A Morphologic Journey (On the Boarders of our Bodies) | Performance
A Morphologic Journey (On the Boarders of our Bodies) is a 2-hour performance in four episodes, inspired by the journey of Ulysses under the aspect of his encounters with the variety of women. Splintering meetings with archetypes of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa and Penelope are guideline analogies of behavioral patterns of people on the run, men and women in search to forget, longing for union and something that may finally last.
“Featuring fog, debris, muck, viscous liquid, broken glass and burned plastic, it is full of references to impermanence, to liminal spaces and to shifting states. They wove successfully more visceral and mythical reflections on death and rebirth into the narrative of urban regeneration.”
* Gabrielle Hoad on Interface review of Vessel Contemporary Art, Plymouth
Episode II: Calypso
The man washes the stone floor with a sponge in his mouth. He destroys a mirror. He stands onto its broken pieces and burns an umbrella. He enters a bathtub filled with salt. He discovers crystal stones and collects them.
The woman changes dress. She lets set alight candles on her torso and in her hands. She opens a construction hanging from the ceiling, from which pours sand. She whirls around her axis under the falling sand until all candles are blown out.
The man passes her the crystal stones.
Episode III: Nausicaa
The man distributes broken glass pieces on the floor.
The woman changes dress and approaches the public. She lets them one by one listen to footsteps registered on a mobile phone and hands them a crystal stone. She wets pieces of her dress in water and writes with it the word TRUST on the walls. She covers her face with her hair and approaches the man, who is standing barefoot on the broken glass pieces. She falls rigidly towards the broken glass. The man, blind himself by a blindfold, catches her falling body.
Episode IV: Penelope
The man lies down on the broken glass pieces and covers his body with these.
The woman changes dress, takes an uncomfortable position on the wall and stitches with a red twine her hands to her dress.
When she can’t hold the position anymore, she approaches the man and frees him from the glass pieces that cut into his skin.
The man exits, the woman changes dress back to her commonplace outfit. She asks a visitor for a cigarette.
* Photos: Margaret Sharrow, Kendal Noctor | Foto +
* Duration: 2 hours
* VESSEL Contemporary Art, Plymouth, UK. September 2011.
Episode I: Circe
The man in a cage. He takes off a second skin and hangs it on fisher hooks. He cuts his leg 4 times and presses white paper on it. He incises a phrase on the black wall. He burns the pages of a book.
The woman enters taking off her everyday dress and entering a dress-construction, which ties her with stockings to a pillar. She starts smoking chain. She punctures black stockings hanging above her head, oils starts pouring out of them. She runs on the maximum extension of the stockings. More oil exits from above, more she slips, slams onto the floor, stands up, runs again.
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