CHOREA LASCIVA

Chorea Lasciva is a full screen composite projection of eight videos. They represent a contemporary media interpretation of the iconographic photography taken of traumatic patients inside the Salpetrière Hospital and Asylum in Paris between 1878 and 1898, where photography was used to assign identity to undefinable pathological states. The photos were researched in the Sorbonne archives, then storyboarded and performed by the dancer as a series behavioral studies without dramatic narrative or characterization.

The installation is meant to create an immersive environment in which the confluence of 8 video studies and their accompanying soundscapes set the stage for an observation of an indicating-phenomenon; which is to say, an unknown and undefinable human experience portrayed by the same subject in 8 variations.

With this installation I want to establish the exhibition space as an observation studio, much in the way what Jean-Martin Charcot, who undertook these studies as head neurologist, created for his team to confront an indicating-phenomenon. The viewing space becomes a space in which to watch and study the unknown and undefinable behavioural studies of this anonymous woman and wait, as the doctors, for a glimmer of visibility or clue from within the subject’s gaze about the secret and hidden thought processes occurring within.

'Chorea Lasciva' is meant to loop continuously.