Somatolyse 2

Duration 15 min.
Interactive Video-Performance
Premiere 2018 ArteReunido Festival, Zürich ”
Shows 2018 Villa Romana, Florence, 2018 Uferstudios Berlin

Concept, Choreography, Performance: Ana Lessing Menjibar
Video Ana Lessing Menjibar
Audio collage Ana Lessing Menjibar
With music by Béla Bartók (String Quartet No. 1) & David Schara
Coding Carlo Cattano

Produced by Ana Lessing Menjibar

“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth – it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.”

This quote from Jean Baudrillard, 1978 (Simulacra and Simulations) is repeated over and over again, digital decomposed and interrupted by the sound of a chicken clucking and by the artist’s movements. With an egg in her mouth she performs herself ad absurdum.

Somatolyse (somato=body, lysis=dissolution) is defined in behavioral biology as animals adapting to their environment by means of camouflage. The performance is like a mind journal, a chain of thoughts that translates acts of somatolyse onto the human body.
Each tap of the foot sets off a new moving image, a new thought. Merging flamenco traditions with performance art, Ana Lessing Menjibar uses her feet to trigger microphone sensors on the floor. This enables her to control the rhythm and speed of the adjacent video projection. On the screen the artist’s portrait dissolves bit by bit. The faster her body moves in space, the faster the projected face disappears. Eventually the artist’s on-screen presence is replaced by World Wide Web imagery.

Creating a multi-sensory experience mediated by digital technology and the body, Lessing Menjibar confronts and questions society’s relationship to virtual identity and self-presentation, alienation from nature, and the hyper-realities in which we live.