where we are right now

interpreted by : simon courchel | john mcgrew | jeremy pheiffer | mary read

Sunday, June 22 | 7pm and 8pm 

Tuesday, June 24 | 7:30pm

 Pier 15, River to River Festival, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, 2014

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Within the text of renowned Brazilian author Clarice Lispector’s 'Agua Viva’ the reader witnesses a dying painter’s initial/final attempt at capturing the essence of a moment through her written words instead of brushstrokes - the energy, the space, the air. Acknowledging this desire to hold true, ‘where we are right now’ is a performed framework inevitably falling victim to time and decay. We began once. Our actions became moments, our moments became memories. As we continue to process and revisit, how do we present the present? 

"there is almost no flesh in this quartet of mine” 

Lispector’s words serve as the origin and the dramaturgical undercurrent for the various states embodied by Simon Courchel, John McGrew, Jeremy Pheiffer, and Mary Read. They have been given this vessel: the base notion of space, the base notion of direction, single points where they intersect and break apart, the recollection of the room that contained our shared experience in those first days. They have been asked to exercise a fluid practice in accepting what is lost in the performing, relishing this notion of conscious evolution, and releasing themselves from the desire to maintain or compromise. They are asked to fill this vessel, let its contents seep out, and when it is emptied, revel in beginning again. 

The work stands as a microcosm: an extension of our constantly shifting existence and the moments in which we find one another. We return as a group for finite pockets of time rather than being submerged in a constant stream. How are we different the next minute, the next day, month, 6 months, 6 years? Each glance, point of contact, and interaction between the four is both what once was and what is now. 

“where we are right now” is a physicalized rumination on the struggle to preserve an ‘instant’, and the inability to do so. It is an attempt to exist in a state of beginning - simultaneously a love song and a swan song between ever moving parts. 

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we come
together
for these reasons
alone

alone 
for these reasons 
together 
we come

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Past showings: June 10th, 2013  Movement Research at Judson Church | June 15th, 2013 River to River Festival Open Studios