July 13, 2019
Center for Performance Research
As a type of anonymous personal advertisement that arises from urban encounters, 'missed connections' has been popularized by sites like New York's craigslist, or London's "Rush-hour Crush" column. Stolen glances, a cold shoulder, then a figure receding into the crowd. Se La Vie, Bodies Need Rest takes this trope as a starting point, exploring the fertile ground of projected desires, transient movement, and liminal interactions. As the body incessantly navigates the specific configurations of architectural surroundings, grimy screeches of public transportation, and the amorphous, shifting tunnels of interior space, it is invariably situated somewhere between movement and rest, intensity and stillness, masked selves and cathartic release.
This series of performances emphasizes on relationality, deconstructing borders that both divide the public and private sphere, and turn us into subjects and objects occupying positions of privilege and precarity. Maskedness is not only a mode of self-protection founded upon ingrained social stratas, it also paves the way for ritualistic intervention and self-reflection. Expanding on the term network latency, which is mostly used to describe various types of delay that occur in data communication over networks and online media, this sense of dislocation can be generally applied to broader connections and disconnections that transpire over physical-virtual spaces, in the form of glitches, temporal suspensions, and sporadic retreat into interiority. Amidst somatic sway and multidirectional instability, lies the possibility for the weary body to recuperate.