Biennale College Choreographers - Residue / A Slow and Easy Day in Venice

A place where time ceases to exist is filled with a transformed entity. Objective events, a record of true constancy, are re- placed by subjective experiences and memories. A place emerges where continuity becomes a construct, not a fact, where identity is re-examined. Through the active structure of their fragile presence, the human takes on the form of an anti-monument. The body is not a testament to the past, but a site of constant transformation of experience.
Memory contains mechanisms for modelling a gap in time, giving individual breaks in the notation a shape-shifting, fleeting character. Pause is a crucial tool that impacts culture and art, and even everyday life, through absence. The transformation of memories serves to organise collective experi- ence. It provokes attention, introduces uncertainty and forces a redefinition of what presence and absence are.

Time does not stay still. / It stretches, repeats, disappears. // In this work, nothing is fixed. / Identity, perception, presence, / all remain un- stable, shifting through repetition. // Faces disappear. / What remains is a body without identity, / a presence without confirmation. // Everything reflects, / but nothing resolves. // At first, the movement is calm, almost hopeful. / A soft beginning, / like the promise of an easy day. // But repetition insists. / What repeats starts to change. // Hope turns into irritation. / Calm becomes tense. // A song plays and keeps coming back. / Slow and Easy Day by Paul Spring. / It tries to stay the same but it fails. / It is no longer heard the same way. // How long can something remain gentle / before it becomes exhausting? // The performance does not move forward. / It stays, insists, repeats. // Until something gives. // A crack, / a break, / a surface that can no longer hold. // And still, / nothing new happens.