Impasse
Performance /video-installation/
Light and Sound Installation
Impasse is a project consisting of performance, installation, and sound. A 'playground' made by thick, free-flowing ropes turns into an acting space, simulating imprisonment of constantly transforming environment. Created and filmed for the collective exhibition Hollow Chambers in the Crypt gallery, this piece was inspired by the exhibition's theme - caves in different perspectives.
Appealing and scary places, full of secrets and danger, caves through my interpretations become a metaphor of never fully explored space – physical or psychological - always hiding something ‘more’, something unrevealed in its depths and its distinctive visual and informative characteristics create the idea of atmosphere impregnated with confusion, disorder, impasse... A place in the Earth’s bowels or a ‘casket of secrets’ in your mind, a strange symbiosis between the concept of escapism or that of a trap, where facing the unknown requires adaptation and completely excludes fearfulness. Disrupting our perceptions of being preoccupied with established motives, prejudices, ‘rehearsed’ models of behaviour.
Through the prism of my practice, such an adventure corresponds with the deep layers of the mind, where sometimes you have to be disconnected to the visible world in order to discover the inner nature of your personality , listen to your senses and inner voice, to acknowledge the essence of your true strengths and weaknesses, and find 'the right' way. 'The cage' symbolizes an illusion we often tend to create imaginary and put our own boundaries of what we can discover, achieve, or escape from. And how easy it seems - to behave the same limited way when we are 'free', as when we are really 'imprisoned'...
The performer is blindfold. She relies on the movement of the body her gestures and intuition are the single ‘compass’ in the darkness. A voiceover echoes her thoughts, doubts, and contradictions. The 'mission' of the sound is to reinforce dramatism. The speech passes the meaning of the words through the emotion, voice fluctuation, and vibrations.
Model
Scale 1:50
Paper, wood, twine
Bruce Nauman
Double cage piece
As I was exploring different states of confinemenet at that time, Impasse was inspired to some extent by Nauman's Double cage. The constructive approach of a concept of imprisonment is, however, opposed in my piece. While Bruce Nauman 'entraps' the the visitor between the metal, hard walls of the heavy construction, enforcing litteral interpretation of the idea, I turned this concept with a contrasting approach, where the confinement is psychological - the 'cage-like' set, illustrated by 'room' and 'bars' is deceiving for the free will and movement of the body
