que le fascine. 

Descansen juntos, observen el espacio/objeto. Que continúen cuando ambos estén listos. Que cambien de rol y empiecen de nuevo. 

Háganlo varias veces, tomen tiempos para descansar. Fíjense en cómo los descansos cambian la forma en que absorben el espacio/objeto. 

Sí están en un espacio con otra gente, que creen un encuentro con un ser extraño- que hablen sobre el espacio u objeto o que descansen juntos. Usted puede hacer esto acompañado o solo. 

O

Describa sus intereses y observaciones directamente al espacio/objeto en sí. 

Para cumplir la partitura, dé algo al espacio/objeto que lo nutrirá por un tiempo. 

Thanks to all who came and supported ditch!

See below for some of the press we got for this work – The dawn is truly miraculous !

River to River dance festival — the dawn worked its miraculous transformations – Apollinaire Scherr, Financial Times

At water’s edge: Jennifer Monson / iLAND presents ‘ditch’ – Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Goings On About Town: River to River Festival – Brian Seibert, The New Yorker

6 Dance Performances to See in NYC this Weekend – Brain Schaefer, The New York Times

The Week in Arts: Jennifer Monson dances at dawn – Siobhan Burke, The New York Times

At the River to River Festival, the Art of Slowing Down – Siobhan Burke, The New York Times 

Dear Friends,

In 2007, I started a year-long project at the Ridgewood Reservoir in collaboration with thread collective, a Brooklyn-based architecture team, and dance artists Mariangela Lopez, Maggie Bennett and Charlotte Gibbons and composer Kenta Negai.

Our research included visits to the site with Mike Feller, Chief Naturalist of the Natural Resource Group of the NYC Parks Department; Andrew Greller, Professor Emeritus, Biology at Queens College; John Waldman, Professor of Biology, Queens College and Uli Lorimer, Curator of Native Flora, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, as well as members of the Brooklyn Bird Club including, bird census coordinator Heidi Steiner, Steve Nanz, Rob Jett and Al Ott.

We became intimately knowledgeable of the unusual rare ecologies thriving in this 60-acre bit of urban wilderness as well as the ways that the communities engaged with and enjoyed the area.This influenced the choreographic research that resulted in fall, spring and summer performances. The attention this project brought to the reservoir instigated a community of neighbors and others committed to conserving this special area as the site became hotly contested for different kinds of development.

We are absolutely thrilled to announce that this month the Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed that the majority of the area has received wetland delineation.

This was the final part the battle to save Ridgewood Reservoir. We now have wetland protection as well as protection under the National Register of Historic Place. Parks has been persuaded to preserve Ridgewood as a wildlife sanctuary and has initiated the first step toward that plan.

If you are interested you can see the results of some of our research here as well as a video of the fall performance of iMAP/Ridgewood Reservoir. http://www.ilandart.org/dance-project/imap-ridgewood-reservoir/

Here’s to art as a transformative cultural and political force!

yours in creative collaboration,

Jennifer Monson

Special thanks to the MAP Fund and NYSCA for believing in this project and funding it!