I read the text More than reflective practice: Becoming a diffractive practitioner by Cher M. Hill. The article concentrates on a very detailed explanation with diverse examples on the pedagogical and research realms, differentiating on reflective practice and diffractive thinking. This brief reflection of mine meets the body of my work regarding the autobiographical axis that guides and feeds my cross-disciplinary artistic research, focusing here on the unpredictability factor and the Brazilian counterculture. Therefore, I write this text embracing diffractive thinking and I let myself to be guided by what came to my mind: "my routine here in Germany is not as diffractive as it is in Brazil".
The text asserts that
in diffraction there is no such distinction as subjects and objects (..) from a diffractive perspective, subjects and objects such as nature and culture are not fixed referents for understanding the other but should be read through one another as entanglements (Bozalek, Zembylas, 2017, p.116 apud Hill, 2017, p.9).
When I’m in Brazil there is much of not being the subject, nor the object of the events. The unpredictability factor speaks out loud, changing the course of things or your daily routine. The unpredictability guides us to a different direction. It invites us to engage with what Klauss Vianna - founder of the Brazilian contemporary dance and somatic technique (KVT) - brought with it: to first and foremost to engage with Presence - an attention and readiness state.
I filmed this car burning on November 28th, 2021. It was Sunday morning, and I was on the open market at São José do Rio Preto-SP, my hometown. It was indeed hot, around 38ºC and I noticed it was getting more hot. I heard someone screaming "Fire, fire, there is fire!" and I simply entered in alert trying to figure out what was happening. Then, I saw the black smoke and finally the car. Long story short, the area was evacuated and at the end the fire department resealed a note saying that the fire started with a small bottle of alcohol gel forgotten inside at the front of the car. I thought that was impossible, but it happened. That day, I lost completely the direction. I spoke to the people around. I got sad when the owner appeared and said that he didn't have insurance. And I spent the entire day still feeling my skin kind of burning, the sensation of it.
Hill contends that "becoming diffractive involves shifting the gaze from individuals to human and more-than-human entanglements, and attending to the emergence of phenomena and to how differences are produced and made to matter" ( 2017, p.7). When I lived in São Paulo, before leaving the flat to work, I used to recap the plan of my day. It was an attempt of already trying to anticipate the unpredictability from the regions that I would need to cross. I used to think every night when I arrived at home what I could bring with me for the next day (whether it was safe to bring my laptop,HD, accessories); checking the forecast per hour (in case I’d need umbrella or more food counting that I’d spend more time in the subway or bus or somewhere due to the floods), besides the subway/bus traffic (in case a subway line was with a problem, or a bus line was attacked due to a confrontation between the organised crime and the police - always on the daily news). Even trying hard to predict, obviously I couldn’t, but at least I was more prepared.
My body used to be all the time full concentrated on being present, aware, ready. The same state that I engage when I perform, but the difference is that living in Brazil, the sensation is that I'm in endless durational performance. To leave the flat early in the morning and come back at night there, it was like launching myself to a diffractive series of events. It is clear for me the awareness embedded in the routine there, and that hardly I have control. When I shift myself to my current routine in Germany or even in Arnhem - The Netherlands, for the Master’s classes, it carries a monotony that still today I couldn’t change, even though I have a full day planned. It is like having control of everything, and when something slip away, somehow the system (government, police, guard, even the guy that works on the bakery - always there and that knows everyone on the neighborhood) contain the situation, and so quickly. It is like a interrupted intercourse. Something is about to happen.. no, not anymore, it is over. There is no time to be indeed traversed, transpassado. I seek and need to find a diffractive flow, to be really traversed by some(thing/one) here. I observe that here, most of the times the unpredictability is not welcome. When something happens here, it is completely unsual and I reflect that this "unsual" is our daily basis in Brazil. It is our "usual". The dinamicity rules our lives there, even from the randomness of our current dis-government.
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