Catalepsia

Kónic Thtr.


At the start of the piece we are, as if in a progression from the virtuality of Blank e_motive, within a white space limited by a pentagon wherein immaculate virtual figures dance. The human being has been transformed into a white avatar, who, as its text and environment get, by trial and error, more complex, its attitude will adapt chamaleonlike, getting more and more sophisticated to the point of alienation, as it expands outside its limits.

“The human face is an empty force... sometimes I have put
next to human faces, objects, trees and animals
because I am still not sure where
the limits of the human body and self lie.”
(Antonin Artaud. The human face)

After the generation of a context and a problematic for the cyberworld via the study of the interface in IO.Zn Interface Osmotic, after the investigation into human movements in the video Ambi><valence and after the creation of virtual replicas of the body in Blank e_motive, in this piece Rosa Sánchez makes the white clone evolve towards flexible contexts of space and time. Artifice is used to multiply the effects of distancing and to expand the process of identity production. A virtual reality that is no more than a sign, a surface, a space of representation and a simulacrum.

The avatar needs an identity. In a reality without the laws of physics any dislocated initiative seems appropriate. Digitally handwritten words in Italian, whispered in French, are repeatedly crossed out, white on black, red on white, wiping themselves out. The sentence “Gobernare el senso del tempo” takes us to a pentagonal space being traversed by a synthetic being, white on white. It doubles up, imitates itself, up to four times, the ones imitating the movements of the others, exploring the space. The figure is crossed and limited by the words as they disperse, the avatar finds itself within a pentagonal prism flowing around its being. Somewhere between circumstance and the interface, this binary individual is presented as a shadow of the writer, and thus as a complementary double, from whom to engage in as little regulated as possible an acquaintance of her own stage. Her hand on the red sand (words written on elements of the house); as she moves the sand, its particles condense and adhere to the synthetic individual. A cyber body that is encrusted with accessory matter and so mimeticizes with his surroundings, to the point of dematerializing.

Assuming that digital life stems from a neutralization of identity, Rosa Sánchez generates, via a performative mis-en-scéne, a digital animation dance that allegorizes the sense of time and its limits within an immaculate being. Acting on the corporeal support, she adapts it to a context. This dependency becomes a limitation. The identification process with its reality, through different affective states, is shred to pieces as this is consumed and stops being unfamiliar.

Technical datasheet

  • Title: Catalepsia
  • Direction: Kónic Thtr.
  • Production: Rosa Sánchez - Kònic thtr. 2005.
  • Team:

    Directed by: Rosa Sánchez
    Script:Rosa Sánchez
    Music by: Alain Baumann
    Choreography and performance: Rosa Sánchez & Josep Ferragut
    Edition: Adolf Alcañiz
    3D effects & Motion Capture : Juan Carlos Olmos, Dani Fornaguera & Alain Baumann
    With help from: Mediateca CaixaForum + Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya, Institut Universitari de l’Audiovisual (UPF) y Metronomlab, Barcelona.

  • Duration: 00:06:40
  • Languages: Catalan - French - Italian - Spanish
  • Original format: DV-Cam
  • Formats: Betacam Digital - DVD
  • TV systems: PAL
  • License: Copyright