Altered states of attention - such as dream-states and hypnotic states - offer a different and broader understanding of vision: by blurring or distorting the boundaries of time, bodies, thoughts, memories, spaces, sensations and images, dreams and so-called hallucinations participate in a perceptive experience that explodes the norms we are accustomed to. These experiences disrupt the hierarchies of perspective and its domestication of the gaze, and allow for more porous and plural experiences of vision. mountains grow unnoticed is a performance that will question how visions happen in the midst of things. In the work process we will look at how our rhythms of attention affect vision. We will consider seeing as a question of time.

Can rhythm give access to other ways of seeing and relating with what we see?

*mountains grow unnoticed is the opening line of a poem written by Emily Dickinson in c.1863

Some things can be grasped in a flash while others call for different temporalities. There is the time of waves and the time of mountains. Focused, fleeting, sharp or dreamy, qualities of attention affect what and how we see.  Can rhythm give access to other ways of seeing and relating with what we see? The term vision is both the manner in which something is seen, the faculty of sight and a mystical experience. FLOUES/Rêvé is a performance that will question how vision happens in the midst of things - situated, rhythmical, changing and uncertain.

Residency in collaboration with Mas Nyam Nyam

There is a famous etching by Albrecht Dürer that represents the beginning of perspective drawing. It’s a strange image. A sensuous woman is lying on a table behind a grid. Facing her on the other side is a man attempting to reproduce what he sees on a surface in front of him, using the grid as a reference system to pinpoint, to measure, to see. Three elements from the etching are transposed into the performance space: the woman, the grid and the observer. These figures are the main protagonists of the project, but their roles are no longer as distinct as they may seem: materialized, geometry is contingent on matter, gaze is embodied, and bodies are prone to senses, emotions, thoughts and time. The figures touch and affect each other. Perspectives shift, friction appears.

At La Caldera, the process will mainly focus on the overall articulation between the different parts of the performance, working more specifically on the relationship with lighting. The project will premiere mid-August at the FAR° Festival in Nyon (CH).