Catherine Yass talks about the dizzying aspects of her film Lighthouse.
– See also Catherine Yass, HASENHERZ.– See also Lighthouse.
This etymological kinship with water seems to be another hint to the watery depths through which we have to make our “way”, our “poros”, when we experience dizziness.
Keeping our bodily balance is a continuous performance, including the effort to keep the erect posture against gravity. However, since this performance remains strictly subliminal we become aware of the state of equilibrium only in the event of disruption: in the very moment we loose our balance, stumble and fall, or more generally, when the relation between the body and the surrounding world is irritated, disturbed, or interrupted as it is characteristic in the state of vertigo.
The Greek word a-poria can be separated into its two morphemes a- and poros (“without” and “passage”). Poros has a wide range of meanings, including way out and expedient.
The question of art’s ability to speak to that which is unknowable, unspeakable and alien has been a long tradition held in Romanticism and Realism, the former being associated with the subjective physiologies of the individual and the latter being associated with more objective and scientific aims.
The process of slipping into dizzying freefall, of sliding into uncertainty, becoming stuck, losing one’s way, giving up are as much actions as occurrences, both active and passive. Dizziness is a midway state at the point where everything and nothing seems possible, where certainty and uncertainty are in superposition, marked by an increasing loss of control.
Five arts-based research projcets taking place at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna will be presented and discussed. Kerstin Mey from University of Westminster and member of the Austria Science Board will give the keynote at the end of the day.
