Fossil

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Fossil (2017) explores the capacity of the human form as a vessel for memory, as paired bodies, create, hold, dissolve, and recompose forms in a continuous cycle of support, absence, and return. One body collapses into the other while the other supports, briefly. As if time stopped in the comfort of this moment, one leaves and the other is left holding the space they once held together as air, light, and time continue to progress in the absence of the other.

Born out of exercises in self-care, Fossil slips between stillness and motion, sculpture and performance, the solitary body and collaboration, and our ability to undo histories by revisiting them, one excavation at a time.

performed by Leslie Cuyjet, Betsy Brandt, Muffie Connelly, Elinor Harrison, Jacob Henss, and Kat Reynolds
as part of A Collection of Slow Events
curated by Alexis Wilkinson
at the Luminary Gallery
St. Louis, MO
July 14 and 15, 2017
img Brea McAnally

I saw your back in my dream. It was all I needed to see to know it was you. I don’t even know your back that well, with all of its insignificant markings. But I could pick it out in a crowd of thousands, even with it turned to me. Your body is the outline of a shadow. Your face is a distinct blob. Your components have faded yet you remain as crisp as lightning in my memory, some glass in the sand I cannot reach, complete and clear. I can still feel your energy here. It drives me to a mild level of madness. I talk to you, unknowingly, walking down the street. I spit at the ground without warning. My shower is a podium where I frequently test out monologues, addressed to you. You exist as a relic of my former self and I now realize that you never really existed, this version of you I desire. Instead, she is real and still prevailing in the hollow space where I house your remains.

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