There is a form; a body; a live, present being.

There is a screen; a silhouette; a trace, an outline of a human form.

There is meeting and parting: transition: how these forms multiple and divide, merge and collide. Weaving in and out of the space to establish a mark, a sense of being. I was once there, and now I am here, trying to encounter what has once past. Can this be relived? Can I aspire to recreate this original form, to embody the quality of this ideal image? Can I thus determine a line, a bond, a connection between one state and another? Who is she? Who am I?

Is this not solely a trace, a trace of footage, a trace of the body, of a landscape… a broken landscape … Do I want to create a new trace, or is this just a scar, a mark, a personal imprint on the anatomy of my muscular and cerebral memory.

Together or separately, we find a disjointed pathway fragmented by memory, desire, estrangement. It is exposure, searching, vulnerability : consider: how wonderful, how empowering, what joy and relief even in the face of uncertainty. There is music, movement colour, and beauty: an eternity of incomprehension but satisfaction of leaping into the unknown.

 

The performance of A Line, A Mark, A Trace, A Scar explores the observer, artist and archivist’s relationship to the trace and how this can be translated within the performative realm to re-present or re-create a new form of artwork. The work is a video of personal archive footage taken from rehearsals for a collaborative piece: What The Scar Reveals, created in February 2009. In the installation, I perform in front and behind the video screen exploring how the live body can interact and embrace the presence of this simulated body, this documented absent body. It is an intermingling of both real and digitally fragmented body parts, where the human form becomes simultaneously distorted and re-assembled.

 

Further photographic documentation of the project can be viewed at: http://flickr.com/gp/caradavies/n9bJ35