cuerpos de la memoria

memory bodies

Nips, Nifoé, Nema;
Nicteris, Nefelé, Nexis;
Rodopis, Rodonia, Ptilé …

Dance and the Soul, Paul Valery

Memory Bodies || Performance
Sowing images in grains of sand || Interactive installation
Menschheitsgeschichte als Fernsehdrama de Vilèm Flusser || Translation
… and a Colloquium Session

Artist Residence at EAC, Contemporary Art Space, Montevideo
Proposal together with the renowned Uruguayan dancer and choreographer Teresa Trujillo:

BODY || PLACE of MEMORY

Notes: Understanding Memory as prelinguistic-information stored in the body, in the muscles, in the cells, in the genes … Using digital technology tools we set out, to unhide memories, imaginations, dreams that exist somewhere in our body.

Sketchbook -videoinstallation || min. 1:15 Cuerpos de la memoria -performance || EAC 2016

Sketchbook || Videoinstallation

The book Soul and the Dance by Paul Valery becomes the guiding thread of our proposal.
The site installation Sketchbook was our starting point, it conjugated images of Teresa at the Bienale de Paris in 1965, the original sound poem Eriximaque by François Dufrêne and a video generated by an algorithm, which disintegrate the image in pixels. On the walls and floor of the exhibition space could be seen original notes of past works and premises for this adventure that was beginning.


Memory Bodies || Performance

This was the main part of the work, pursuing the idea of threshing and atomizing images in real time, imitating memories dispersing in the cells of our body.  Inspired on Vilèm Flussers studio Menschheitsgeschichte als Fernsehdrama our bodies have played with the images, the pixels and the time….

I like to think that one day we will may access this information, and read as in a book of accumulated memories, until an origin, the first memory in time …

The dancer-performer interacts in realtime with a generative digital interface.
With her movements she threshes her own image into particles, image which was freezed a few seconds ago. At the same time a random sound composition is generated.
The viewer sees the digital image projected on a big screen, while the dancer’s body lets be intuited behind of it. This body, a body with memory, is Teresa Trujillo, a renowned Uruguayan dancer, choreographer and eutonist.


Teresa wrote about this experience:

… Slowly I was entering the screen. Moving my arms, as soon as I had my figure, I was making it disappear … So I went through my image, with the palms of my hands, with other movements, to which my hands took me; my body followed those movements exposing my forms with the comfortable and uncomfortable of my existence … 30 years passed! That is my body, it is the present and the past at the same time. Moving in this „mirror“ brings me to the present / past simultaneous observation of my sensitive, equal and different movements from that unforgettable Eriximaco of 1965.

I recognize the memory of my body, the multiple internal / external spaces, the plasticity in which I inhabit, which still remain in that memory … flow of life bearer of happiness. I experience once again what my body / time want to do; to be and NOT to be, with the movements that make my corporeity, rescuing Memory from the neurosensitivity of my tissues and enjoying again.


Sowing Images in Grains of Sand || Interactive installation

The interactive interface remained configured as site installation in the exhibitions room, open to the public for experimentation.

Sowing images in grains of sand: Public interacting and experimenting with the interface.


Colloquium Session with the Public …

The performance was followed by a Panel Discussion with the public. Guest panelists were professionals from the sciences and the arts.
Among the many contributions inspired by our proposal was Ing. Professor Franco Simini (Professor for Biomedical Engineering and Medical Informatics, University of the Oriental Republic, Uruguay; founder of Biomedical Engineering Center) who claimed the human right to dream, and Dr. Magdalena Irisarri Hughes (Regional Pharmacovigilance Analyst in AbbVie) who told us about genetic archeology and types of inheritance.


Translation

Part of the work was the translation into Spanish of an essay by Vilèm Flusser, which proposes an interpretation of the digital image linked to our proposal:


Meditations about the Process

It is as if this work had always been there, it was already in us, at least since our last performance together, 30 years ago, oh! … without our being really aware, there was always this feeling, that we had something left to do … Together we unhidden this work, which was waiting for us …
No wonder that the subject of Bodies of Memory was this … where was this proposal kept saved for so long? In myself? in Teresa? It wasn’t in this, that we call conscious … but it leaned out there from time to time.

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