soma / pneuma : gnosis (1997)
I was reading Elaine Scarry’s book, The Body in Pain, when the inspiration for this video work materialized. In the preface, Scarry describes a general inability for humans to effectively communicate the experience of pain to each other. For me, this absence of clear communication gave way to an exploration of two questions:
What can we know of another person’s physical experience by watching his/her body and not knowing what they are experiencing?
Can we perceive their reaction accurately?
The double skirt (one waist down, one head up) removes two forms of visual cues from the image: 1.) direct viewing of what is happening to the person on screen, and 2.) signals from the face that indicate how the person is reacting to the experience.
Feedback from various viewers at the time of the video’s exhibition made it clear that the work was generally considered inaccessible. The piece is most successful when the viewer abandons the central premise of trying to “know” or “perceive” what the performer was experiencing and simply appreciates the movement on screen as interpretive dance.
I have included the piece in this online portfolio because the themes being addressed demonstrate the continuing exploration of, and reaction against, Descartes mind-body problem that underlie several of my projects.
Exhibited at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh Scotland, February 1997
