welter film

In welter-film, three simultaneous solos emerge out of prolonged work with color. The performers occupy a viscous dimension of saturated light, their submergence in which is total. Infected by color virus and noise making, they exhibit symptoms which evince something ancient and essential to emotional survival, complete with an extra-lingual mode of communication that is evocative of invocation, incantation. The performers do not surrender their agency; rather the spell endows them with a more evolved force unmediated by language. The resultant, feverish state enables a direct, non-abstracted, non-symbolic account of desire and its power.

Friction and asymmetry, both auditory and physical, serve to scramble preconceived notions of form and ways of knowing that otherwise inhibit this polyphonic, trancelike condition. This circumstance—of a disrupted surface—forces the performers to plumb their depths and locate an interstitial space between disappearance and emergence, charged with potential. It is here, in this lingering state of becoming, that embodied force is recovered, uncensored by history, experience or emotion. A new way of knowing is tacitly understood.

Concept/Direction by Elena Demyanenko

Performed by Laurel Jenkins, Chloë Engel and Elena Demyanenko

Video Direction by Mariam Ghani

Editing by India Abbott

Camera work by India Abbott and Adityajit Kang

Lights by Michael Giannitti