BE WATER MY FRIEND

 

empty your mind

                                be formless

                                        shapeless            like water

                                                                                water can flow

                                                                                            or it can crash

                                                be water my friend

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZxGtvpp49M 

I came across an interview with Hito Steyerl, in which she mentions this Bruce Lee remix by user MELODYSHEEP (I couldn't find the original clip, but linked is what I presume is the same uploaded by a different user). Steyerl used this remix in her work Liquidity, reflecting the need for fluid movement to adapt to constant, turbulent change. 

I can't exactly pinpoint what about this clip intrigues me, but I enjoy how the materiality of the image - the grainy quality, the slight lag, the slight robotic tinge to his voice - makes the video itself flow as if it were a body of water. At the same time, though, none of those qualities I would describe as smooth, or boundless, something I would typically associate water with. I see this duality with digital technology - it is built to know no bounds, endlessly circulating our information until we lose track of it. At the same time, screens glitch, interfaces lag, firewalls control who has access to what and when. Nothing about this is natural to us, but we are told to simply "be water my friend".

this then led me to this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZbfNtDCHdM

depicting a clip from 1985 movie "Sinfonia do Alto Ribeira", by Ricardo Lua.

There is a kind of static background noise to this video, which you cannot distinguish between coming from a flowing body of water or from the screening of the video.

Both evoke a desire within me to move. As a Taekwondo fan, Bruce Lee's calculated kicks replaying again and again are making me want to do the same. The second video has ignited a desire within me to play, to splash, to not be water but be in it!