Tuesday November 17th   7pm    RISD auditorium @ canal walk.

Click here for more information Betsey Biggs.

“Based on their observation that the Dom Luis I Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge roughly reflect one another across a horizontal access, their elegant project explores the thin line where two different linguistic and cultural territories can connect and engage in conversation. The engaging and very tactile project allows for user created conversation, as well as deep reflection on the metaphor of wire in today’s digital society.”

-FuturePlaces 2009

Hye Yeon Nam earned an Honorable Mention for her video project in the exhibition.

“Hye’s video of walking backwards throughout downtown Manhattan quickly creates a sense of unease and discomfort for even the most casual of viewers. Her simple and very understandable idea immediately captures her difficult experience in assimilating to a new culture.”

-FuturePlaces 2009

Congratulations!

For more details about Oporto-Brooklyn Bridge please check the following link:

http://futureplaces.up.pt/2009/doku.php?id=exhibition:naomi_kaly_alyssa_casey

My interest in the body sensations started during the time I spent in Dharamsala, a small village in the north of India. In this small location next to the Himalayas, I learnt to meditate using the Vipassana technique as Goenka Ji teaches it. During those days alone, in completely solitude, I started to observe the sensations that my body was generating. My teacher showed my how they are a key element in the relationship between mind and body, how what we think that they are elaborated thoughts there are nothing more than reactions to the pleasure or displeasure of those body sensations. However, the most important thing that I learnt is that all that physical activity is impermanent, there is no never-ending pain and there is never-ending pleasure. Both of them are body sensations that arise and pass away. Being aware of that it’s the first step of a real happiness.

My work just tries to present a very initial step of this process. I just want to pay attention to these body sensations, noticing their presence. Most of the times we are not aware of them. Only during moments of extreme and intense emotions we feel how our body is reacting. We are aware that something is happening. Those changes are a continuum. We are permanently evaluating the information of our senses. Don’t pay attention to that process doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. In fact, the part of our mind that it’s always connected with our body it’s our subconscious. It detects an input from the external reality, activates the senses, gets some information about the input, evaluates it and generates a body sensation that we like or dislike.

I feel that being aware of these physical reactions is important in order to understand the nature of our behaviors, how we make our life the worst of the nightmares or the best of the dreams. I feel that my role as an artist is to try to point out the strings of the puppet. There are moments in our lives than we ask to ourselves, why did I react in that way? Why do I suffer so much if I know it’s bad for me? Why do I like it even if I know is bad for me? I feel that those body sensations are part of the answer.

I don’t consider myself a prophet. I’m not interesting in the transmission of my truth. Everyone should find its own way to explain the world. My position is being one more experiencing the piece. I try to generalize my own archive of body sensations. It’s difficult to say that is universal, every human being is different. At the same time all of us share some kind of very basic physical reactions.

It’s not a coincidence that love is representing in cartoons with a huge heart jumping out of the body. It’s not an act of free creativity representing anger using a red face produced by an internal heat. Most of us share some basic reactions to the most elementary emotions. This is my dictionary in order to talk to the audience. All of us share the dependency of our body, that’s why I try to express myself with these sensations that we also share.

I try to establish some communication with the audience in order to encourage them to set up their own communication with their bodies. That’s my final goal. I would be happy if they don’t listen to me because they are listening to their bodies.