Performance for video with enhanced audio

Cartography, developed and performed at the Koumaria residency in Sellasia, Greece, captures the last 1 hour and 22 minutes of a 3-hour durational performance. I wanted to rethink the privileging of human subjectivity in the constitution of world. Taking "mapping" as a form of domestication or inscription of human constructs upon the environment, I wanted to turn this on its head and think about the ways in which matter inscribes on matter with or without humans. What are the ways that the dependency on the human subject could be decentred and disrupted?  

 

I am traversing barefoot at a constant gate through grass, brambles, thorns, stones, mud, and flowers in the rural landscapes near Sparta, Greece. I weave back and forth, perhaps over increasingly familiar terrains, but the audience is never sure of their location—we are never given enough visual context, seeing neither forward nor retrospectively, to know where and when we are as spectators and what/where/when the subject is; we can only exist in the precise moment of the document. We therefore begin to lose the definition between subject and object.

 

The point of view of the camera and the audio boom (both of which I am carrying during the performance) are maintained at a almost humanly impossible angle at the level of vegetation, slightly in front and above the foot. Both the perspective and technical interpretation of the image and sound by the recording equipment introduce a “technological subjectivity”. We do not see a human conception of the action rather it is mediated by the equipment who sees and hears the world differently. The camera, for instance, interprets time in a different manner than our bodies. The image instead simultaneously captures a series of moments—pasts, presents, futures—that multiply the expressions of what was a singular substance—a flower, a leaf, a twig, a stone become a repetitive pattern across the duration of a step. 

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Cartography has been featured at:

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• Koumaria Exhibition, Sellasia, Greece, May 2023

• Koumaria Exhibition, Plyfa, Athens, Greece, May 2023

• "Guerilla Philosophy", The Ionion Centre for Arts and Culture, Kefalonia, Greece, September, 2023.

• "Particle and Wave Festival" Emmedia, Telus Spark Science Centre, Calgary, Canada, March, 2024.