Meet Annie Lure

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Annie Lure a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Annie, we are so deeply grateful to you for opening up about your journey with mental health in the hops that it can help someone who might be going through something similar. Can you talk to us about your mental health journey and how you overcame or persisted despite any issues? For readers, please note this is not medical advice, we are not doctors, you should always consult professionals for advice and that this is merely one person sharing their story and experience.

Merge the physical with the psychical. Western knowingness disarticulates the two.

Refute medicalization. All its nomenclature. Diagnosis. Prognosis. You won’t process what you won’t name or entertain.

Body forth vitality by crucible. I do site-specific durational performances, one of which was Sicilian tarantism. The crux is to willingly undergo the bite. Then move with seeming automaticity. A woman possessed.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

Core-centric choreography.

A fusion of Pilates and rectilinear calisthenics.

Swordsmanship and sundry martial arts.

Temporal manipulation.

Culturally inflected durational performance. At the intersection of method acting, religious epiphany, and endurance sports. Works include:

– Dionysian grape crushing

– The water cure

– Crouching in a bunker too low to stand and too short to recline in so as to connect with those condemned for ideological infractions

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1) Develop corporeal knowledge:

The only way of knowing is through the body.

Don’t count calories or delineate nutrients. Attest to a meal’s descent into your stomach. Ascertain its provenance. Eat sensually. Not merely for nourishment but for ascension.

Aim for bodily perfection. You are sculptor and sculpture. Tailor and cloth as an Italian poem goes. Focus on form when exercising. Find alignment through iteration.

2) Interpenetrate with your environment:

Recognize a site as culturally salient, possibly unique. Replete with knowledge on the human condition.

I’ve held vigils (Peru) and immured myself (Albania) to connect with historically remote women inhabiting the interstices of bridges and castles. They’d been immured to ensure these structures’ durability. I found how that they’d abdicated themselves, sometimes erotically sacrificially but often only partially willingly, to communal cohesion. My stance was at once seductive and austere. You don’t learn of such stories but embody them.

3) Be self-possessed. Empathetic to the unfortunate (i.e. the war-torn). Indifferent to the weak. Neither fawning over nor jealous of the successful but receptive to their methods.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

Performance artist OR painter OR photographer to body forth the following verses from Sharon Olds’ poem ‘The Spouses Waking up in the Hotel Mirror’:

… her eyes
skinned back, she looked insane with happiness.
—
Her ribs and breasts and clavicles had
the molded look of a gladiator’s
torso-armor
—
I could see her in a temple, tying someone up
or being tied up
—
I looked into his iris
like looking at a rainstorm by moonrise

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.odyssey.pm/contributors/annie-lure-2/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annie-lure-a2b7392b6/
• Other: [email protected]

Image Credits

Annie photographed by Shamayim.