erika is a dancer & experimental video artist
currently based on earth.
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erika is a dancer & experimental video artist
currently based on earth.
<<< INDEX >>>
in a field where visual, image-based documentation dominates forms of public presentation, how do we record, recount, and re-perform that which refuses to be photographed?
DILATION( )/interstitium is an opening;
a durational (sub)merging of movement, time & space;
a ghost of a performance;
a leaking;
a bending of bodies with/in light
so. the installation is in near total darkness. near totality. the darkness is interrupted(?)/cut/broken by what appears to be light leaks from three projectors in a triangular formation on the floor. the projections become points of orientation for the viewer, who enters disoriented, in the dark. slowly, cautiously. only once the eyes begin to adjust to the darkness - pupils dilating - that the images - thin, along the black wall, - begin to make themselves known. they are always present, but not always perceivable. the gradual adjustment is important to the work. the viewer has to give in to being in the darkness. the absence of sound from the images means that the viewer contends more with their own acoustics in the space.
the (moving) images cut the darkness. the viewer cuts the image. (cuts, merges with, bleeds into, intersects).
the viewer attempts to avoid becoming part of the projection, part of the work.
this is an installation, a temporary situation/encounter in a container. is it also a performance? here we blur the lines. some say it's a performance; that the viewer is witnessing a figure cycling through a sequence of gestures, a choreography of bending, contracting, twisting, squatting, extending, folding and unfolding around itself - but also chasing itself, in a sense, through a secondary figure, a shadow performing the choreograph on delay, overlayed. the figure moves in the space in ways that others/viewers will not.
you, viewer, enter a space governed by a figure who is not exactly watching you but is present in the space. commands power over, in that it replicates what you experience - a presence that is only known with time, with extended duration. as in, the performer/figure is always there, even when you are not, and is always there even if your eyes cannot perceive. minding its own business, in a sense, but you will cross into its threshold. ready to receive you into its light, into its image.
the projection, the figure projected - projection converts/transmutes the physical flesh body into light beams, which leak onto you. make contact with you, without you knowing. the figure can hold your shadow in its frame, implicate you in its image, but the viewer cannot hold the body, or touch the flesh body. it's a withholding of the physical from yours.
is the figure aware of you ?
some say it's a performance of/among viewers. those in the space together watch and listen for one another. there is a heightened awareness of being both visible and invisible to other, as one occupies the container. one is in the light and out of the light. light hits the viewer, the way light hits a dancer on stage. a viewer can watch/witness others moving through the space, as though watching bodies on stage. we blur voyeurism and exhibitionism. we blur seeing and being seen. the act of looking with the whole body.
listening becomes an important activity for orientation, navigation. there is a sense of echolocation.
the darkness matters, the adjustment of darkness matters.
the video is out of focus on the wall. only in focus when you get close, six inches away, and obstruct it from the wall. the image is small. the blur matters. testing the bounds, thresholds of legibility. again, withholding, softening. the crispness would be too satisfying? - and too identifiable. when out of focus in this way the viewer can still make out that it is a figure moving. but the figure is genderless, anonymized.
video - pixels - data.
low light - minimal/bare setup - bare as in exposed, but also as in giving less - toggling giving and withholding. low light requiring more focus, more quiet, more attention.
containers: body as container, black box as container, projector as container. what containers are porous. what is the function of the container. how does the body queer the container. conditional containment. what are the conditions that define how the container functions, performs.
movements of (undetectable) organisms, or less detectable -
politics of/in laying low, crouching, squatting, being less visible, or less immediately visible. requires a sitting with, a waiting, for the image to reveal itself. a deep contrast from the light outside.