erika is a movement artist
& experimental film maker
currently living on earth.
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erika is a movement artist
& experimental film maker
currently living on earth.
<<< INDEX >>>
installed at the Performance Space
Visual Arts Facilities, UC San Diego
dimensions variable
a durational (sub)merging of movement, time & space;
a ghost of a performance;
a leaking;
a bending of bodies with/in light
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DILATION (in time, your eyes will adjust) contends with the death of a performance; with the death inherent in the medium of performance. it is a multichannel video installation, staged in a space designed to hold live performance, that considers the ways in which a performance can be sensed and felt: even when the performer is physically absent, when the physical performance has already taken place, when the physical performance is obscured through doubling, blurring, and darkening. when what remains of the performance - as residue, as trace - is alchemized to hold a life of its own.
three projectors cast thin images in a light-tight black box theater. a figure in motion is projected, not on a screen but on the perimeter of the theater: on a wall, in a corner, along a stairwell. the projections are faint, thin, and out of focus. the figures are recognizable as human, and the body is unmasked, but the identity is unknown.
within each loop, the figure slides in and out of darkness, and in and out of doubling. the figures cycle through a choreography of crawling, folding, unfolding, reaching backwards, twisting. the figures move endlessly.
the projectors are positioned in a triangular formation on the floor of the theater, on the <stage>. the projectors point slightly downward, spilling the figure onto the ground.
the space is filled with the white noise of the projectors: technological organisms, breathing. the space also echoes the sounds of viewers moving: footsteps, textiles and keys rustling. the projected figures move in silence.
upon first entering, the viewer cannot easily perceive the figures. the viewer perceive the space as image-less, as though the projectors are presenting blanks screens. it is only when the eyes adjust to the darkness of the space - the darkness which is cut by the light from the projectors - that the eyes are able to begin to perceive the figures on the wall surfaces. by projecting images onto black walls - not designed to clearly surface images - the work dissolves the screen altogether.
this work surfaces a performance across multiple time dimensions. it spills a performance from the past into the present, on a continuous loop. the work engages with the simultaneity of presence and absence: there is a body repeating itself, while simultaneously being (physically) missing in the space.