OFFTA / Habiter + Strange moods and dissonant feelings

In a breakfast table setting reminiscent of everyday reality, illuminated by a single light source, Habiterexplores the relationship between body and place. An aesthetic of chiaroscuro unveils a series of both strange and familiar actions that are punctuated by the intermittent movement of light, and which temporarily plunge the room into darkness. Playing with illusion and time perception, visible and invisible movements of the bodies quietly and subtly alter the visual space as if a painting would come to life before our eyes. We are called on to pay close attention as the familiar becomes an increasingly strange fiction.

“I’m a dancer. When I trained to be a dancer, I was taught to be malleable, flexible, available, strong and to learn the movements of others as quickly as I possibly could. I was essentially training to be a manual labourer.”

On a small stage, a closed-circuit video camera is filming the projection of its own video signal. Between the camera and the projection, a lecture and choreography take place. The result is a mise en abyme of the performative process which uses replay and sampling to explore memory, perception and the brain’s need to find compositional resolution.