Nona Fernández
Voyage
Concept of phenomenological behaviour of memory/ Analogies between wether and memory activity.
‘Being far away' has been a temporal and spatial condition, a relation between feelings and location. However, this state is being built, like a chronological process that plays where the thoughts look.
I could call them like ‘emotional perspectives’, depending on the moment of my migration. My body and my life were moving towards here, while my inner state was slowly turning backwards.
This condition of distance has been a trigger of sensorial memories. A personal and emotional phenomenon through which I have been able to recognize 'place markers'. Elements identified with a certain place, from a relation of belonging, revealed from distance. This, as a situational context as a migrant and where distance becomes the daily context.
In this way, I consider the wind as an emotional activating agent, as a medium through which I evoke memories or longing for my land of origin.
Observing the wind as a phenomenon and archiving my thoughts and imagination, I try to investigate how the memory of places acquires a spatial dimension in the distance? Through sensations that awaken the memory of places that no longer exist in the immediate reality. As a parallel reality, and decontextualized geographically, historically and socially.
‘Being far away' has been a temporal and spatial condition, a relation between feelings and location. However, this state is being built, like a chronological process that plays where the thoughts look.
I could call them like ‘emotional perspectives’, depending on the moment of my migration. My body and my life were moving towards here, while my inner state was slowly turning backwards.
This condition of distance has been a trigger of sensorial memories. A personal and emotional phenomenon through which I have been able to recognize 'place markers'. Elements identified with a certain place, from a relation of belonging, revealed from distance. This, as a situational context as a migrant and where distance becomes the daily context.
In this way, I consider the wind as an emotional activating agent, as a medium through which I evoke memories or longing for my land of origin.
Observing the wind as a phenomenon and archiving my thoughts and imagination, I try to investigate how the memory of places acquires a spatial dimension in the distance? Through sensations that awaken the memory of places that no longer exist in the immediate reality. As a parallel reality, and decontextualized geographically, historically and socially.
Using the wind, I explore how its presence in space is revealed in different dimensions. And how through media such as video and sound, it acquires a value as a sensory phenomenon. A passing presence in existing places, which correspond to a different context than the memory they evoke.
In this way, the choice of place aims to disrupt the viewer's expectation. Developing ephemeral realities, in the format of immersive experiences. These involve positioning the viewer within a created context, to be part of the experience placed into an unexpected location. Encouraging the spectator to explore spatially in an active way, to transit the place and corporally awaken their sensory perceptions.
In my practice I work with the link between place and memory. Using distance or being far away as a revealing condition to connect certain elements with a certain location, from a relationship of belonging, that is how it started in a personal approach.
Since then, my work has been focused mainly on the wind, not as an element in itself, but as an experience.
Emotional: As an evocative phenomenon of memory related to a specific place.
Sensorial: As an awakener of perceptions, through the other dimensions of its presence. Sound, touch, temperature, smell.
Spatial: As an activator of space, giving a sense of time, through movement.
To a scenography experience:
What I search within my practice is:
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- upset the spectator's expectation.
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- develop ephemeral realities, in a format of immersive experiences.
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- create a context in which the spectator is an active part, being able to explore and walk through the place
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- make wind a spatial guide, awaken the awareness about the place and time
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- make wind a sensorial presence, awaken the perceptions of the spectator.