COLLABORATIVE WORK
Next to being a platform for collecting and connecting the individual work of the individual artists, PERSONA also aims to create collaboratively and collectively. By combining each artists' individual medium bound experience PERSONA creates work within specific imagery which resides simultaneously within the realistic, the cinematic and the deformed world. PERSONA exposes the contemporary individual and their alienation from corporeal reality.
Collaborative PERSONA work is heavily influenced by the shared research the body as the manifestation of identity. Creating projects that delve into the different layers within the identity of the artists, the viewer and our shared society.
PROJECTS
SKINNED
CINEMATIC DANCE WORK
2021
stills from SKINNED
SKINNED is a 40-minute cinematic dance work, in which two performers embody the inner process that one goes through in the search for oneself. Through physical exploration, they question the usual layers with which one conforms today. Layer by layer, the figures deepen their evolving physical identity and molt into new forms, eventually entering an abstract state of self-awareness.
Following multiple intertwined paths, they explore the relationship between their soul and body in an attempt to discover their identity. The figures use their bodies and their movements as metaphors for this transformation.
SKINNED is an interdisciplinary project where two dancers and a visual artist meet in a medium that is new to all: film. Both are part of the dramaturgy in order to enliven the dialogue between the two disciplines. SKINNED is an investigation into shared poetic qualities in both performance and photography.
In SKINNED, the visual image and the performative quality are two aspects that coexist equally. Together they create a visual language that attaches importance to emotion and aesthetics.
The film is a deep reflection on the different layers of an identity and invites the viewer to go in search of themselves.
CREDITS
a film by Persona
dance Pieter Desmet + Steffi Mennen
director of photography, Jonathan De Maeyer
soundtrack, Adriaan de Roover
with financial support of Stad Antwerpen
with support of Zuidpool
residencies KANAL Centre Pompidou Brussels + Ultima Vez
location holders, STRUIK + Zuidpool + Wassalon Potuit + Zoniënwoud
CATCH-22
VIDEO INSTALLATION
2021
Catch-22 is a video installation which describes a moment in which one wants to escape a specific, paradoxical situation but they cannot because of contradictions in their nature and their surrounding world that are out of their rational control. A friction between consciousness and the outer judgement and the subconsciousness.
A catch-22 is a dilemma, or difficult circumstance, from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting conditions. The term was coined by Joseph Heller in his 1961 novel by the same name. In it an army psychiatrist invokes it to explain why a pilot requesting mental evaluation for insanity - hoping to be found not sane enough to fly and thereby escape the war - demonstrates his sanity in creating the request and thus cannot be declared insane.
Catch-22 questions the situation we found ourselves in during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like a paradox artistic work was being produced by the whole cultural sector, but there were no possibilities of presenting the work for an audience. In Catch-22 Persona questions the status quo of maintaining this constant workflow but continuously clashing with different obstacles such as the various measurements. The installation is a continuous loop, we see people not being able to finish their action, as if they are stuck in motion. Stuck in time and space.
Catch-22 searches for our core identity. Often difficult to discover, or recognize, because of the countless layers of subconsciousness surrounding it. One finds themself stuck in a paradoxical unwilling acceptance.
The installation is connected with our general research the body as the manifestation of the identity and the previous works it encloses: looking into the identity of being.
The images that are used are taken from the cinematic dance work SKINNED. Due to Covid-19 the film wasn't finished at the time Catch-22 was presented for the first time. Within the context of the installation SKINNED is simultaneously a past and a future work. Material is being reused and given new meaning, while taken from a work that hasn't shared or established its own meaning yet. By changing the context Persona gives the images different identities.
Catch-22 is an intimate one-on-one experience where the viewer comes face to face with the freedom to seek their own core.
still from Catch-22
CREDITS
concept by Persona
dance Pieter Desmet + Steffi Mennen
director of photography, Jonathan De Maeyer
with support of Stad Antwerpen + Platform In De Maak
residencies KANAL Centre Pompidou Brussels + Noordoever + Kunstgrillen
location holder, STRUIK