This project is the result of long reflection about being uprooted. The value of the sense of belonging, not just regarding others, but rather regarding a territory. The contact of the feet with lands that support bodies and ideas. Ultimately, feeling a part or portion of something.
But all this runs up against a time in which ephemeral conquest is better. More importance is given to the experience, to those landscapes to visit and stain with the unfocussed emptiness we are dressed in. To be professional tourists out conquering places in visuals that will end up lost God knows where.
To be travellers who hide their eyes, feet and back when leaving. The ones who bear anniversaries, noise, the taste of water, star charts, music boxes and ideals to impose on any corner that has more light than existence itself.
To stress the right to belong to every place at the same time, to the “I was there and took this with me”…, to dismantle as a right and food, and to only return to the port of departure to spill it out to anybody and then repack your bags.
As imaging technology is enhanced, our surroundings become more unfocussed. Because without a home everything is fragmented; there’s no strap or spear to hold
things down, just ganglia of live wood, with no nexuses, no words… just granite and dust. “To live in many places and die everywhere” – that’s the new mantra of existence.
Because there are things that are best told using metaphors: bodies that fragment, elusive tables as home, branches with arms that sustain and give shade, distorted atmospheres and speed, as changing as it is predictable.
In this work, dance and words go hand in hand to talk about what’s now trampling our unsteady feet.
“And at the end of the trip you’ll recognise me for the tiredness and tilt of the head, like an apple on a tree branch. It won’t change my name, though I’ll pass before your eyes with more resolution in photos than in my cells.”
This work could be a prayer danced to one’s rightful place, to that place where we all have the right to fall down, living or dead, and which no-one dishonours.
Will words, movement and light be what brings a little peace to all this noise?
