One funny video is the one where cats are chasing after a reflection of sunlight that is moving around from a mirror. The cat is going crazy chasing that little piece of reflectioned light, trying to trap it with his paw and the cat is looking very confused with the light mainly because of how it will not hold still under his paw and later he is sitting still just staring at the wall in fronts of him, staring at it like a freak like he has got a big problem with it (the light on the wall) cos the light is moving around there just above him and sometimes he is raising his tabby coloured right paw (he is a tabby cat) and he is raising his right paw a bit like he might just strike at the light but the most funniest part of all is where the reflection light is making circles around the cat and the cat is doing crazy circles on the carpet by the coffee table thing like chasing his tail around and around he goes you think he will spin himself into a whirlwind or tie his godamn legs in a knot he is going so fast that is what is so funny. Another funny video is of Kelvin, or Kevin and he is running into the garden to play baseball and his brother  - I guess, you cannot really tell if it is his brother or not but I think it must be his brother that is there already and he (the brother) says 'Kelvin! (or Kevin you cannot hear it properly) and whacks the ball towards the Kevin that unfortunately catches him right in the testicals and he goes down on the ground like a sack of potatoes or however they say it, like a tree that has been felled over onto the patio there, like a dead man with a expression of excruciating absolute agony on his face. Another funny video is of a dog that has landed on a blue trampoline in a yard. You cannot tell how he got into the trampoline. Did he jump on there all by himself? I kind of doubt it. Did someone throw him on there just to make the video? He is not really a big dog, only black and white and small so it would be possible to throw him, but the way he goes upwards like a rocket is totally laugh out loud funny and that strange expression on his face and the big eyes, that dog for sure looks surprise. He goes down falling to the trampoline at the start of the video then he goes up, bouncing, he goes high up with that expression like a rocket he goes up, then he goes down again but it stops (the video) before he hits the trampoline again you do not see what happens next the video is only nine seconds long or maybe 11 seconds. It is hard to tell if that can really be the world funniest video if it is only so short. Maybe there should be a different categories for short funniest video and longer funniest video but I just want to figure out which is the funniest video on the whole world without using any categories like the funniest hip hop dance video or the funniest animal video or the funniest video of a ski accident - that is not the funniest video in the whole world. Anyway the contest is still going. I will keep looking. Someone linked me a video of a guy that cannot stand up. I think he has not got damaged legs or a serious brain impediment he has been drinking that is all but probably he has been drinking a lot. It is a totally funny video because you can see he is confused like he thinks the world is tilting or something, he thinks the world is the problem but really it is him that is the problem. Loser is holding onto a tree or a lamp post or whatsoever he can find to cling onto to stop him from sliding off the edge of the world then he gets up and walks some steps along the street, I have seen a hamster walk better than that (in another video that is not so funny) but this guy can hardly stand up, he is swaying then he takes a step. What is so funny? I guess you are just waiting for the guy to fall over again. Some funny video can be full of surprises but another funny video is sometimes just exactly what you expect, you know what will happen it comes as no surprise at all but still you are laughing.

The following text I wrote for the new publication What I Think About When I Think About Dancing published by Campbelltown Arts Centre, Campbelltown, Australia. Curators: Lisa Havilah, Emma Saunders, Susan Gibb.

Quick Steps
(what I think about when I think about dance)

Movements that seem ordinary – the stretching of fingers, the lifting of a glass, or a knife, the low-key meander of a walk to the shop on a Sunday morning, the sudden start of a rapid jog down the stairs to catch someone at the door, the run for the bus and the shoulder barge to the subway doors, the reach for the TV remote, the hand raised in a wave from the back of the car, the throwing back of the head and the closing of the eyes, the slump and collapse into a seat. The negotiation of a crowded bar whilst carrying drinks (glasses pressed together with tension between hands, or balanced on a tray). The pause and slight bend to listen at the door of a neighbour’s apartment when you pass it late night and hear voices from within. The unbuttoning of buttons, unzipping of zips, the thumb-dance of SMS texting. The sidestepping back and forth of polite pedestrians eager to avoid a collision. The silent and strangely punctuated dance in a hotel doorway as a visitor leaves at night. The almost frantic dance of hands and stooped body when searching for a mobile phone that’s ringing somewhere, but deep in a pocket, which pocket? or concealed in which zip-compartment of a bag? The arm thrown back for the hurling of a stone. The looser arm bent back for the throwing of a stick. The sideways tilt of the body, torqued to skim a stone across water. The soft lean back against the wall of an elevator. The movement of palms against a surface – brick, polished concrete or carpet. The movement of fingers, turning the pages of a book. The rotation of feet and ankles, stretching of calves and knees whilst seated, cramped, on a plane. The gestures of stop, come forwards, wait, go back. The gestures of yes or maybe, the gestures of now, then, yesterday, today, here, there and never. The dance of fingers on a tabletop. The dance of hands and arms explaining the route that someone must take to reach a building somewhere in the neighbourhood. The dance of hands and arms that seek to describe the architecture of a courtyard on the other side of the world, the turn from the crowded main street, the sudden and unexpected opening out of the interior space, the six trees within, the brilliant rectangle of sky. The dance of arms and hands describing a fight between sisters, or a fight in a taxi rank late night. The semaphore pantomime of hands making gestures as part of a bellowed conversation that traverses traffic in the street. The dance of lips talking. The dance of eyes reading. The dance of hands demonstrating a touch that once a departing lover made, with his hand, or her hand, on yours – not a caress and not a handshake, not a blow, not an assertion and yet neither a question. Flicking crumbs from your lap, brushing dandruff from your shoulders. Scratching the arse. Precise movements made with a key in an awkward lock, the various twists and lifts, pulls and pushes (with hands and shoulders, even knees) needed to open up the door. Scratching the back of the left calf with the upper side of the right foot. Itching the nose just by moving it – a wriggle. More scratches, itches, tics, gasps, sighs, yawns turning to small shivers, minor shakes. Blinks, twitches, hesitant gestures to no particular end. Movements that seem pretty much unplaceable – hardly a part of discourse, scarcely part of any kind of behaviour, system or code. Vague gestures. Amorphous shifts, shivers, shrugs, glitches. Undulating forms, flows, tensions and extensions. Dances of musculatures, tendons, and interlocking bones. Movements that are scarcely, in some sense, recognisable as human. Or movements that are on the edge of what you might think of as human. Body as invertebrate, as canine, as aquatic, as simian, as reptilian, body as machine, as robot, android, cyborg, body as ghost, as spectre, as wraith, as demon, as flesh in the grip of possession. Body taut and stretched in orgasm. Body open. Leaping running jumping stretching. As if a kind of temporary war on gravity has been declared. Body closed – folded in on itself. Body knotted. Body fighting itself. Bodies in configurations that you only see in pictures from the killing fields. Bodies impossibly twisted, dislocated. Knotted, piled, stacked, hung, thrown, crumpled like so many rags. Scarecrows. Broken forms. Slides. Glides. Quick steps. Dazzling feet. Electrified. Pure joy. Delight. Surprise. Sweat. Joy again. The crush of bodies in a mosh pit. The movement of eyes around an unfamiliar space. The movement of eyes around the body of a sleeping lover. The movement of eyes across the screen of a laptop. Taste of blueberries. Stumbles. Trips. Misses. Shapes written on the ground – lines, circles, spirals, zigzags. Fingers on skin. Walks with purpose and intention. Crawls. Runs. Drags. Meanders. Feet or hands moving vaguely with indecision and uncertainty. Movements that feels more like sketching, or searching for something. Movements that feel like incomplete memories. Movements as attempts to peel back some layer of the present to get to the past. Butterflies. Movements that feel like they are attempts to be something. Attempts at something. Versions of something. Provisional. Small steps. Small gestures. Moves that make you think of other dancers and other dances. The way this one holds her head, the way this one moves his leg, the long back of this one, the grace of the other one, the energy of that move, all of these things pointing you elsewhere – into your own past, into the many times you sat somewhere or stood somewhere and watched others move. Sounds. Breathing. Occasional exclamations of breath, slight and unintended sounds of exertion, effort, stress and strain. The sound of feet moving on the floor, pounding, squeaking and always the breathing. Ballroom dancing. Tango. Waltzes. Line dances. Disco dances. Ballet dances. Mosh pit again. Solos. Duets. Enormous and complex sequences of perfect unison. Meg morphing. Wendy ghosting, fighting. Fumiyo shimmering and cutting and melting. Kate tangled in Las Vegas sequins and knots. Vlatka’s hands on a table top, turning and shifting – there and then gone and then there again. Jerome’s lines. Jonathan’s arms. Seth’s feet. The big guy from Pina Bausch. Raimund Hoghe. Bez. Prince. Ian Curtis. A class of school kids dance the sea – appearing not only as the sea creatures themselves, but as the floating seaweeds, the plankton, the bubbles of air. Another group of school kids dance the stars and the planets, the meteors and comets, all of them with tinsel tied to their wrists. A dance of skeletons. A dance of sparkling jewels look, Aladdin’s cave. Drug dances. Drunk dances. Fight dances. Weeping dances. Dawn dances. Pavement dances. Burning dances. Trembling. Penetrating. Order. Disorder. Order again. Lost shoes and kicked-off shoes. An ex-lover dances in her apartment, there amongst the kitchen things, the furniture, the coffee cups and strewn clothes, she dances, showing the moves she must dance on a stage in some weeks time, marking and naming the moves one by one as she marks them: ‘the fall’, ‘the wave goodnight’, ‘the kiss the air’, ‘the swivel hips’, ‘the not now’, ‘the cripple bend’, ‘the wave goodnight’.

Tim Etchells at 23.01 on 21 October 2009, Sheffield.

New Guardian Diary piece about my Empty Stages project with Hugo Glendinning, up since yesterday here... plus an associated gallery here. Have been waiting for them to sort out the numerous errors in the credits and the titling of the locations before posting here but have now more or less given up.

I’d like to ask first of all please let it not be that Utopia with doves and waterfalls and soft white clothes and doors that open as soon as they are approached

and please let it not be that utopia with all in harmony and accord

and please not that utopia of agrarian fantasy, with all of us in touch with or at peace with the land, working the land together or weaving together in some endlessly temperate and agreeable climate, caught in simple pleasures, eating simple wholesome food

and please – just as strongly, please - not that techno utopia where no one works at all since the machines - ever more clever, resourceful and skilled - are doing everything, hidden in basements, miniaturized or concealed behind the walls

and please not that morbid utopia that so many churches speak of or hope for or promise, but only come the day, meaning after death

and not that utopia of absolute freedom or that of total equality

or that of the flattening of creeds, races, genders and all that into one single humanity or brotherhood

and not that utopia of original ignorance, Adam and Eve, the nakedness that is not nakedness no thank you

and not that utopia of free love 

or boundless and open desire

or that hallucinatory psychedelic utopia of the human dissolved into the universe

and not that utopia of the virtual, with its useless pretended transcendence of flesh and biology

and again please, not that utopia of endless oneness and endless accord

not likely peace, or everlasting peace

not likely peace at all

and not the satisfaction of all desires 

and not the exhaustion of all need

and please not an end to difference

no to the utopia determined by sense

no to the utopia determined by utility

no to the utopias of knowledge, understanding, and progress

please not the uniformity of consent

or that of placidity

no to the erasure of anger

please not the utopic reduction of human space to that of a prison in which all needs have been anticipated, prescribed, provided for

please not the reduction of everything to the realm of the solvable

please not some temperate climate of banality cotton-woolled and perpetuated ad nausem

not late-capitalist laissez-faire bliss

not communistic brotherhood

not either theocratic order

or rationalist decency

not some medicalised or genetically modified utopia in which all personalities and physicalities have been balanced, remixed and extended forever in a calculation of chemicals and genes

please not the utopia of the old and wise

and please not that utopia of the young and the carefree

please

not men and women in accord with each other in all the possible combinations,

or mankind so called at accord once again with ‘the animals’ so called

no, not equality 

nor comfort

nor acceptance

not even tolerance

we'll have none of it

a utopia of dispute might be better

a utopia of permanent contestation

anger and the unruly.

But not even those will satisfy

let’s have instead the utopia which resists all names,

refuses all belonging

refuses all place, definition or affiliation

i.e. not for us that which can be dreamed or imagined, described or spoken of

and not for us anything that can be caught in the noose of 26 letters (called an alphabet) and hanged

not for us what is offered

not for us what is given

not for us what is promised

not for us what is even possible

not that

not anything of it

but everything, everything which is other than that.

Friends, acquaintances, enemies i look forward to our eventual meeting,

and to your full acceptance of these my most reasonable demands.

Tim Etchells, on the train from Paris to London, the 25 October 2009.

[Written for the recent latenight program event on Utopia/Dystopia at Frascati Internationaal in Amsterdam. Also read in Munich at The Woodstock of Political Thinking two weekends ago].