Seduction and other exercises

 It’s always risky to play with space. To stretch or cut the tissues of proximities and distances. To insert, either forcefully or not, a presence, or to carve out an absence. To narrow or expand the gap required for a breath. These are only some among all possible interventions.

Playing with space is never simply an unsuspecting, naïve search, or a disengaged observation through a detached gaze. Almost inevitably, it is an attempt of a grasp, of taking hold, even if unaware, a chase, a subtle hunt, an escalation to a trap, an aim for occupation.

Sometimes it’s risky even to just move through it: negotiating closeness and retreat, the rhythm of approaching and receding, swaying in a more or less bold, more or less delicate walk on a tightrope – a continuous choice between lure and fear.

Space here, of course, is not a mere expanse, but a relation: an architecture built on the submerged topography of affects. There’s a persistent ambiguity to such a space, its shifting map and the inversions of the so called “in” and “out” (the malleable boundaries between the “I” and “you”, a touch and a grip).

So, that’s a space that can’t really be pursued or tamed. Like “the sea that treats everything and everyone the same” [ o mar trata tudo por igual ]: an engulfing subaquatic maze formed, at its base, by an endless opening – “the mouth of the wind” [ a boca do vento ], a passage free of consequences and intent.

But it is only in the openings as volatile sites of capture and exchange – mouths that both terrify and enchant, exposed bodies that can  equally invite and repel, the alternating entry exit points of not only viscera and surfaces, but of their extra and meta-physical spread – where an encounter can take place.

Within this mutable terrain of risk, it is the balancing act of choreography of freedom – tempt while release, eject while embrace – what sustains the space.

Maša Tomšič