Transcript from tracing exercise

“I have laid out—laid down on the ground—a piece of canvas. It is thicker than the cheesecloth I’ve been using. About 1.2 meters by 3 meters. I’ve placed it on top of another piece of canvas and a plastic sheet to protect it from the dirty floor. I am sitting, looking at it horizontally, thinking about what I can do with it. The main idea for today was to outline my body, move around, and find a light, nice stance—on the canvas or in the canvas, haha. Yes, and I will talk through it. I’ll go through what I feel, what I touch, what I see, and any remarks that come to mind. Be ready.
I am now standing on the canvas—or on this dense cotton fabric. Standing with my feet in one of the corners. From where I’m standing, it’s the bottom left corner.
I notice how the light interacts with the surface. There are folds, mostly vertical, slightly off-center to the left. In contrast, horizontal folds appear as well. And then the natural crinkly texture—it makes it look like water.
Water that decided to become a fossil.
Now, I’m walking around it. Stepping on it. Moving through the folds—the previous folds. Seeing what I feel like doing. Looking at the ground, my lower peripheral vision, and the sides. I see my feet walking—when they move forward. If I’m standing still, I don’t see them. I want to see the tips,
I see my torso. Nice. I see my arms if they move, if they move with the body. One, I understand.
It helps someone think.
I can also see my pants a little, especially if I move.
 I put my recorder down. Move my hands. I see them very clearly.
But if I talk about them, they’re not there anymore.
I’m thinking.
Will I trace myself or will I project. Retracing, or perceived tracing, of my body. I think today, I will continue the exercises I was doing before on the cheesecloth. And use my body as it is.
Since it’s not just one outline, but combinations of outlines. A map of movement. I have to start somewhere, with the idea that I will move to another place. Though I can always return to the point where I started. Because movement is just movement.
I keep gravitating toward this left bottom corner, so I will start here. I will start with my feet, the way they are. The way they are placed. I’m using a green pencil. Because I felt like it. There’s not much more to it.
My socks are purple. A rich purple. My pants are black. My shirt is blue. Just blue.
So, I will begin. I touch my feet with the edge of the pencil.
I trace my toes. The corners of my toes. The walls of my feet. The part of my ankle that touches the floor. I notice how the light falls—the light is coming from the right, so my feet are dark on the left. A very visible shadow projects from my right foot.
And it stops with my left foot.
I trace both.
Now, I don’t feel like moving. This is it.
I feel comfortable. There’s something… Yes. There’s an aspect of tracing the space I’m occupying that brings a certain comfort. A delineated space, outlined by my own volume.
And at the same time, it makes my volume flat.
If I step away—as I do now—I can immediately see the size of my feet. If I look at the size of my feet, standing next to their outline… If I stand in front of it…
Yes. I will trace them again.
Now, my feet are facing the outline of my feet. This just happened. I will trace them again.
The light is now coming from the opposite direction. I twist them.
There’s something confronting in this. What is there versus what I see versus what I perceive.
Because if you don’t look at your feet, you don’t really… You feel the weight of your body on the ground, but you don’t really feel your feet. It’s like touching a wall without looking at your hand. You can trace your hand in your imagination, understand its size in relation to the wall and what you are touching.
I step outside the outline again.
There was a slight change when I stepped—my feet are no longer straight. I will trace this. I think I will trace every immediate movement I make, the ones I don’t think about. Because I think this is the point of the exercise—to understand my own movements within this piece of canvas.
It’s much looser, for some reason. It’s easier to draw on this canvas.
I sit down. I start to feel my shoulders.
I want to be closer to my feet.
Before sitting, before placing my weight down, I crouch. But I can’t put my heels down. So, only the front part of my feet touches the ground.
I will trace this as well.
Going underneath the foot with the pencil. This really helps with understanding. There is always a separation between you and the ground. You are not the ground.
I broke my pencil.
So now—I am obliged to move.
I move.
(A pause.)
Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you—
It’s okay, okay.
My classmate enters. Hands me my spray bottle.
It’s nice. I was busy anyway.
I put my feet back in position. I place them exactly where the last outline was. It’s quite nice. I continue tracing.
Now, I can sit down. No—actually, I won’t sit down.
I will lie on my left hip. My feet have moved.
I like how the feet seem to be literal gravity points. Literal weight. Like paperweights in this exercise.
They really allow you to see movement. More than other parts of the body. Because feet are such recognizable shapes. If they are completely laid on the ground, if only the tips touch, if they are on their sides—you can see the shift. You can see that I changed positions.
For now, I will just trace.
Tracing my leg. My knee. My left leg. My hip.
My right leg is bent, so it’s not touching the ground. I don’t trace it.
I return to the left leg.
And I finish again at the heel of the left foot.
For this to be possible—for the whole form to be on the ground—I need to lay my right foot flat and position my left foot completely down. I trace it, and already, I see so much movement.
I keep breaking my pencil.
I do it too much. I need to sharpen it to a shorter tip.
I notice how my sense of interior space is always dictated by negative and positive space. This is why I usually wear black clothing. It helps me understand the space I completely occupy.
Now, I am doing what I did before. But with the right leg.
And I really notice The interior space between my legs is—um—very angular. This makes sense. It’s very angular. I’ll take a picture.
(See picture for reference.)
Now! I make a similar shape. That’s my instinct. With my arm, I want it to start showing. I put it parallel to my legs, following the angle of my right leg. And—uh—yeah, I’m placing it so that my short arm touches the ground, copying my lower leg.
And then, of course, there’s a sharp 90-degree angle where my upper arm extends. Since it’s not touching the ground and is moving directly toward my eye in perspective, it feels like it follows the same angle as my leg. Even though it doesn’t touch the ground, I will trace it. But I can’t trace it literally—because it’s not touching the ground.
So, I will trace my lower arm directly. The way I do it is by placing the tip of the pencil at the edge of my sight on the arm. At the very edge of my arm, I put the tip of the pencil and outline it. Until my vision no longer reaches it. It moves through my armpit, then to my chest.
I follow the form until it reaches my leg, touching the outline of my leg on the floor. I repeat the same process on the other side.
Tracing the exterior part of the arm is more difficult. I go from the inside. And, of course, it stops somewhere—it just stops.
You stop there because you can’t see your back, unfortunately.
This results in some distortion. Of course. But I think that’s the point.
When I put my arm up, I see my lower arm perfectly well. I see my hand. But the outline of the part that isn’t touching the ground—its shape—gets disrupted. I will include an image, but it becomes almost conical. It’s not correct, not at all, but it comes very close to how I sometimes perceive visual disruptions.
Now, I place my body following the outlines.
I think I’m going to turn around. Because—I feel like it. I leave my short arm touching the ground and lay down. I take a small look at what I’ve done.
There’s empty space behind me that still needs to be used. Not all space has to be used, of course.
I’ve found that turning around from this position is complicated—it creates major confusion, both in the image and in the way the positions relate. I decide to sit up instead. My ass is exactly where it was when I originally sat down.
My legs are free now. I put them—yeah, you can’t see it—but I put them parallel.
I hug the drawing of my leg that was already there. With my current leg.
If that makes sense.
I have no idea what this will bring me. But I am—yeah, I’m hugging it.
It’s funny how the traces I leave become something. I understand them as myself. Somehow, they’re evidence that I’ve been here. They gain some kind of consciousness. It feels like that.
I think it’s understandable what these past 25 minutes have been.
The green is less aggressive than the red—the burnt sienna.
My body is touching itself. I am laying on myself, touching myself.
I feel the volume of the two-dimensional traces I’m leaving.
And I enjoy it.
I decided—I traced the leg that was showing movement from the original, the first leg tracing. There was too much empty space. It felt bad.
I want to occupy all the space. I want my body to be it.
I move now to the right.
I’m sitting exactly where I was before. My right leg was there first. Then, I put my arm on it. Now, I put my right leg on top of that.
Stacking body parts together.
A direct relationship between limbs—because, really, they’re all the same shape. Every part of the body has the same shape. They just occupy different volumes.
It’s funny to realize that.
Something shifted in me today.
I don’t understand how these exercises can be so helpful. But they are.
They really are.
I think—somehow—I am enabling myself to see my actual space.
Stacking and stacking and stacking and stacking and stacking.
I stack one leg on top of the other. Yes, exactly. And—on my knees. I'm on my knees. And I'm going to trace this position. Knees and my feet. The bottom of my feet are looking up.
Okay. There's always great pleasure when outlining my knees. I think, yeah, the knees are the major tension points of the body. The knees. The—the movable cartilage parts, which I forget the name of. And there are always these meeting points. So now, with my legs closed, I will even define it more because this meeting point—
Beautiful. Where the knees touch. If the knees touch, it’s a beautiful thing.
Yes, I will. I will.
I think my torso is missing. Or—I believe, maybe, I can do my torso, I can do limbs. And yeah, this is a good idea to separate the thing.
Yeah, what should I do now?
Now, I move to the side. And I trace. Just exactly trace. So you can again see movement. Turn my legs on the ground.
No—my hip is on the ground. So? It’s not that my legs are completely—
Yes, done. And I will also outline the space that is—this position. Because it’s there.
I find that the pictures I take in this exercise are more relevant than voice. Because the process is so internal that to exteriorize it—it’s quite hard. I must say—I don’t see the point.
Okay, so the next progression is, logically—actually—putting my shoulder on the ground. And I put my shoulder on the ground. And I have an arm. And I trace this arm. That is—
Again. Very comfortable. Exercise. Brings me much clarity.
Now, I have an isolated arm, and it's just there. Chilling.
I’m doing some movement with it. So, it’s possible to see how—
I reached the conclusion that if I continued with the green and with the limbs, I would be composing an image. So, I decided to move to the next step, which is to think of the torso. The thing that connects all these limbs.
So, I grabbed my burnt sienna pencil. And I will put myself in the last position I was in.
Legs together. Slightly turned, so only my left hip is on the ground. My left arm is on the ground. And I will—
What will happen? I assume—
And there should be—yes, everything’s good. Arm there.
And I will draw. I will just see what happens. From the tension point in my armpit. And lay down.
Can I trace my torso? Also from where my shoulder is going? And I try the best I can to reach the back of my back. Yes.
And.
Okay, this is quite good. Now, there’s a definite body there, which I appreciate.
Now, my knees are in a different position. I find that I should have two pencils, actually. But maybe I will do this in red?
Now, I will get in green. So I trace back. And I go to the natural position.
And.
It’s again a situation.
I’m on my knees. And on my knees. Again, beautiful tension points in the center.
And then I go back. I trace my feet again. And I’m using green because of my rule. I think I could have done it all in one color, but—I feel like I need some idea of what I’m doing.
Now, because I really want to do the torso, I think maybe I will lay down again and do the torso again on the side. And this way, I’m actually going to almost lay—
And the source of it was already there.
This time, I—I’m not sure if I can reach it back, but it’s okay. I like to do it as clean as possible.
Yes. And stopping. So, the torso—I’m counting it from my shoulders until my hips.
Yes. I—I will put myself—On my back. And—I’ve changed. I am now directed toward the other side. And I’m in a weird position because my feet had to be where they were before.
I’m taking care of my tracing again. My torso.
This is very difficult to do because volume seems to appear.
On the hips. I think, yeah, the fat. The fat is distributed differently, so the volume is circular.
Again, it’s very important that I include the hips in this because otherwise—a torso is not a torso.
And I think I’ll do it all the way to my shoulders.
I see that this is a much messier process than I had anticipated.
Because the fabric is thicker, I need to make sure that things are drawn.
This may be a little bit difficult.
I’m now standing up, so I have an idea of everything. It’s actually just a messy composition.
But I’m happy I’ve done it.
Yes, I will continue.
Okay, so I will use the fact that my shoulders are like this. I’m not turning.
In order to reach further.
I think I need to lie with my face down.
And I—I will do it.
There’s always the possibility of choosing some parts to outline and other parts not to outline. But I think this is for a later exercise.
Now, I have my feet right in the beginning.
I’m thinking if there’s anything more I can do.
I believe.
I believe I’m done.”