A Centering / A Passage

Duration of Videos:

A Centering (16 minutes, 15 seconds)

A Passage (5 minutes, 25 seconds)

Both works are HD Video with sound, 2015.

A Centering and A Passage are performance videos that are linked through sound and concept. Each performance is a walking meditation. When I made this work, I was thinking about the way we move through our lives and prepare for death. Members of my extended family, a mother and child, had recently died within a matter of months. I was contemplating the courage it takes to face one’s death and the possibilities of what might happen when we die. A Centering is a walking meditation that echoes the architecture of an old building, as one body traces another. A Passage is a different kind of meditation, as the focus on balance becomes a metaphor for our unfolding and often perilous journey through life as we negotiate the space from one threshold to the next.

In these works, I recorded sounds from the bridge and stairway architecture of the sites. Working with Norwegian percussionist, Ivar Orvedal, we harvested sounds from the bridge and stairway as a site-specific form of musique concrète. These sounds became the sonic vocabulary that composer Yoni Mizrachi used as we collaborated on finding the best pacing and tone for the soundscape. I wanted the sound in these videos to create a sonic embrace that could hold the space for these performance actions. I intentionally designed these videos to share the same soundscape: A Centering and A Passage are designed for flexibility in that they can be shown as a two-channel video installation, where the sound serves both works, or as individual projections in other contexts.

These events were both recorded while I was an artist in residence at the The Nordic Artists' Centre Dale (NKD) in in Dale, Norway during the summer of 2014.