Object Matters — Clea Filippa

OBJECT MATTERS

Installation, scores & performative activation,
2024

Contribution to ‘Done is a Door’ publication

OBJECT MATTERS radiates around the idea of joints - practically and conceptually. Joints as hinges, springs, limbs, the human grip. Joints as tension, confrontation, junction, motion, flexibility, hybridity. Joints as composition and as format. Like a hinge, the work is dual with an installation in on end and a performance in the other.

The installation takes its form from broken and discarded objects: a spring, chopped wooden railing and a broken pallet collar. While non-functional in their original sense, the objects conatin motion and recomposability that allows new forms of existence.

Part of ‘Done is a Door’ graduation show, KMD (May 2024),

curated by Ciara Philips and Oda Tungodden.

Object Matters, installation view (‘Done is a Door’ group exhibition)

The performance calls for public participation. Through improvisational scores that instruct movement, falling, dropping and holding tension, the participants are invited to think of themselves as joints between objects. As a multi-sensory encounter in the liminality of performance, sculpture and workshop, an unrehearsed somatic, but also visual, choreography is initiated.

Part of ‘Done is a Door’ graduation show, KMD (May 2024),

curated by Ciara Philips and Oda Tungodden.

Object Matters, performative activation (‘Done is a Door’ exhibition).
Photos: Andreas Aicka Thomsen & Clea Filippa

Human joints need fluidity in between them in order to minimize friction and not wear down the bones // This led us to contemplate on the difference between friction and tension // Whereas friction halts motion, does tension contain it? // Where tension preserves energy, friction eliminates - it creates heat, it breaks //

Space creates movement // Space between the bones, the spine, the hinge, the chain is necessary for units to move // This reminded me of dance facilitator Rikke Libak’s repetitive phrase: movement creates space // If all bodies remain at the same spot, there is less space in the room to move // A paradoxical law, movement creates space and space makes room for movement //

The joint is in-between, is a function // The hinge is a fold // The human body folds to absorb // We fold (eg. in our knees) to absorb confrontation and avoid collapse //

Gaspard stands next to me as we talk. He pushes me from the side of my shoulder. I’m not prepared. I lose control and stumble until I replace my foot and regain balance.

// The step prevents us from falling //

He pushes me again, this time I bend my knees, activate my body in order to resist. My body doesn't absorb the motion much, I lose control again, less, but enough to make me move a foot.

I’m reminded of the design of suspension bridges // The suspension bridge needs certain flexibility to be resistant // If it can’t sway, it has less resistance to the wind // At the last push I “meet” his energy with my body rather than resist it // I didn’t move towards it, but rather absorbed the motion and his hand, so that we would feel almost like one motion or one unit, a wave?

A reproduction of a conversation through bodies (with dancer, Gaspard Schmidt, 2024).

Worksharing through workshop, KMD seminar, 2024.
Photos: Mario de la Ossa