I was wandering around, talking on the phone, as I like to do. My collaborators, Sasha and Alex were on the other end. It was a warm day. I pushed a foldable bike with one hand as I walked. Alex told us of her desires to investigate a topic that was not of her expertise. I felt a similar wish. We imagined this project as a space where we could experiment with ideas and invent practices, not knowing exactly where we were headed but figuring it out along the way.


I decided to put in focus a subject that I had been curious to explore for a while but hadn't done so as it had felt just too intimate, too private. My middle name, Abraham, was a name given to me in honor of an ancestor whom I had never met. My grandfather was born Adolf Margaliot in 1920 in Chemnitz. At the age of 18, during The Holocaust he ran away to Palestine-Israel, changing his name to Abraham. Abraham Margaliot was one of the first Holocaust researchers in Israel.


‘Being with’ shifts between multiple practices of gathering, collaging, questioning, dancing and measuring in order to rethink our relation to time and of being with chosen ancestors differently than our daily, habitual ways of doing so. Within this research I propose positioning my familial archive alongside my research around time.


Here are some of the practices that I shared during my session. It is important to mention that as the session took place through zoom I imagined how the screen becomes our shared encounter or studio. I questioned in what ways we might use this 2D medium to feel and experience some sort of poetic togetherness.


EXERCISES / PRACTICES / OPEN SOURCE -


* word bank

We wrote random words into a shared google doc file. Later in the session we returned to those words and together, created a poem using only the words from the word bank. We read the poems out loud, all together. You can listen to us reading the poem together here-



* Bits of heart across time — SUB(JECTIVE) kit / score

For this exercise, I set an alarm for 1 minute and asked the participants to place their fingers on their wrist or heart and count their herbeats. When the minute was up they each wrote down their pulses. They repeated the same procedure at the end of the session.


Here is an example of my pulses per minute:
103 pulse (beginning of the session)
77 pulse (end of the session)
This practice was a way to position myself in time in a numeric way, one that he doesn't have a full control over. The following graph shows my pulses throughout 2019, taken in various places across the globe. Visit the link below for more information.
Here is a link explaining further about that.
https://longingtosuspend.cargo.site/bits-of-heart


*following that I proposed-
choose one of the following questions and write an answer to that question

can you be timefull?

where is your time?

can you get rid of time?

can you gain time?

does your time exist in a certain place?

does your time increase or decrease?

is now just like any other time?

is your time mostly on your legs or on the palms of your hands?

is your time flying or is it landing?

is your time a lie or is it true?

is your time a poem or a story?

It is a journey through the dance

how abstract is your time?

can you switch times?

is your time within your body or outside of your body?

can you let go of all times?
can you become another time for sometime? for how long?

can you break time apart?

can you stretch time?

does time dissolve you?

can time assemble you?

can you assemble time?

do you feel that you have less time now or more time?

is your time within your body or outside of your body?

where is your time?

*Hi time, here I invited the participants to write a couple letters, poems to time, where you directly address time as a living entity, starting with the phrase ‘Hi time’

to read some of my letters to time, click here. If you would like to have a printed zine of the letters, feel free to
contact me!

also, antoine mermet composed some songs to the poems, if you want to listen to an expample or two- here you go : )




*in the last part of the session-practice we were drawing maps of utopic time and devoted a dance to one of our ancestor whom we never met.

getting closer to abstract themes felt meaningful, like something I would like to practice and share more often, thanks time, hope to see you sonner than later
xx

Nitsan Margaliot is a choreographer, dancer, and curator entangled with family and queer archives, fabulation, and vulnerable encounters.
He danced with the Batsheva Ensemble and Vertigo Dance Company. Since moving to Berlin in 2014, he has worked with Laurent Chetouane, Maud Le Pladec, Kat Valastur, Aoife McAtamney, Moritz Majce, Benjamin Bertrand, Anne Collod, Milla Koistinen and Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop.
His choreographic works have been presented at 14StreetY NYC, Vitlycke Centre for Performing Arts Sweden, Israel Festival, Radialsystem, English Theatre Berlin, Soundance Festival - Dock11, PATHOS Munich, Kunstquartier Bethanien, Adama Festival, LAB Frankfurt, Suzanne Dellal Centre, SomoS Arts Berlin, Barnes Crossing Cologne, Kelim Choreography Center, and Jewish Filmdays Frankfurt.
Nitsan holds an MFA from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he evolved his research around subjective relation to time through writings and installations.
In 2020 he initiated TouchingMargins.com, an alter-archive, with Sasha Portyannikova; and The Platform, an organization creating sustainable conditions for freelance dancers in Israel, with Tamar Sonn. In 2022 he was co-curator of the exhibition and performance series Movement Research ACROSS at Galerie Wedding. He is a 2023 research resident at tanzhaus nrw and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm; and a recipient of the Tanzpraxis stipend granted by the Berlin Senate Department of Culture.