Touching Absence (2022)
There is a tendency to think that absence is immaterial, forgetting that to be perceived, it requires access to our physical and emotional memories. In fact, we cannot miss what we do not know or remember.
“Touching Absence” is the second chapter in approaching the theme of absence, following “Dealing with Absence” (absence as distance). Now, we will explore absence as a relationship. The project will conclude with “Embodying Absence,” the final step being a process of exploring and accepting absence as an inner state.
The project now, after giving life to a film, intends to take the hybrid form of a live performance/installation. It saw its first step in December 2021 at the Hyper Art Festival at the PARC Performing Art Research Centre (FI).
It has become apparent with the return to a life of presence how absence and isolation still surround us, becoming a constant inner state. And from here arises the question: how do we physically interact with an isolated person who is next to us?
The Virtual Reality headset thus becomes a tool to experience elsewhere, to immerse the body in a state of immersion in another reality, leaving us, the observers, with the question: what kind of relationship can we establish with this body and with the experience it is undergoing?
If in the past cinema was a collective experience, lived in a room similar to a theater where the screen was distant and very large, we cannot ignore the progressive approach of screens to the body: television makes screen consumption familiar, up to the cellphone and the headset, making consumption increasingly personal and isolated. This isolation reveals a vulnerability and precariousness of these bodies, absent to our eyes but actually present elsewhere.
The project aims to investigate the physical dynamics of the relationship between these two states, those who are elsewhere and those who are here, seeking a possible physical relationship that opens up new possibilities of listening, asking without judgment, what does an absent body need? A connection to the here and now or perhaps the ability to let go and travel completely elsewhere?
Touching Absence (2022)
There is a tendency to think that absence is immaterial, forgetting that to be perceived, it requires access to our physical and emotional memories. In fact, we cannot miss what we do not know or remember.
“Touching Absence” is the second chapter in approaching the theme of absence, following “Dealing with Absence” (absence as distance). Now, we will explore absence as a relationship. The project will conclude with “Embodying Absence,” the final step being a process of exploring and accepting absence as an inner state.
The project now, after giving life to a film, intends to take the hybrid form of a live performance/installation. It saw its first step in December 2021 at the Hyper Art Festival at the PARC Performing Art Research Centre (FI).
It has become apparent with the return to a life of presence how absence and isolation still surround us, becoming a constant inner state. And from here arises the question: how do we physically interact with an isolated person who is next to us?
The Virtual Reality headset thus becomes a tool to experience elsewhere, to immerse the body in a state of immersion in another reality, leaving us, the observers, with the question: what kind of relationship can we establish with this body and with the experience it is undergoing?
If in the past cinema was a collective experience, lived in a room similar to a theater where the screen was distant and very large, we cannot ignore the progressive approach of screens to the body: television makes screen consumption familiar, up to the cellphone and the headset, making consumption increasingly personal and isolated. This isolation reveals a vulnerability and precariousness of these bodies, absent to our eyes but actually present elsewhere.
The project aims to investigate the physical dynamics of the relationship between these two states, those who are elsewhere and those who are here, seeking a possible physical relationship that opens up new possibilities of listening, asking without judgment, what does an absent body need? A connection to the here and now or perhaps the ability to let go and travel completely elsewhere?
