Jumping and Falling, Luuk and Lisa Scheers, Lisseuil/France, 24 April 2017
The writings below are based on: Hermans, C. (2021). A Sense of Balancing: Moving In-Between the Vertical and Horizontal Plane. Platform: Journal of Theatre and Performing Arts, 15(1), 144-153.
In the images you see my children jumping and landing on a mattress that is placed in the backyard our mill in Lisseuil/France. As the mattress provides safety, the children are allowed to take more risk. The mattress in fact is an integral part of the act of jumping. This is also the reason why I decided not to remove the mattress in the post-editing process. I am more interested in the expressiveness of a pose rather than drawing attention to its spectacular nature.
The set of images can best be described as a collage, since images from different sequences are selected and re-arranged in a loose order. I purposely break up the linear and temporal construction, in order to isolate the different phases of jumping and falling: approach, takeoff, flight, landing, and recovery. It is only because the chain of movements is interrupted, that the narrative of the action is suspended.
With these images I try to capture the body in-between: ‘the body of the almost, when the movement is on the verge, actual but almost virtual, hanging, pulsing, spiralling’ (Manning, in Cooper Albright, Falling 40). The in-between that enables us to engage with potentialities, where the self (as a fixed identity) is suspended, in favor of a floating, unstable state of being. The in-between reveals the groundlessness of our selves. The in-between is a transitional state, a crossing, a no-man’s-land, a fluid zone, an unstable borderland of differences. The in-between is ‘an open space, filled with an atmosphere of suspension and uncertainty, neither this nor that…’ (Fremantle par. 1).
The in-between is a moment, a place, a possibility, ‘an existential state, a suspension of reference points in which new experiences become possible’ (Cooper Allbright, Dwelling in Possibility 259). The in-between creates passages from the actual to the virtual, thereby opening up a continuum of multiplicities. It enables us to engage with potentialities. In a more literal sense, the in-between is movement that is still on its way. It has not found its definite form yet.
To fall is to lose balance, to slip over, to be knocked off your feet. Falling confuses our sense of the world’s order (Cooper Albright, How To Land 18-19). Falling is disorienting. Falling unsettles our world (Sharrocks 55). We fall from grace, we fall in love, we fall asleep. It happens to me quite a lot. The falling into sleep I mean, or actually, the falling out of sleep. It is called hypnic jerk: the feeling of falling triggered by a sudden involuntary contraction of the muscle twitch. Hypnic jerks typically occur moments before the first stage of sleep. In fact, the hypnic jerk is a sign that the motor system can still exert some control over the body.
Dropping. Surrendering. Releasing. Letting go of the upright position, engaging in the horizontal. The fall: ‘any movement of the body as a whole and its segments in the direction of the gravitational force’ (Reguli et al. 64). We fall because of imbalance, caused by endogenous or exogenous factors. Falling almost always implies the giving up of our upright position (and indeed our dominant human position), when gravity pulls us downwards, we engage in the horizontal plane. We fall towards the ground. Only in our dreams, we can fall without landing on the ground (since in our dreams we fall and land into our subconscious).
Falling is relational—if there is nothing to fall toward, you may not even be aware that you’re falling […]. As you are falling, your sense of orientation may start to play additional tricks on you. The horizon quivers in a maze of collapsing lines and you may lose any sense of above and below, of before and after, of yourself and your boundaries. Pilots have even reported that free fall can trigger a feeling of confusion between the self and the aircraft. While falling, people may sense themselves as being things, while things may sense that they are people.Traditional modes of seeing and feeling are shattered. Any sense of balance is disrupted.Perspectives are twisted and multiplied. (Steyerl par. 4)
Ann Cooper Allbright perceives the fall as the opening up of other possibilities, a state of becoming, a state where you become more-than, and where openings arise in the personal envelopes of singular bodies, where self, space and time and re-organized (Falling 40). For Cooper Allbright being off balance is a transitional state. It is a place of uncertainty. It is the suspension between two known points that ‘opens up multiple possibilities and different orientations’ (39). It is here, at this transitional point, where new meanings may emerge.