Un-whole, fluid, boring, familial, queer and kind
Jay Yule
Image: Jay Yule. Satelliser discursive rehearsal notes 2020.
It feels important to acknowledge the immense aftermath of emotion and processing that I experience in the days following Satelliser. Somehow over the intense period of practicing, I unlock new ways of communicating and relating to myself, others and the contexts we live in. It feels like anything is possible, I can find meaningful connection with any being I collide with whether that be human, snail, tree or leaf. It feels like the Satelliser group of people are a family who are developing a new language together. It makes me think of the books of Earthseed created by one of Octavia Butler’s characters Lauren Olamina in her novel the Parable of the Sower. The books of Earthseed centre around the idea that God is Change. The story follows Lauren as she escapes a crumbling walled community and journeys into the remains of a society that has set itself ablaze in the year 2024. Along the way she gathers a community of people who one by one come round to the teachings of Earthseed and accept that the only way they will make it through the post-capitalist hellscape is by remembering that change is the only thing we can rely on happening. I agree, it sounds kind of cult-ey and without likening J N to the founder of a post-apocalyptic bible, I find similarities between the story of Earthseed and the story of Satelliser. The feeling of building a community of people who develop a new way of relating to the world, in order to find a way to make it bearable. I have felt like the space we create is a sacred bubble for meeting one another, away from the violent noise of the rest of the world. I have felt like the care in listening that it demands in me, is so desperately needed by the world to meet without violence and polarisation. I have felt that the sense of community we have built together is not present in other parts of my life.
Image: Jay Yule. Satelliser discursive rehearsal notes 2020.
The practice of Satelliser brings my speed and format of processing to my attention, most likely because in other contexts there is not space for different ways of processing. I’m sure we have all been part of a conversation and hesitated or thought a little longer on something before voicing it and by the time you want to say it, the conversation has moved on and what you would have added is no longer relevant. The practice brings into consideration the nuance of conversation which feels hugely lacking in the polarised Twitterscape of 2022. Some days I have felt like a fire cracker, interjecting and speaking long before I have had a minute to think about what I am saying, sometimes feeling a pinch of regret for not thinking harder before speaking. However, the state I have most often found myself in is a half-formed, half-articulated, half-complete thought sheepishly lumbering from my lips and often becoming too embarrassed or self-critical to make it fully out. This state has felt frustrating to me on many occasions but I think that’s most likely because we don’t often allow or accept half-formed things. In the practice of Satelliser, there is space for the mumbling and bumbling to happen and maybe an encouraging question to assist in helping find the conclusion or non-conclusion. Non-conclusions feel unsatisfying but only because we live in a boxed and bow tied world, where endings are happy and finishing means completeness. There is so much more possibility in the space where non-conclusions exist. There is uncertainty in incompleteness. And uncertainty, although unsettling has so many more avenues. There is room to change one’s mind in the incompleteness of a half-formed thought. There is room for interjection, debate and conversation, there is duality and queerness in the space between whole and un-whole. When we expand this thinking, is there ever really a true and whole conclusion which is complete? Scientists are constantly disproving conclusions we thought were so concrete we wrote them in textbooks and taught them in schools. Allowing thoughts to never reach conclusions feels like a radical practice of accepting that change exists and nothing is final. Seeing ourselves not as concrete pillars of identity holding up the building of us, but as something more fluid like a weather system constantly changing depending on the day and what other pressures are pushing down on us at the time. Holding multiple and contradictory truths is one of the wonders of being human.
Image: Jay Yule. Satelliser discursive rehearsal notes 2020.
I need kindness. I need more rivers meeting. I need to be doing more than being. I need to be swallowed by the sky and kept warm in her belly for a while. For the wind to lick my lashes open and to show me the violence I am too comfortable to seek. To decompose beneath the stars. To be owned by the land we live on. To communicate through touch. To dream beyond the blue of the mountains. To revel in the privilege of dreaming. To feel other’s pain as my own. To feel the weight of responsibility for the actions of my ancestors. To carry home with me like a bag or a bird or a boat. To embody the mortality of nature. To create something boring. To create something which measures time. To seek kindness. To get lost in the endlessness of the sky.
Image: Jay Yule. Satelliser discursive rehearsal notes 2020.
About the notes
These notes can be viewed as a form of documentation of the Satelliser conversations I was part of between May 2020 and now. They were not written with the foresight that they would be included in a printed publication and so they are mixed in with my own personal reflections and sometimes questionable hot takes. I hope that these notes serve as a time capsule of sorts, which demonstrates the spiralling, cyclical and ever-rebirthing journey that Satelliser takes.
Image: Henry Curtis
Jay Yule (she/her)
Jay Yule works as a dance performer and maker. She works regularly with artists Jo Fong, J N Harrington and Sarah Fahie as well as Theo Clinkard, Heidi Rustgaard and Luca Silvestrini. She has performed throughout the UK, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands and in disciplines across puppetry, opera and immersive theatre. Her practice draws from the experience of queerness, works from an intersectional feminist perspective and is of an existential nature. Jay tries to foster an inclusivity into the way she creates, making art which can be viewed by anyone with the hope of imparting a sense of activism from watching.