laboratoire écologie et art pour une société en transition
Peau Pierre: an audio capsule
TRAVELING BODY by Jonas Van
In a room in the heart of Geneva, in the middle of the afternoon, our group of artists is meeting. Large quantities of water flood the ground. Collectively, we try to move the water with our bodies. But it flows at a speed we don’t understand; we can’t physically transport it.
The human body has around 100,000 kilometres of blood vessels, enough to circle the Earth two and a half times. Blood vessels are made up of arteries and veins. “Vein” comes from the Latin “vena”: a small natural underground water channel. In fact, by holding the water in our hands, we are imitating the body’s own blood circulation, but outside it.
The water on the ground catalyses our memories. And when our skins finally touch, water is the intermediary in this encounter. This is how a crack in time opens up in this room in the heart of Geneva. Our skins, imitating the movement of the circulatory system, have gradually warmed up to produce enough friction for the water to take the body on a journey through space-time. The next exercise was to talk about where we had travelled. These journeys took the form of audio capsules.
This speculative story is part of the T-T Transition Glossary, a tool designed by Ritó Natálio to develop a form of environmental education that encourages artistic practices as a means of understanding and applying ecological theory to societal challenges. This audio capsule is a work by Jonas Van Holanda, inspired by the Peau Pierre project, workshops, for which he was artist-in-residence.
Peau Pierre: an Audio Capsule by Jonas Van Holanda