Reverberant Mapping

2019

Performance

Duration: 15-17 min.

In the text and speech based performance Reverberant Mapping Thams draws a map of the human body going between voice, chest, hands and foot soles. In the performance the audience is asked to imagine a figure, and in a both heartfelt and urgent tone this metaphorical body creates ground for empathetic consideration of and entrance to the physical and emotional bodily, lived experience.
Through the coordinates, voice, chest, hand and footsoles, four essencial characteristics of the quivering human body unfolds—critical agency, biological experience, posibility to act, and the balance of physical strenght and affectuos touch.

Reverberant Mapping, SPOKEN
Photos: Christina Stihler

Excerpt from script:

...
Here it is the quivering body. Now giving birth, in its utmost achievement – reproducing and sending life into the future. And here it is, the overseen body wrapped in vibrating tissue, in skin. Skin in communication – vibrating utterance overheard.

And it is here. The quivering nervous system, wanting to participate in more than the labour market – it is present. Beyond the limits of exchange, but quivering in its precarious call for more than mere survival. For inclusion. For meaning found in flesh, voice, movement. For meaning found in pulsating hearts and uttering subjects. Yes, in plural. In us. You and me.

We depart from an urge to resonate with the collective body of human beings, being here right now – and thus to go against the feeling of being a production entity – solely valued on the metallic outcome or on that of exchangeable effects. Our bodies quiver. And this unforeseeable movement is a clear sign of our existence always found in the making, always unstable. On the go.

And now, our muscle tissue and impatient minds push the body to quiver – the impulse is found in the invisible but deep-felt sounds, produced heath, bodily moves, heartfelt tunes, which also bind us together. This sum is our sum. Poignantly pointing at the fact that we are incomplete when alone, insufficient in isolation. My body concerns you, as yours concern me. Both in the close relation between bodies when coming into the world, as well as in the manifold inter-relations that constitute our shared, public sphere.

Here it is again, the body in all of its somatic composition. Here is our shared ground, movement and mass. Here it is, the quivering body of our experience of lively living.
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Exhibitions