LA POMME de vie

2021 · Action performance (tiro) · ~45 min · KirakArt, Budapest

Stillness has a shape, if you wait long enough for it. Something that was liquid an hour before now holds you in place. Between us, an apple — not in our hands, but between our mouths. Then we move again, and it falls.

Performers – Beáta Egyed, Gyula Cserepes

Sculptor – Dénes Csasznyi

Music – Januš Aleš Luznar

Video-documentation and editing – Kristóf Várnagy

Photo-documentation – Iringó Simon

Online stream – Réka Oberfrank

Production – Atelier 21220

Supported by MU Színház

The focus-point of the performance is the creative process of sculpting. Differently from the traditional method, when the negative is being taken from a clay figure, the starting point of the direct casting technique in this case is live models (a female and a male dancer). Beside the live models, the other speciality of the process is that while sampling the dancers, the sculptor - applying the creative freedom - sometimes “breaks up” the form, skips or adds some parts intensively, while he tries to create the thinnest layer possible within the limitations of the material (medical gypsum) itself. By doing so he aims to create a positive - like a second skin - instead of a negative reproduction of the models. The dancers, through their movements, fragment further and eventually shed this positive-negative and hence a new relation gets established between the parts of this “gypsum-skin”. The form appears chaotic from a distance, but the recognisable imprints of the human body in the individual parts create perceptive images in the spectator. The relation between the fragments results in new illusions at a close range.

The result of the performance, an installation of an apple and gypsum fragments, stays in the space. The gradual, slow deformation of the materials on the pedestal prolongs the creative process granting a new dimension to it. The returning spectator would face a new version every single time. That’s how the final artwork becomes infinite in reality