Harmony disrupted is a collaboration that includes a series of work encounters. A score with the plastic was originally developed with Ileanna Cheladyn. Our goal was to explore what a praxis of disorientation feels like, as an anti-colonial demolition. What types of attention, relationality, perception, and politics are possible from a being posited in a place of disorientation. In the process, however, this also brought images of objectification, sexualization, feminization, and sexual violence. And those remain as a question as I develop this encounter of bodies and plastic, of water and soil and the intersection with the material. Plastic, flesh and nature, as an extension of modernity in the violent practice of the anthropocene. How does it feel to imagine creatures of the ocean suffocated by plastic, or microplastics living in their bellies? And there is, as well, a collaboration with the material.

One day Sam Rathbun took over the camera, thought of the light and time of the day, drove furiously and brought us to the creek. She led a session of work where the current and light were guiding us to compose. Sarah Ashkin and Ileanna Cheladyn spread their magic, trusted their bodies, proposed ideas and spoke of their senses. Once again play was key in the darkness of suffocating bodies, infiltrated beauty of human hearts and waste colliding in the creek. Woman’ bodies, floating in the river. We are all Laura Palmer. Women and sexual dissidence. We can all be found naked in a plastic sheet floating in a river. The flesh that carries history, behavior and relationships. I don't want to keep the burden of it alone. Collaboration is again, to lean into others, perceive together, against, along with, in contrast, in opposition, in harmony and noises.

Created by Teresa Salas.

 

And some creative encounters that gave shape to this idea: Valentina Menz, Patrick Makiri, Theodor Makiri, Lorena Salas, Sarah Ashkin, Ileanna Cheladyn, Sam Rathbun, Matty Davis.