Nicole De Brabandere

In the series Sharing Duets (2014) I generate transversal tensions by sharing mundane tasks with another person. This series was developed with Stefanie Mrachacz for the Z+ Showroom (ZHdK) Zurich, Switzerland.

Proposition: 0utline the form of physical contact with the floor using chalk, while relaying the chalk between two bodies as they move over the surface of the floor. The urgency to keep the line moving means that the difference between the limbs of each body, as well that between limb, movement and contour, is conflated. The moving outline passes between hands, guiding the chalk, chalking the surface while lifting feet forward, collapsing knees downward, and stretching precariously at the limits of reach. The fast, forward pace of the moving contour seems to sprawl physical movements across the floor—participants must clumsily negotiate lifting, rolling and stretching their bodies over the floor to preserve the continuity of the marking trajectory. The contrast in ease and finesse between the forward force of the line and the physical movements required to sustain it makes the feeling of the body blunt, heavy and inert. Then focus shifts to the way the thighs, toes and arms bulge flatly over the floor—and in the next moment, to lifting again, which un-sticks the skin from the cool tack. As the movement of the rendering line generates relations of pulling and flattening the skin over the floor, floor and skin seem to knead together to compose and recompose a churning mosaic of flesh and stone.

The upper halves of two bodies become suspended in the stretch and slack of a sweater, mid-way between being worn, at the threshold of fitting and form. The surface of the sweater undulates in irregular tensions of pressing over poking arms, elbows, shoulders and crowns. These unruly extremities threaten to exceed the limits of arm and neck holes but never do. The sweater membrane and the surface of skin enter into a mutual relation of bulging, gathering and tightening, in skinned and skinning symbiosis. The sweater is an emergent, living threshold, a duration of fleshy excess that looms between standing tall and a grotesque consistency that churns the difference between bodies from the inside out.

The sharp tips and rigid structure of a toothpick is pressed between two sets of teeth. The small rigid extension intensifies the space of the connection that is both fixed in the stability of toothy form, and vulnerable in the movement of blind navigation with the delicate, haptic interiors of the mouth and gums. The toothpick is held precariously between the teeth while the performers encircle each other, in a hesitant pivoting on the vertical and horizontal axis of the toothpick. In the constraint of preserving the movement relative to these fixed dimensions of relation, the form of toothpick, teeth, heads and the crane of the neck, new proprioceptive atmospheres emerge that soften the teeth and the threshold of corporeal interiority.