I Hold, and Am Being Held (First Embrace)
2024
Durational Performance
In collaboration with Seval Seher Çifter
I Hold, and Am Being Held is engaged in the versatility of touch, more so about a specific form of touching: holding someone. Departing from the contradicting charges of this action, the work explores the healing and visual potential of a gesture along with the ritualistic potential of touch. To hold someone as in a soothing physical expression of affection, an embodied experience of connection; and to hold someone somewhere, as in an act of restriction and a consequence of control.
The symbolic gesture in the performance is based on a photograph taken with my mom from my childhood. During this reenactment shot at my childhood home, our bodies stay in place, hold (onto) each other and challenge immobility reciprocatively through sensory signals. Swaying in space through (in)visible transitions between tolerance, resistance, empathy and attachment. Being exposed to physical, mental, and emotional implications of presence.
Just as semantic integrity is loosened by linguistic failure, Winnicott’s term ‘holding environment’ which touches upon the process of gradual failure in the mother/infant bond is activated. By utilizing home as a symbolic place, internal/external behavioral spheres of individuals along with the internal/external stimuli in regards to perception of touch are called into question. “If the ‘organ’ of touch is ‘inward’ or internal; second, flesh is but the ‘medium’ of touch;”* I hold, and am being held is an embodiment of the threshold of holding.
*On Touching-Jean-luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, 2005
I Hold, and Am Being Held (Second Embrace)
2024
Two-channel audiovisual installation
6'28''
Second Embrace is a documentation, response and reflection of the First Embrace. It holds the bodily experience's impact in, as the previously held body part puts it on record in real time.
Installation view, Photo credits, Francesca Malfatti, Francesco Cinà
Still frames
