In our schizophrenic age, it's probably one of the few moments the family gathers. It's also a time for pointless conversation--a space of dos and don'ts. "Don't put your elbows on the table," "Don't sing at the table," "Pass the salt," "Say please." Often this microcosm of rules and (performed?) harmony is the perfect time to formulate in thought, over and over again, that which we dare not say at the table. "Why didn't I take that plane? Why did I wear that dress?"
Ours is a feminine space of intimacy and we're about to let you in it...
First, we should say that our initial proposal dealt with the same key idea of the close involvement of the audience with the narrative space, as being the conceptual basis for the storytelling engine. We originally imagined this space as a surface we could step on and were interested in using dance notation systems, such as Labanotation and Eshkol-Wachmann. We had some problems in abstracting from the complexity of the systems towards a broader sense of a grammar of movement and eventually became more interested in exploring a smaller space, more intimate and domestic: the dinner table.
The environment is a table with a place setting, the missing element being the plate: food for thought?
There's no one at this meal and this absence is unsettling and emphasized by the sound of voices around the table. These fill in the total aural space. As you approach this familiar setting, a video is triggered: the image appears at the place where the plate should be. The physicality of the object is conveyed by the projection's circular shape, but mainly by its content.A woman dips a spoon in what must be a bowl of soup. The point of view is the one from the bowl; there's no way you can escape. You're drawn into it and trapped in this woman's perspective. You see your own reflection in this soup bowl; at least it must be you since once you withdraw, the image disappears. You must be polite, since you look right and left, addressing and listening to everyone around the table, the voices that echo around you. Once and a while, you cast a distracted glance into your bowl of soup. There are objects on the table. When you touch them, you are allowed into this woman's intimate realm. This private space is again, an aural one: in a continuous whisper, she flashes back into different situations in life when she could have acted differently. They are now... missed opportunities. Suddenly, your reflected image on the soup bowl is contradictory: you seem to be actively engaged in the conversation but yet you're regretful? Which is true?
