July 2021, and I am starting an intriguing new Artist Residency at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, as part of an England’s Creative Coast commission, and supported by the Syrian Resettlement Project, East Sussex.
Artist Holly Hendry’s Indifferent Deep, alongside Invertebrate, currently on show at the DLWP, absorbs both internal and external spaces, and will be the starting point to this co creative lab within the galleries and external gallery spaces.
In partnership with my my ongoing two year Site Line project, a series of experimental lens based workshops with refugees, and in collaboration we will use mobile phones, and our bodies, exploring through the use of photography, somatic walks, and texts, new encounters with edges, borders and the spaces beneath.
Notations
1/4
‘Indifferent Deep’…I like this title. The distance between the two words paired together , the emotional load of each. The choreography that appears…
Words that invite us to navigate new spaces, to encounter the building as both an architectural and a physical body. To enter, interrupt, sooth and play. Bodies within a body.
Today we are a movement in four parts. A dance of expectation, noticing, creating escape hatches, fits of anxiety, and familiarity …
And so we begin a process of navigating, disturbing …
We explore through the eye of the camera (mobile phone) and our sensing eye. We move from space to space, leaning, arching, looking up, down, and glancing sideways. We become archaeologists, peering through layers, and physicians as we Stand in front of illuminated intestines…
With mirrors, we create escape hatches, and seductive windows. We play with the forensic tilts of light and fragmentation…
so much can be done without touching …
another time perhaps we will move with these mirrors? Planned/ unplanned …these windows, these distortions…how will we enter/exit the frame? Will our bodies leak into a different space?
2/4
Movement as a sound walk within the acoustic ecology of the building, it’s architectural spaces, it’s body and it’s hollows. At the end of the gallery we stop at a large mounted sculpture. The back appears like a free form ear, and so we put our ears against it, and listen, only to discover a mesmerising echo as we whisper to each other…
We create fractured views and little islands with groups of mirrors, splintering across the spaces and regrouping like magnets…like atoms reforming to recast energy.
Acts of fracturing…in medicine it is the interruption of the integrity of the bone, and in geology it indicates the earth that splits, crumbles, moves . Within a more humanistic context, fracture could configure as distance, isolation wound and trauma…
3/4
Further acts of fracturing.
Our choreography shifts around the building.
Above and below roof and ground, altering spacial membranes…
We speak to each other through texts. Texts morph into a movement with mirrors , refracted light and secret messages.
Interruptions and interpretations.
Image: Paloma Sourtchev
4/4
Extending and elongating the borders of this building we walk to meet the sea.
We carry the building ‘memory ‘ within our bodies, and carry, like portals, small round mirrors.
Our path is across the lawn and down white glittery steps. We reflect and catch the afternoon light and dance the reflections across the white stone.
Now the tide is coming in. We immerse the mirrors in the salty water. They take the appearance of underwater moons…
An unfolding of images, sound walks, voices and listening became part of this creative lab at the DLWP. An immersive process that opened up new questions…
How does a building breath? How does it shift in time?Where does it believe it’s borders are?
And can we ask the same of ourselves …
With thanks to the DLWP, Bexhill on Sea.
A diary of the project can also be found here:
https://www.dlwp.com/site-line-a-residency-with-nicole-zaaroura/
