Duration: 5h
Time: January, 2020
Place: an old built-in closet, Palazzo Mora, Venice
Materials: a white feather, a white stick, transparent glue
Action: to disassemble and reassemble the feather

I sit in the closet, slowly and meticulously detaching hair by hair from the feather and gluing it to a white stick processing the difference between the beginning and the end of time.
The built-in wardrobe was in an ancient Venetian palace, in the wall of a large, empty hall almost in the corner. The hall had high ceilings, heavy and awe-inspiring double doors, and the echoes in it made you want to watch out. It was an ancient wardrobe, one that I imagined held countless secrets and harboured more than a single hostage to fortune.
Inside, it measured approximately 1.5 square meters and was so black that darkness seemed to devour everything within. Around the entrance to the wardrobe, there were ornaments resembling the frame of a Renaissance painting – a gateway to another world. 
The performance took place on the border between the darkness of the closet and the illuminated hall bridging the aesthetics of Renaissance painting and the modern world – an ideal point to reflect on time and man’s efforts to keep or change it. 
Resting on this threshold, the feather assumed the role of a symbol, representing fragility and the struggle to surpass earthly constraints.

This performance was result of Dissenting Bodies Marking Time, the new chapter of CO-CREATION LIVE FACTORY, the 12-days artistic-pedagogical live art residency project of the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK. Tutor – Marilyn Arsem.

Photos: Fenia Kotsopoulou, Mauro Sambo, Lorenza Cini

Video: Tyler Hallett