A presence without texture.
LIGHT
A direction.
The Dust of Time - Theo Angelopoulos
Invade the body without touching it
A measure of time.
The body is drawn by light.
The shadow is what remains when the light has passed.
SHADOW
A presence without a body.
A body without substance.
Shadow follows.
Shadow distorts.
Shadow remembers
negative of presence.
The dark side of what we know.
The unconscious made visible.
“A shadow am I / Growing in the light.”
Let shadow be the evidence of a body.
A footprint be the evidence of movement.
A crease be the evidence of touch.
A stain. be the evidence of desire.
Pina Bausch - Cafe Müller
REFLECTION
A third element.
Andrei Tarkovsky - Mirror
Something between the two.
Reflection doubles.
Reflection interrupts.
Ingmar Bergman - Persona
Reflection lies.
Water redraws the body.
Bill Viola - Fire Angel
Glass divides it.
Metal bends it.
Bill Viola - The Passing
What is real when the image changes?
What belongs to the body?
What belongs to the surface?
The figure is stretched.
Scaled.
Broken.
Repeated.
Compressed.
Abstracted.
A body becomes another body.
Reality becomes slightly unreal.
A surrealism born from what already exists.
The reflection is never the body.
A face in glass.
A shoulder in water.
A hand against a mirror.
A silhouette behind a curtain.
The body caught between two realities.
Bill Viola - Messenger
The body as object.
The body as landscape.
The body as medium.
The body as surface.
The body as evidence.
To wound.
To pleasure.
To cover.
To unveil.
To protect.
To expose.
The skin is not a boundary.
It is a record.
It absorbs.
It reacts.
It carries.
It breaks.
It remembers.
The body is a battlefield.
Ingmar Bergman - Persona
And a landscape.
And a shelter.
Soft folds.
Cracked surfaces.
Pressure marks.
Marina Abramović
Unexpected depths.
Things buried beneath the surface.
Things waiting to emerge.
“for here there is no place that does not see you.”
The body is something to be:
born,
buried,
exposed,
stretched,
wrapped,
transformed.
وتحسب أنك جرم صغير وفيك انطوى العالم الأكبر
Pina Bausch - Cafe Müller
TRACES
Theo Angelopoulos - The Weeping Meadow
A mark is evidence.
Something was here.
Now it is gone.
The body >>>>>
Only the trace remains.
A scar on skin.
A bruise.
A crease in fabric.
A broken object.
A footprint.
A wet pillow.
A shirt left on the floor.
A bed after sleep.
A table after dinner.
A room after everyone has left.
The quiet after desire.
⸻
The body is absent.
The evidence remains.
A trace does not tell the whole story.
It only suggests one.
It leaves a question where an answer should be.
What happened here?
Who was here?
What touched this surface?
What passed through?
What was left behind?
A trace exists somewhere between:
event and memory,
presence and absence,
body and object,
touch and disappearance.
“The shadow I cast when I stand in the sun has disappeared…”
AFTERIMAGE
Perhaps seeing is not about what is in front of us.
Perhaps it is about what remains after we look away.
A body leaves an image behind the eyes.
Light disappears.
The image remains.
A movement becomes a memory.
A touch becomes a crease.
A person becomes a trace.
Thodōros Angelopoulos
Life in a still image.
An image without an ending.
A story with the event removed.
The viewer completes it.
The viewer invents what happened.
The viewer decides what is real.
Robert Wilson - Adam’s Passion
Not everything needs to be revealed.
Some things are more powerful when they remain unseen.
Some things exist only as evidence.
Some things are understood through their absence.
.........
..................
END OF ARCHIVE