KIM COLEMAN

Aphelion Slip (2017)

​

Kim Coleman, Zoë Poluch and Cara Tolmie.

​

Performers, props, programmable intelligent lighting - VER strobe and Robe 500 moving head, UV canon, microphones. Variable length.

 

Aphelion Slip is a performance created by three collaborators. The audience is invited to witness this shared practice - of variable duration - which explores the collaborators’ respective lexicons of light, sound, and movement.

 

Aphelion Slip functions as a testing of visibilities, audibilities and compatibilities between flesh and electric bodies. Within the micro-climate of the performance, stage lights become performing bodies in their own right, with sensual, slight, awkward and stammering personalities and temperaments, not the spectacular, smooth and commanding roles they commonly have within large-scale concerts and performances. The bodies of Zoë and Cara concurrently undertake a perpetual back and forth practice. Sometimes the flesh bodies are stroked by the light emitting from the electric bodies, other times the performers’ hands physically caress, touch and support the light bodies, however, neither exist for the sake or promotion of the other and - as a result - each move in and out of visibility and attention over the duration of the work. 

​

Within the landscape of Aphelion Slip, visibility is decentered as the priority. The performers' practice delves deep into the mediated interior experience of the performer whose action may or may not have been seen by the audience. One performer composes and the other receives a ‘choreography for the senses’. The administering of sensory stimulation (sound, touch, smell, movement, etc.) is done as a kind of writing upon the others’ body, a choreography made to trigger association, narrative, memory and ultimately spoken translation through the partner’s body. 

 

Commissioned by Block Universe festival, London, Aphelion Slip was made possible through the support of Block Universe, the Arts Council England, and the Embassy of Sweden ( London.)

 

Link to performance documentation

 

​