Folds of a Separation.
- project Somewhere.
Folds of a Separation is a short rumination on the withdrawal of bodies from public spaces and the cost of protesting a draconian state. Played across a collection of rooftop-bound labyrinths, it seeks to examine the grievous harm of a state which is keen to contain its population in boundaries entirely of its own choosing.
There are no advertisements on the walls of a prison cell.
No exhortations for a study-abroad course, or proclamations about the efficacy of detergent-powder; No screen printed fliers for a circus or a family-planning clinic. There are no bawdy film posters here or thrift store deals, no boarding house rates or quick-loan schemes, no handbills for Chinese food and homeopathy clinics, there are no bulletins and no political banners.
The walls of a jail are not plastered with the promises of the living because there is no vantage to see them from. There is no landscape here that can place the clamor of existence into perspective and no distance from which you may squint towards a sign or a leaflet and declare yourself convinced by its proclamation.
In jail you are equidistant from every other wall and every other body that is confined to the present. Confined without the dignity conferred to each of us by the landscapes we can traverse, and by the people who travel with us.
After all to a state that has learnt to fear your actions, or your voice, or your name, or the accident of your birth, the colour of your faith or the lineage of your learning, you are but bodies that deserve their seclusion. You are ideal citizens; Subject to just as much space as the state deems sufficient for your meager survival. You are bodies reclaimed from the colourful theater of the street, and from the public stage of the maidan where you once performed, in pagan fashion, your desperate marches and rigorous migrations in a proud defiance of the state.
But one cannot march in a prison cell, where every tread only mimes the liberation of walking without the transcendence of a landscape.
Credits :
This project was originally created for display at : Fantasia Malware Presents, at ACUD MACHT NEU Berlin, 2022.
Press :
Displayed at :
Circades, curated by collectif espace fine at Le 6b (Saint-Denis, France), 2022.