SEVERANCE

foil / foetus / water / blood / cobalt / leaves / branch

Across a 4-hour performance, the body explores queer grief by confronting the loss of the twin. It is a longing for an irreversible past sense of being with the other(ed) self, the one that occupies a space but is not seen. In an interplay of organic and inorganic materialities, the body revisits its temporal journey - its embedded past and future becoming(s). This exchange is achieved by working with materials such as foil, metal nails, leaves, branches, water and the embryo of the twin. In confronting grief, the actions inform an embodied mode of being and moving with these affects to discover a kind of symbiosis between the living and lived body, the twin and its embryo. Throughout the performance, the body undergoes cycles of movement with various applications of endurance, repetition, pain, and pleasure, while the limitations presented by the post-Soviet restorative nostalgia conjure the abject body in the present. The work culminates with a ritual expulsion to explore post-human re-workings of the innate loss of the twin in its embodied format to encounter new existences within the flesh.