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Variations on Broken Lines  ​

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Variations on Broken Lines is an immersive screendance installation that explores notions of liminality and the experience of being suspended "betwixt and between" — a state of ambiguous transition where the simultaneity of space-time places us neither here nor there, and where selfhood and collectivity are continuously constructed and challenged — tracing the non-linear experience of time and its relation to ritual, memory, and cultural practice. The first iteration was conceived in 2020, during the pandemic, which cast the world into a collective global rite of passage marked by separation from familiar space-times, as life became mediated through computer screens and virtual grids.

 

These experiences unfold in the space between the physical and the virtual, the corporeal and the digital — a dwelling beyond fixed time and space where movements are ritualized and where social, cultural, and political identities are formed and reformed as poetic gestures of becoming. This in-between condition is at once the structure of digital virtuality and the ancient condition of ritual passage. An assemblage of screendance vignettes comprising animation, geometric form, and archival materials is projected through a rotating holographic panel and onto a composition of wooden sculptures, mirrors, prisms, and holographic film. Luminous movement creates variations of calligraphic forms, geometric symbols, and bodily gestures unfolding cinematically.

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​​​​Support, Credits, Acknowledgments: This research-creation and the production of the first iteration were generously supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) through a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Gratitude to Cinzia Cavalieri, Maria Kravchenko, Mahsa Alikhani, Jemaa, Sebastian Ureamuno, Marc-André Weibezahn, Diana Yoo, Kunstbereit e.V. Berlin, Cristina Negucioiu. This research-creation project culminates my MFA thesis research at York University. Special thanks to the YorkU committee: Suzy Lake, Yvonne Singer, and Yam Lau. Archive / conservation: Dr. Ruth Del Fresno Gulliem. Reading - Variations on Broken Lines, published September 2020.