LIMINAL STATES 2017 Exhibition at Chisenhale Studios 64-84 Chisenhale Road E3 5QZ London United Kingdom
Wednesday, July 26, 2017 from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM (BST)
Liminal States is curated by Alexine Rodenhuis and supported by the Goldsmiths Annual Fund.
Liminal States is a one-night event with an immersive installation and performance by Rachel Cheung which physically and conceptually negotiates the uncertain agency of human forms when approaching technological transcendence. Transforming the Chisenhale Studios space with an ephemeral display of sculpture, video, sound and movement, Cheung will create a Portal Room—an environment that opens a threshold between the real and the unreal, the physical and the virtual. Visitors within the portal will be suspended in a state of liminality as they find themselves guided into a temporary realm by a metallic light map which wraps the room from floor to ceiling and a web of reflective aerial sculptures. Alone within the empty room the objects hang motionless and visibly silent, but with the entry of moving bodies into the space the realm becomes an “activated portal”. The silvery shapes move and glisten as subtle currents of energy and spirit permeate the air. The portal will be fully activated with a two-part dance performance by Cheung along with Paola Napolitano and Piedad Albarracin Seiquer. This newly commissioned piece will explore human movement and presence within virtuality. The physical bodies of the dancers will conceptually straddle the periphery of the portal, existing between the lived world and a realm that is suspended in place and time. Their actions and motions will mimic those of machines to question the precarity of bodily agency within digital and simulated domains. Celebrating the unique shared site of the Chisenhale Studios and the Chisenhale Dance Space, this performance will highlight the work of artists who bridge creative disciplines and explore the materiality of gesture and expression within a space. The vitality of the portal will be stimulated throughout the performance with interjections of spoken word in the form of Virtual Poetry. Conceptualized by Cheung and accompanied by a permeating audio soundscape, the poetic verses will be amplified into the space to create a sense of other-worldliness in a place that is at once disorienting and familiar. In an age of accelerating automation through technological advances, Cheung’s presentation will ultimately return to an enigmatic question: who has the control, the human or the machine?