Sentí que podía traspasar la membrana
Sentí que podía traspasar la membrana (I felt I could reach through the membrane) is a sculptural-audiovisual installation in collaboration with video artist Sofia Rozen. The installation explores the relationship between skin and breath, creating a space conducive to heightened perception and sensoriality in tune with the rhythm proposed by the bodies.
We aim to shift attention to question conceptions that hierarchize the body and its senses. We explore the skin as a breathing organ. How does the skin breathe? Does it breathe light? To the skin belongs touch, a somewhat neglected sense. What is its narrative? What is its language? What happens if we propose to think through the skin, to listen with the pores? Can we mediate or dissolve the border between the self and the other?
Three dialoguing elements comprise the installation. A five-meter long continuous skin-like surface that plays with the idea of skin as a disembodied material. A luminous body that breathes, cyclically inflating and deflating. A video that projects various fragments of skin, putting in question their locations in the body and their hierarchy, and exploring details of texture, porosity and rhythm. The skin as a map that reveals the movement of the breath in a continuous and abstracted landscape of the body. These elements, in their relationality, explore the skin as a permeable interface, as an organ that breathes, as a porous border between the internal and the external; and rhythm as a primal language of the body, a marker of its movement.
Sentí que podia traspasar la membrana was part of Meet Arts Festival at Pluto, Valencia, Spain. Video footage shot by Philippine Sellam.