entangled bodies, suspended in the ebb and flow
installation with stereo audio, watercolour paint, cotton rope hammock
A moment in time, floating on the surface of my ancestral lake, my face warmed by the evening sun. A feeling of suspension, my body cradled and embraced, my ears submerged, listening to the watery world beneath me.
The weeks prior had been a time of reconnection – to my loved ones; to the land – the mountains, the lakes, the rivers, the more-than-human; and to myself. They had been filled with laughter and tears, with highs and lows, with the full range of emotions that make life whole. This moment in the lake was the culmination of everything, and as I floated there, simultaneously letting it all out and soaking it all up, the boundaries of my body and the lake dissolved. Time was frozen briefly before it continued to flow through us. I thought of what had been, of what was now, and what was to come – of the entanglement of it all.
Entangled bodies, suspended in the ebb and flow tells of the porous relationships we have with other bodies through time – human, more-than-human, geological, and watery. These connections are found in the rivers that lead to and from the body of water painted on the floor. The use of diluted watercolour allows for a combination of human involvement and fluid entropy; it is a collaboration of the water and my own hand. Add more water, and the paint becomes fluid again. Underneath the watercolour, the topography of the floor has dictated its course, imitating a trickle of water becoming a lake.
The net that makes up the hammock acts like a rhizome, linking up multiple points that together cradle a body, suspending it. When empty, the hammock alludes to where a body once lay, and its porosity in combination with the lake underneath insinuates water having leaked from the body through the net and onto a puddle on the floor.
The audio also demonstrates this leaking and seething of transcorporeality through the sounds of swirling water combined with deep inhales and exhales. It portrays the layering of time in the sounds of the geological processes that created the lake and are continuing to shape it – glaciers cracking, mountains eroding, molasse rumbling. The layered murmur of voices carries across the water from afar, reminding me of the people in my life – past and present, while my humming brings me back to myself, floating in the lake on a beautiful, warm summer’s day.
The weeks prior had been a time of reconnection – to my loved ones; to the land – the mountains, the lakes, the rivers, the more-than-human; and to myself. They had been filled with laughter and tears, with highs and lows, with the full range of emotions that make life whole. This moment in the lake was the culmination of everything, and as I floated there, simultaneously letting it all out and soaking it all up, the boundaries of my body and the lake dissolved. Time was frozen briefly before it continued to flow through us. I thought of what had been, of what was now, and what was to come – of the entanglement of it all.
Entangled bodies, suspended in the ebb and flow tells of the porous relationships we have with other bodies through time – human, more-than-human, geological, and watery. These connections are found in the rivers that lead to and from the body of water painted on the floor. The use of diluted watercolour allows for a combination of human involvement and fluid entropy; it is a collaboration of the water and my own hand. Add more water, and the paint becomes fluid again. Underneath the watercolour, the topography of the floor has dictated its course, imitating a trickle of water becoming a lake.
The net that makes up the hammock acts like a rhizome, linking up multiple points that together cradle a body, suspending it. When empty, the hammock alludes to where a body once lay, and its porosity in combination with the lake underneath insinuates water having leaked from the body through the net and onto a puddle on the floor.
The audio also demonstrates this leaking and seething of transcorporeality through the sounds of swirling water combined with deep inhales and exhales. It portrays the layering of time in the sounds of the geological processes that created the lake and are continuing to shape it – glaciers cracking, mountains eroding, molasse rumbling. The layered murmur of voices carries across the water from afar, reminding me of the people in my life – past and present, while my humming brings me back to myself, floating in the lake on a beautiful, warm summer’s day.