QUIT IT

I have been thinking about the idea that complete interpersonal connection is impossible, which has been explored in my previous project, How Connected Can We Be. From my last project, Can You Direct Me, Please, I realized that I had not been able to accept that idea and I still had the desire of filling the gap. Influenced by Lacan’s theory about self and other, I feel I still cannot let go of the desire of a unity, a non-differentiation, a non-separation, a merging with others. But the lack, or absence, disconnection is the condition to become a functional being. The inability to accept the separation between self and other makes me functionless. I’m attached to other. When the other is gone, the attachment is cut but I still cannot accept the disconnection. My mind cannot be attached to my own body. My body becomes functionless on its own. It is misplaced. There is the desire of getting somewhere and the futility of meaningless attempts of erasing separation, otherness, boundary, space, or gap.

The inability to accept the absence makes me think of trying to sit on a chair that does not exist, put things on a table that does not exist, and hang things on a hook that does not exist. I find the three objects are all designed to support. Their absence shows a loss of support and the repetition of the attempts only to fall suggests I am unable to accept the separation. The visual of falling is inspired by Mona Hatoum’s Under Siege. The effect of absence is influenced by Jennifer Doyle’s writing about Franko B’s I Miss You!:

In walking down the aisle alone, Franko B performs a union with an absence, for an audience. In this sense, the performance locates itself in the agonistics of the melodramatic conclusion as one attempts to absorb loss, the gap between what one wants and what one has.
Hold It Against Me

Other is a mediation to feel my existence while I am unable to differentiate them. It makes me think the camera is also a mediation to see oneself. It suddenly reminds me of the illusion cameras can cause, like the illusion of complete unity other may provide self. I have the idea of creating the illusion of sitting on a chair, putting a cup on a table, and hanging clothes on a rack while everything falls but I keep trying.