Innerspacing © Sylvain Souklaye
It took wildfires from Canada to put New York back to its indoor and masked self. The subsequent orange and red atmosphere reshaped and deepened my reasoning behind my live experience Depopulated*. Arts as a transactional phenomenon exist as a catalyst of our ordinary behavior. A non-existent or restricted access to the arts interrogate our relationship to the place where they are displayed but also to the people that we share space and time with.
I tried to present Depopulated more as a collective experience than an experiment, because I do not see the audience as a subject. But if the audience is not an object either, what are they to me? What am I to them? And why am I?
From micro frictions to interactions
In Depopulated my body accepts, submits and jubilates inside the spectrum of collective liveness. My body is the extremity of something. An extremity executing a perpetual movement. A body reaching the unknown and folding onto itself. To do so, and for now, I am using ropes to define the space, tie myself to time and finally connect with other bodies. The choice of ropes is as symbolic as it is definitive. Ropes can help or kill or enslave or chain us in various ways. In this live experience, my body and others’ are linked by ropes, not culture.
My process is organized around the amount of conscience and absence available inside a space. I do have to question what is the beginning and the end of this process. The structure and conditions of such a live experience produced for and in an art space may be too restrictive for my body of work. Before the live, I conducted meticulous researches, designed and experimented endless artistic and reflexive parameters, but none of them have a specific timeframe, form or outcome.
I have to admit to myself that other researches and experimentations precede me and will continue after me. I have to be cognizant of my place and accountability inside this movement. And therefore that the productivist and artisanal or industrial imperatives of my practice are subject to be counter agents of my process.
I am responsible, I am accountable for my body, and then my work.
I am responsible, I am accountable for the others’ body, first.
The accumulation of bodies other than mine constitutes a succession of events transforming corporal and verbal values. These values are new forms of micro frictions which I have to assess, attract, articulate and spread to maintain the contact with the collective, if I can.
Layered by chaos (i.e. improvisation) or design (i.e. planning), every single micro friction will become an interaction. All these interactions are ultimately forging a direct line of communication between the self and the collective. I am calling this practice Innerspacing. From one body to the many, I collect interactions, connect bodies and conduct an exploration of the collective movement. I proceed by spacing and clustering bodies, one by one.
Encapsulated in a space inside a place during a specific event, I support the weight of stretchable time and a potential emotional explosion or/and implosion. My body and others’ are a part of the same movement. We have to care for each other. We have to share, for each other.
We are a nation of one made of bodies switching between their wandering star and magnet function.
Being the vector of a distant history
I am present in this space, in those conditions. I created Depopulated as a movement made of the one and the many. Manipulating life inside an architecture is something I am not treating lightly. It is a constant struggle to not confuse knowledge with power. I have to work on myself, perpetually.
Sharing a space with strangers feels as primal as it is uncomfortable.
Once upon a time is now, and I conduct and free the narrative.
Yet, the “present” and “I” do not exclude other temporalities and bodies.
On the contrary, they are two anonymous anchors exploring asynchronous and epigenetic histories. Bodies embedded into life (i.e. memory) and light (i.e. space) are accountable for the “before” and “after”. It is somehow exhilarating and frustrating to be the de facto vessel for those who preceded me without having neither a say nor control. This peculiar situational endeavor differs from any other form of collective micro frictions, then interactions. There is no negotiation, no transaction and often no closure.
You and I, we do not need. But you and I, we must want to be ourselves.
As I spoke to one member of the audience corpus, I came to realize that my process could be felt like a work in progress, and this made me reflect on the impact of my presence in the space. Therefore, I think I must become less palpable in the next variation of Depopulated. I entered this live experience thinking like an anchor and I left with the responsibility to transform myself into a compass.
The temporal then spatial condition of this situational endeavor requires me to accept and commit to activism as a technique and to the unknown as a process. I think passive and repetitive mechanisms are the foundation of progress but also a negation of everything primal inside a body. While I already did, the other bodies had to relinquish control.
Because my body is a vessel of previous selves, it engages the “present” and “I” in a inner battle about intimacy’s natural selection.
Because I am the vector of a distant and deceased history, it is making me the first and last link. But you, the others bodies, are another link and the next one too.
This untold mediation is fundamental to any form of live experience.
My process does not start with an idea nor does it stop with predetermined applause. You and I, we are more than a live experience forged by my artistic and economic agencies. We are life in movement, together and separate, inside an architectural condition designed by the rules of civilization.
A quest for renewed togetherness
Now I have to carefully choose my words, as much as I lost control of my body during the work in progress process…
I envisioned, orchestrated and established an organized but chaotic experience to invoke my intimacy and reach the others, but is it enough? Is art, as a commodity on the global market, the right vehicle for this experimentation? What are the audience’s expectations and states of mind and body before and after life (i.e. memory) and light (i.e. space)?
My equilibrium of being the beginning, the center and just another element inside the collective is fragile. There is no end, we are conditioned to experience closure as the way to sequence our functional lives. But fragility implies to be active even outside the light and others’ sight. It also demands to activate others without telling, negotiating or transacting. This relationship exists in the realm of bodily and innerspaced micro frictions, then interactions.
I’m trying to touch without touching. Using ropes is carrying a non-neutral history when “I” the artist, Sylvain Souklaye, am the medium and the mediator.
But I think there is no place for civilization and culture during this moment of magnetic natures. Everyone becomes the other’s satellite, invisibility stating the values of its own gravity and gravitas while shaping an ephemeral live mapping, then living map.
What are really the “present” and the “self” when a satellite of vulnerability resonates as your own, is your own? They are both conscious and absent.
These principles are the embodiment of Depopulated. A frictional but carnal quest of renewed togetherness, but in motion.
Depopulated exists solely as a common space, design and desire creating an unbalanced but centered movement exporting our interiority.
*Depopulated took place for four consecutive days at Brooklyn Art Haus.