Immurement
The Crypt Gallery
7- 10 November
One of the definitions of Immurment is the condition of ‘being enclosed against your will’. The pursuit of Witchcraft, being considered as a threat with its practice beyond human knowledge or understanding, becomes one of the most turbulent periods in the History known for its countless arrests, vague accusations, torture, and murders.
I decide to respond to The Crypt space, as a dump, dark, cold burial place, in a way that will bring the genuine experience of the historical facts I was investigating.
The atmosphere reinforced the dramatic feeling, and even though my performance was in its core slow movement, performer being more absent than being present, spiritually isolated among a physical crowd, the effect of the appearance of ‘ghost-like’ character was enhanced by the interaction with the audience, or I would rather say – ‘lack of interaction’
The space characteristics enabled a specific interplay between performer and audience –sudden, unexpected appearance, or discovery, causing amusement, enabled strong impact - confusion, amusement, even fright, and anxiety.
Within the organisational process I accepted my role as part of the Curation team with responsibility and concern. It was overall a significant learning process, especially in terms of working with such a diverse group of people, trying to be mediator between necessary requirements acceptance and the personal will of each participant. I can conclude that we worked well as a team, following an established program, which facilitated the accurate and time-scheduled structuring of the show, may be because of good understanding between each other, coincidence of vision and objectivity. I faced as well the possible sources of arguments, which I dare say we did not let occur, in such kind of collaborative project engagement. The most distinctive one I may describe is even not the very personal attachment of each artist to a certain space to accommodate his artwork, but the fact that most of the participants did not even presume that there might be five more people with the same specific requirement. Surprisingly, most of them were not strictly demanding and, in spite of the weather and site-specific conditions, the curation and installation day was a positive and educational experience. Accounting the obstacles and benefits from a collective work, I am satisfied with the achievement we had .