LOTUS POOL

 
2019 Cairo, Egypt
A live work exe­cut­ed by 8 vol­un­teer par­tic­i­pants, mov­ing in con­cert and col­lab­o­ra­tion with each oth­er to nego­ti­ate a space of phys­i­cal con­straint through cre­ative coun­ter­ac­tion.
Dura­tion: approx­i­mate­ly 30 minutes 

The work con­sists of 3 series of 8 coor­di­nat­ed group move­ments with­in a square are­na criss­crossed with taught elas­tic cords. The lengths of the cord inter­sect with­in the square in pat­terns of scared geom­e­try, which are made increas­ing­ly com­plex as the work evolves. The par­tic­i­pants, sym­met­ri­cal­ly posi­tioned at the out­set, are asked to inter­act with each oth­er as they are led through a sequence of move­ments designed to alter the orig­i­nal pat­tern by impos­ing new geo­met­ri­cal com­po­si­tions on the under­ly­ing struc­ture. Each new com­po­si­tion is an abstract fig­ure (such as “phoenix”, “scarab”, “butterfly…etc.) based on a pre-exist­ing schema which the par­tic­i­pants coop­er­ate to repro­duce in space. To achieve each new expres­sion, the par­tic­i­pants must simul­ta­ne­ous­ly change posi­tions inside the are­na and push their bod­ies again­st the cord to dis­tort the tense geom­e­try and phys­i­cal­ly con­nect to each oth­er. Waist-deep in the elas­tic “pool” the par­tic­i­pants shift loca­tions by drag­ging the cords with their bod­ies, gen­er­at­ing increased ten­sion and resis­tance to the emerg­ing shape. Par­tic­i­pants are ener­get­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed to each oth­er through the trans­fer of ten­sion, and are forced to intu­itive­ly cal­i­brate their posi­tion in rela­tion to each oth­er. Using each other’s strength by clasp­ing hands or lock­ing arms to con­sol­i­date the coun­ter-fig­ure, they momen­tar­i­ly fas­ten their col­lec­tive for­ma­tions, pro­duc­ing a flow­er­ing sequence of liv­ing diagrams. 

DIAGRAMS

MOVING DIAGRAMS

NOTES

 
Using per­cep­tive and respon­sive move­ment to attain a joint con­fig­u­ra­tion, par­tic­i­pants are con­tin­u­al­ly seek­ing to con­front the resis­tance of the bound­aries in order to impose a coun­ter-net­­work of human bonding. 

Per­formed at the Cairo Bien­nale of 2019, the work count­ed with the col­lab­o­ra­tion of musi­cian Mee­doo Ish­mael, whose seg­ments of per­cus­sion and voice frame each posi­tion from entry to release. 

The work evolves in 3 sep­a­rate but con­sec­u­tive acts, cor­re­spond­ing to the 3 lay­ers of cord draw­ings with­in the square. Each act is com­posed of 8 move­ments, each move­ment last­ing 1 minute.