Spinal
Shown at: ‘Not Yet at Ease’, FirstSite, Colchester, United Kingdom (2018) | ‘Spinal’, Frith Street Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2019)

Video
Duration, 10′ 24″

Spinal is a study of the vertebral column that brings together an anatomical model and a dancer’s body in a conversation of gestures, stances, steps, positions, and caresses. The positions traced by the dancer’s body echo the arrangement in John Singer Sargent’s iconic 1912 painting “Gassed”, where a line of wounded soldiers, blinded by a nerve gas attack, hold on to each other, shuffling towards an uncertain goal. Hovering, too, is an image of the dancer’s hands caressing a pedagogical model of the human back-bone.

This exchange references the silences and elisions to avoid the term ‘shell shock’ (which has evolved to become PTSD today) by British Military Authorities. The “nervous ailment” – which authorities claimed was only experienced by officers and not British soldiers, or soldiers imported from other parts of Empire – was said to be linked to ‘disturbances in the spinal column’ caused by repeated vibrations from gunfire and bomb explosions. 

Spinal attends to early twentieth century’s dislocations as a move towards understanding human fragility and endurance. 

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