Tenues Par / Held by 2020

Durational performance: 8 minutes

Conceptualized and performed by Jessica Doucha (SA) & Cecile Lassonde (FR). Photography Fabian Fuchs (GER)

This multi dimensional work delves into numerous layers of philosophy, geometry, symbolism and storytelling.

The work is fundamentally about intimacy, connection and notions of time. Thematically, we speak universally, in vernacular, about sameness. The same sea. The same species. The same drop of consciousness in the infinite ocean. Our work speaks a language that contains no borders. It is a human quality to express compassion, tenderness and empathy that bridges distance between our temporary islands. In our capacity to effect and be affected by human interaction.

As a site specific, durational performance, empirical data relating to time, space, location & temperature become intrinsic to our visual language. The ebb & flow of the tides, the  human cycle leading to death, can it  signify the possibility of reversal of time, a return to ones origins?

Where does the eternity of time traverse against human mortality. Is spiritual oneness, interconnectedness contrasted to our isolation, remoteness, a distant as we perceive it to be?

There is glass bottled filled with Icelandic sea water. The label on the bottle reads, “I AM NOTHING.”  There is rock on the shore, it is adorned in gold leaf. There are two figures with golden hands, protected golden feet, they are embracing. Are we held by gravity, the water, the weight of gold, each other, a memory? Does our body weight displace the ocean water adding to the rising shoreline?

The exchange of body heat keeps us warm, keeps us safe from reaching hypothermic temperatures. We become an hourglass against the backdrop of the frozen nordic Fjord.

In ‘The order of time’ by Carlo Ravelli, writes about ‘the arrow of time appears only when there is heat. The link between time and heat is therefore fundamental: everytime a difference is manifested between the past and the future, heat is involved… The first principle of thermodynamics is related to the conservation of energy. The second is the fact that heat passes from hot bodies to cold, never the other way round.’

What is this eternal current that moves between us? For a moving object time contracts. Motion in relation to what, to stillness? How can we determine which of the objects, energy, humans, landscape moves, if the motion is only relative? We are existing at a location in space, a point in time. What happens to that energy when there is separation between to events in spacetime, from A to B? “A duration can be associated only with the movement of something, with a given trajectory. “Proper time” depends not only on where you are and your degree of proximity to masses; it depends also on the speed at which you move”

We are interested in the quality of time spent, time held, time shaped together in this eternal embrace.

PLAY WORDS:

Les pieds les uns sur les autres

s’effleurent pour sécher 

ces larmes tombés d’ailleurs 

Ce sommet si expressif 

on pourrait s’y fondre 

S’y laisser tomber

Jusqu’à son cœur tambourinant

Flotte, Flotte et restes-y

La vibration bercera tes maux 

Les mots d’ici, les mots d’ailleurs 

Cet ailleurs n’est plus montagne 

Mais bien rivage 

Percer la brise d’un humide visage

Les orteils touchant cette eau ancestrale 

Je nagerai les mains dorés 

simplement pour te retrouver

Feet on top of each other

graze to dry 

those fallen tears from somewhere else 

This summit so expressive 

we could blend in. 

Dropping in

To its drumming heart

Fleet, Fleet and stay there

The vibration will cradle your ills 

Words from here, words from elsewhere… 

This elsewhere is no longer a mountain 

But a shore 

Piercing the breeze with a wet face

The toes touching this ancient water 

I’ll swim with golden hands 

in order to simply find you.