+ Performers: Kasey Gloria Oldford, Angeli Sion, Mark Boswell, Joel Henriques, Chloe Bass.
+ Installed and performed at Triangle Arts Association, NY / 2017
Constructed as a multi-dimensional, domestic proposition, with spaces within spaces, Pinch, Fold, Cut, Line creates a disorienting, ever-expanding and warped environment woven with vignettes. Setting up a tension between the texts ‘Tropisms’ (Natalie Sarraute) and 'A Pattern Language' (Christopher Alexander), Pinch, Fold, Cut, Line disables the audience's normative perception of events, materials and spaces in order to present new modes of being and seeing.
The nuances, particularities, connotations of each built, architectural space of the home-- how one is supposed to interact in shared or private rooms, how sex and race politics are embedded in domestic objects and space-- is explored and challenged.
Holes in the narratives allow for circulation between spaces and times, and disrupt typical boundaries in this porous space that the audience is invited to freely engage with. In this world, images and objects look at us. They no longer simply represent things, but actively intervene in everyday life. Stories are told and words go missing. In Pinch, Fold, Cut, Line, this set of diverse elements share the desire to dismantle structures and divisions, yet suggest alliances for a new kind of logic.
---
Tropism is a biological phenomenon, indicating growth or turning movement of a biological organism, usually a plant, in response to an environmental stimulus.
In Natalie Sarraute's vignettes, Tropisms (1939) are concealed, fleeting, inner movements. Warped characters and objects play a partly-unconscious game in their miniature domestic worlds. Carrying out involuntary actions, moved by invisible external forces, they are seemingly unable to imagine a way out. Tropisms are indefinable movements that slip through us on the frontiers of consciousness. They hide behind our gestures, beneath the words we speak. The individual and the body appear as fragments and metaphors rather than as whole entities. Individuals are frequently replaced by voices, bodies are only seen as parts.
"Tropisms are moments of existence, pockets in a space. Every tropism requires a force, or partner, to bring it out from beneath. This can be a person, object, or situation."
A Pattern Language (1977, Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein) provides a kind of taxonomy of the diverse components of cities, buildings and rooms. The compilation offers approaches that anyone can take to creating improved architectural spaces, and thus enhancing our experience of the built environment.
“It is possible to make buildings by stringing together patterns in a rather loose way. A building made like this, is an assembly of patterns…”
