artist statement

I am not a whore in the traditional sense. I want to give everything for free. I want to give everything. I want to give it to you, even if you do not want it. I need to give this to you,
Now. Because it matters.

My work is silent but loud. I want to gently strip away your skin and touch you underneath. I want to insert a needle, or maybe a thorn from a flower.
How do you feel?
Please tell me.
These dances come to existence from a need to speak, to ask, to participate. The form that they take is the form that offers itself for me to find a way in. I am looking for a way in, into your mind, your body. The work is created in our meeting. It does not exist without you.
I make work to understand the world around me, to make sense of what may have none. I dance to map what otherwise is incomprehensible to me. I am attempting to see the world through a poetics of the body, which is to feel and to be felt.
My work asks what is important. What do we care about? What were the choices that brought us here? They are questions I ask of myself, and I try to lie less every time I answer. I go towards discomfort, because it is a mobilizing force. I place naïveté above cynicism: it does not make me look good but it helps me see what is here. I move in a guise of confusion, of embarrassment and not knowing, because the constant reminder of how little I understand forces me to actually learn.


Wednesday, October 21, 2009

how to continue

i was very happy with the reception of the work at fall dance.
it feels like this part of the work is complete.

i am thinking of a live version, but not with projection or interactive sound scapes. i want interactivity but in a very basic form. if i were moving blindfolded and had volunteers from the audience speak commands, and take care that i don't bump into things.
this part of the work would fall in the genre of dance, in the wide meaning of the word.

i am thinking of the sensation of threat in the body, and how moving to study in the united states and trying to understand the reasons for the wars, has made me re-live childhood memories of cold war eastern europe and the constant fear of nuclear attacks.
i am trying to understand how it feels, to have unseen enemies on a foreign ground you never see.
do people live their everyday lives under a threat?
do they, like we did, feel personally, physically threatened?
touched by someone you don't see, creating a collective body of pain which requires action.....

2 comments:

  1. I am very glad that you have a sense of accomplishment. Very rightly deserved. Congratulations. The next reading will be of use to you as you consider the notion of interactivity. The Fantasy Beyond Control Lynn Hershman, 1990. It raises the issue about who is active and who is passive and what this means in terms of control of ones life and the experience of the work of art.

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  2. thank you Simone!
    i'm going to try out the new concept with audience for the first time today, will post video of parts of it soon.

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