Kasia Tórz
AFTERIMAGES. NOTES ON MIRAGE DISPLACEMENT
Migration is embedded in Mirage Displacement. Present in the title as displacement, it manifested itself also in the structure and body of this performance. Its components were some scenes inspired by Mirage (1): on the one hand scenes transported (migrated) into a new space; on the other hand, deconstructed under its influence. For the presentation at Centrale for Contemporary Arts in Brussels on 25th May 2019, the dancers gained a new partner: the exposition La banquise, la forêt et les étoiles / The Ice Field, The Forest and The Stars by Sophie Whettnall (who created objects for the original version of Mirage) and Etel Adnan (whose paintings were exposed in the space of the gallery).
During the evening, the viewers could freely move around. This way of attending made it possible to navigate different modes of presence (dancers and works of art), and thus open up to their energy. Whettnall’s structures: perforated, translucent screens with damp patches, as if they were some organic unevenness, were stretched out on light, polygonal frames and, although delicate, powerfully activated the space. Adnan’s work: small size canvas carrying abstract images. Areas of earthy colours threw on the surface, so that each component was clearly present, occupying its respective territory. These were the two-dimensional elements. Three-dimensional were the pieces of white modules, the remains of a former block of matter, cut at various angles, like some archetypes of ruins, whitewashed from content, colours and meanings.
Movement in Mirage Displacement was a way of non-geometric, free examination of planes: the floor, cutting surfaces of blocks, but also invisible divisions organizing the air. Five dancers were as scattered in the space as us – viewers, objects, paintings – and explored their possibilities, individually but also in relations with other bodies – by leaning on each other, pulling and pushing out, listening their pulse. The ecosystem of the performance was set by whiteness and its negatives: in irreversible folds of wrinkled paper, in various scales returning as an important performer. Everything that had been gathered in the space of the gallery, the materiality of elements, seemed to have its own intangible shadow: breath. If the presence of paper, its transformation, movement, was amplified by means of technology, a mechanical listening ear (microphone), then the effect of rustling was directly migrating into internal regions: the bodies of dancers, viewers, constellations produced between them and the sound landscape.
Paper, as a page, a crumpled ball or an irregular chunk, served as an abstract unit of contemplation and an act: a sheet of paper waiting to be written on. At the same time, one of the (countless) layers that melted together, like in a 3D printout, could become anything, for example, white ruins belonging to the set design. This basic unit, a part of a surface, might well have been a fragment of one of the walls of a white cube where Mirage took place. What mattered was marking: a gesture of pure possibility. A possibility of a sheet of paper cutting through the space, dividing it again, complicating it, and at the same time being able to welcome anything, like a thought, appearing out of nowhere and dis-appearing back in the nothingness. A possibility of a body tracing invisible divisions in the air, testing in-between dynamics, investigating the surfaces – by its curves, its gravity, by the movement: touch.
The surface of the paper as a membrane generating ghostly movements (when it became a coat, a shelter, and in the movement of dancers who animated the sheets), gained its own respective life. For a moment, the sheets of paper turned into galvanized sculptures documenting the passage of time. They were like thick, breathable skin powered by the energy coming from under the surface. They also influenced the surroundings: the audio sphere, when a very high sound reached the limit of audibility, making the ear's membrane tremble. At this point, the whole interior revealed its high-sensitive quality and resonated. It opened a space for the free flow of afterimages, sleepwalking, exploring the state of displacement.
A mirage is a real optical phenomenon. Although the object is a delusion, the eye registers it. The very act of looking creates a being, brings something to life (something that preserves its own timelessness). A mirage establishes an intense subjective relationship with what seems to exist. Its sister state is an afterimage. This notion lies at the centre of the reflection and artistic practice of Władysław Strzemiński (1893-1952), a Polish pioneer of the Constructivist avant-garde and creator of the theory of unism, who defined afterimages as a real physiological sensation experienced by the retina of the eye (whose movement establishes the basic dynamics of the act of seeing) after direct contact with a source of light or an object that reflects it. The afterimage is therefore an individual internal mirage. Strzemiński believed that it was possible that the physiological mechanism of vision had not changed for centuries: “what is important ... is not what the eye catches mechanically, but what one realizes from their own vision. Only that which was realized was seen in reality”(2).
Both of these optical phenomena: mirage and afterimage, are actual states of perception, which result in connection with the image, although the image itself is not an objective record of a tangible object. However, it exists, it enters the space of memory, leaving an affective trace, tearing apart a consistent coating of experience, penetrating its texture. One may rehearse particular kind of mirages at the seaside, during the ebb and flow of the sea, when all of a sudden, the landscape changes completely. When the beach seems wider than usual and resembles a deserted square stretching endlessly, and the sea: a distant, shredded lake. Everything is shifting. It is no longer clear what is in front and what is at the back, how far things are, and if they really are over there.
A different state of displacement is a punctured sheet of paper from which confetti is made. If you try to fit each of the small dots back into the hole from which they emerged, it will turn out to be impossible. There will always be a difference. A misaligned edge, a trace of the act. It is in these slits that Mirage – displacement evolved. This experience made me ask: How many movements, invisible trajectories, does space contain? What is the archive of the bodies: the bodies brought into the space by the viewers? Mirage Displacement offered a different form of life: for those who decided to enter the image, as well as for its original form, which was given a new skin vulnerable to changeable external conditions.
Kasia Tórz, Afterimages / Notes on Fragments of Mirage (Mirage Displacement) by Olga de Soto, Sept 2019
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(1) Mirage premiered on 22 and 23rd, 2019 at Charleroi danse, La Raffinerie, Brussels
(2) Władysław Strzemiński, „Teoria widzenia”, p. 54, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi, Łódź 2016.