DEREE - The American College of Greece
artistic research from February - March 2018
A Rebirth
Foetus
Biologically, we are designed to actively register only a fraction of the sensorial details we are exposed to. And through a process called repetition suppression, we display less response to familiar external stimuli: our attention decreases, the experience becomes mundane. The bulk of information we encounter is too vast to remember, it is not stored in our explicit memory, and thus we tend to forget the majority of our experiences.
What we often can remember more vividly are our "firsts". They often shape us deeply, and since they are stored semantically they are easier recollected. However, despite our seeming forgetfulness, long-term memory actually decays very little over time, and can store an immense amount of information, almost indefinitely. Some scientists claim that we never really forget anything, that it just becomes increasingly difficult to access or retrieve certain items from our memory.
But what about our earliest memories which were formed before we were born? When and how do they come about? Can we recall anything from before were able to breathe on our own? Do we have any memories from our lives as foetus? These questions were the premise for the movement research of Foetus - A Rebirth, which called for a deep delving into the world of the unborn, trying to access sensorial remnants of the past, to recollect elapsed sound pieces, and to awaken a physical memory of the self as foetus.
How does loneliness manifest itself to the individual? How does it affect a person?
How can the body communicate its innate loneliness to other bodies? Is there a sense of sharedness in solitude?
To answer these questions, the performers had to undergo a very intense and highly personal research and rehearsal process that pushed them into experiencing or recollecting their own solitude(s). The rehearsal process began by creating an individual safe space, a place of serenity which then was violently destroyed by external and internal factors, leaving them vulnerable and exposed.
The next part of the research challenged them to funnel their repressed emotions in the face of loneliness through physical responses and natural sounds. The performers physically and vocally responded to the texts of T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land) and Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea, No Exit), and wrote their own texts regarding their experiences with loneliness. Through the investigation of the personal within the collective, naturally a sense of seclusion as much as a sense of collectivity emerged.
Part of the process happened outdoors and was more site-specific, and thus, the performers gathered natural materials which were brought back into the studio. These materials became extensions of the body with which new movements and sounds were possible, distilling deeper layers of solitude, anger, sadness, loss, apathy, fear, melancholy and comfort.
During the last phase of the work, the choreographic process began, which focused on extracting the essence of the previous weeks. The aim was not necessarily to tell a specific story, but rather to create a space for the release of an all too often repressed sense of desolation and uncover how deeply connected we are in that experience.
These profound expressions of the inner to the outer and the outer to the inner revealed very clear individual characteristics but also numerous underlying similarities. Essentially, the piece became a land and soundscape of loneliness(es), crystallizing individual as well as universal aspects of loneliness – a solitary feeling experienced by everyone, transcending space and time.
Research by Nadja Mattioli & Iony Moschovakou
Performed by Nadja Mattioli
Soundscape by Iony Moschovakou
Supervision by Dr Ana Sanchez-Colberg