Writing by Denys Blacker (Hawk) >>

Hawk Bólit, Contemporary Art Centre, Girona, Spain. 2018

Walking up the worn, stone steps, the crumbling walls dripping water, I am wondering where Helen is. The tunnel is tight with people, the darkness revealing their faces in the flash of a mobile phone light or in the yellow glow of a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. It’s cold. I have been here many times and I am not surprised as we enter the space, an impressive, cavernous room. This used to be a rain-water deposit tank belonging to the convent of Saint Anthony in Girona. Built in the seventeenth century, it is fifteen metres high and the lime coated walls are coloured with the accumulation of earthy mineral deposits left by the dripping water. It is now in use as a cultural space. Despite efforts to keep the water out in recent years, it is still filtering through fine cracks in the walls that on this rainy night, are glistening wet, iron red, burned ochre, sienna brown and lime yellow.

Helen is on the floor, face hooded in black leather, eyes covered. Her torso is naked, vulnerable and only a thin blanket protects her body from the damp tiles. She swings her body, hawk-head upside down, legs stretched back over her head, neck veins swollen, pressing face to chest. Back over, flipping spine, strained arms. She stands, stretching up, saluting an invisible challenger. The hawk-woman is back down on the ground, thrusting her torso forward, all her weight on her elbows, feet off the floor, she balances, arms trembling.

 This room was used as a bomb shelter in the civil war and ancient fears resonate in me as I watch, feeling her stretching muscles in my own flesh. Jaw tightening, fists closing, I find myself labouring with her, there is no way out of this strange birthing. I feel a tension that is not just physical; the fervent search of a fragile body straining to get beyond the carnal, to not be bound by muscle and bone. I can sense where she is going, unassailable, unstoppable, she is running herself to ground, hunting out the spirit, separating it from the flesh, searching for flight. Hawk-woman limbs that stretch behind her, arms twisted, she keeps on. Breathing hard, she does not seem fearful of the foe she cannot see, but we can, her own self caught in a mortal struggle.

 There is no air in this rotten cavern and her lungs must be clogged with the damp mould. I am trembling from the cold. She tips back over, arching body nearly falls, pulling back from the edge, she balances lightly, head back, neck damp with sweat. This attempt to journey beyond the limits of the body is tiring her, subordinated by the perseverance of breath to hold mind to flesh, retaining her from dangerous flight. She will not abandon this scene where we are now united by intent. Her determination is keeping her in movement, her body repeating contortions that are becoming less stable. She is executing the extreme yoga postures that she has refined in decades of practice, and I feel the ritualistic tautness of her time-honoured actions.

 This has never been about a carnal display of athletic ability, it’s a brave incursion into a territory from which we have been discouraged to go, where knowledge is gained, not by thinking, but in moving and sensing. By stretching her physical body to its very limit, she is reaching into areas of knowing and understanding that it not possible to get too any other way. She opens herself as a container for others, a vehicle through which we can experience our bird-minds. Flocking beyond the range of our cognitive senses, the fragile pulse that keeps us in this joined place is held in the movement of her body, a strenuous, depleting task. This is a gift that she offers to us for the duration of our silent conversation and conscious of the rarity of these moments, I stay until she is unable to continue. Worn out by the effort and cold, she is covered with a blanket by caring hands.

She had built a psychic bridge, her powerful body straining to eliminate the space between my breath and hers, chipping away at the illusion of separateness that kept me from her, you from me and them from us. This place of mutual becoming, revealed not only the deep and resonant connections between us, but the difficult task of creating and maintaining such connections.

Denys Blacker
August 2018