Unbearable Lightness of Being (2023)
Performance for Camera
"Being, pure being – without further determination."
-Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Science of Logic.
Wave Theory Exhibition
October 25-30, 2023
The Ionion Centre for Arts and Culture
Metaxata, Kefalonia, Greece
The scene opens in blackness.
The audience is left wondering whether this blackness is “darkness,” or a lack of content, or if they are merely waiting for things to begin.
A performance begins to quote Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel....
"The Unbearable Light Being" is a "research" performance that considers Hegel's writing in terms of the performativity of his text. He writes in a careful, speculative manner where his text enacts the ideas he is expressing. Hence his utterances are not preceeded by the reality they describe, rather they work to constitute it in real time. As I read his deconstructed and reconstituting text in realtime the accrued words fill the screen and illuminate my presence. Similarly. as Hegel begins to discuss the concept of the "nothing" the disappearance of the text takes us back into darkness. The piece is shot on analogue video using only the internal microphone of the camera.
"The Unbearable Light Being" was prepared as part of a presentation for the 9th Annual Conference: 'Body Knowledges: Praxis, Politics, Performance', in Valletta, Malta, March 22 - 24, 2023
