INTENTION.
Being is first and foremost a being of participation, a "Being in action", and I firmly believe that the very essence of action is that it asserts itself, of itself, by itself. In this respect, the "Declosion de l'instant" project is rooted in this fundamental need for participation, which translates into a quest for identity in a territory that is psychic, imaginary and geographical.
So, to undertake this journey, I had to return to the source. It is in this concern to return to the essence of things that I approach clay as an original material, attempting to contract the beginning and end of cyclical time in the same instant. The appearance of this performative sculpture allows me to offer the gesture that works the form, not in representation but in presence. It's a question of creating a somato-sensitive language that transcends all cultural experience in order to access the Being of things, the intimate Being, in order to carry out the transformation to Dasein, in other words: to declosion.
DESCRIPTION.
This proposal, is a performative sculpture*. It is an experience that cannot be carried out by sight or mind alone; there are no organs other than the hands, no other parts of the body that can fully carry out this creative action. Throughout the performance, it is our hands that guide us. We see and breathe the world through them, "the mind makes the hand, the hand makes the mind. [...] The gesture of receptive passivity is organised for experience and action. [...] It measures itself against the material it transforms, against the form it transfigures. As an educator of man, it multiplies him in space and in time " (Henri Focillon, Eloge de la main, page 18).
Like Pygmalion, who breathes life into a stone Galatea, by shaping this heap of earth, the artist creates a composite being. Under the weight of the clay, the inert body, buried beneath the earth, struggles to come to life. It is invisible to the viewer, only the movements of the earth generated by the weak breaths are perceptible. Gradually, the breathing becomes more rhythmic and cracks appear, like a break-in, a tear. Muscles and bones spring from the earth, the birth of a being, an animal or a human.
While the creature seems to hatch out of itself; at the same time, the demiurge using its elbows, fists, head, digs into the earth, grafting its body onto it so that it too becomes matter. Confusion ensues: is it the creature that becomes the creator or the creator that becomes the creature, is it flesh that becomes earth or earth that becomes flesh. The physicality of the bodies undergo metamorphosis, constantly forming, transforming and transmuting. The earth matrix now contains the bodies of the two performers, so they become the support for the material. We are in a triangular struggle between three bodies: that of the material and that of the two performers.
By inhabiting the earth, the seeing/visible bodies are both on the side of the human but also on the side of the earth; they belong to the world of things seen, to the world of objects. Sensory perception is both fusion and fission between the body and the world. In the space of an instant, we slip into the realm of the undivided, and run the risk of being swept away into the belly of the earth...
*After the performance the sculpture of the Matrix made during the performance will live by herself and will break down as follows day by day, to return to its original state.
