Like the Smell of Your Exile in My Body (2017)

Like the Smell of Your Exile in my Body (2017) is a two-part collaboration that Jamal Sterrett and I performed on 5 and 7 March 2017 respectively at Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale in Tirana, Albania.

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The second part of this performance took place on the ground floor of a large under-construction warehouse. In this performance Jamal and I split the site of the performance into public and private territories by using a veil as a physical barrier between the two

The main narrative of the live action consists of establishing temporary habitat under the veil where we strap our limbs together with strings. We then engage in an intimate dance-like-wrestling accompanied by my singing, as I take off my inside-out shirt and put it on Jamal.
The sound produced  consists of my singing and the jingling of dozens of spoons. They were hung from the strings that had connected our bodies together. Their jingling is the outcome of the sum of the forces that we exerted on each other’s body by pulling and pushing.

The immediate spectators of Omega Fragmented (The Soil Returns to Us) no.6 (2017) could not directly access or view the narrative of our actions. Hence, we decided to use two projectors and live-stream the narrative of our wrestling from the projectors on to the ceiling of the warehouse.

The moving image below is the documentation of the performance.