Giovanni: Do you make use of different colours when you write?
Elisa: I don’t really mind. I tend to use a pen, but I’m not very specific when choosing what instrument to write with. My priority is to work on a stream of ideas, something that is lodged in my mind at that time. This is because I need it to remain somewhere, even visually, not only in the body. The writing practice can create an exact written memory that I can go back to look at again in order to remember it. However, since it is also really connected to the flow of thought that comes about in the moment and that I feel the need to get down on paper, I am not really bothered about the instrument I use. My writing progress is also a bit chaotic and it’s then my responsibility to get to the crux of the matter, to find the thread of the speech again. More important for me than the use of colours is the process of ‘marking’: my written stroke may become heavier or lighter, depending on the things that I want to write down.
Giovanni: Are you able to remember this stroke quality? Sara used the word ‘translation’: does it make sense for you to translate this stroke quality into the practice of movement or it is simply the need to use a heavy stroke or a light stroke since this is linked to what you want to write, but then the stroke is not mirrored at all during your practice of movement? Are writing on paper and writing on the body two separate moments?
Elisa: In actual fact, everything happens in parallel. Surely, if I come across a word or a text that I need to remember and that I know that it is fundamental for the body, for my research and the creative practice, I’m going to look out for it. In the mapping of information that I am going to put down on paper, there are some that are sure to remain in the background, others that I know will have to surface at a later point.
Sara: I use colours. I use them also when I want to highlight some words. In general, I also use the pen a lot. I like the word understood as a creative form. For example, I also really like to use writing to create, and I also enjoy working on the computer with even more creative and architectural forms of writing. I am really messy and in fact every time I speak, also when I am practicing, a sheet and a lot of scribbles are present. So, this form of writing is very meaningful for me.
Elisa, you speak about making the signs bigger, which for me is also linked to the sizes, there are some sizes that are completely out of sync in my writing. A sheet has a thousand possibilities and so, I have come to realise, does the body. When writing comes about, it’s not a smooth, linear form of writing. Yet, on the contrary, it is full of other stimuli.