Kiss Me

You hold a small mirror to your nose, like a pair of glasses, while kissing someone. You look into your own eyes, but kiss someone else’s lips.
Despite the world being connected through an intricate network of fiberglass, more than ever we seem to be alone together. ‘Kiss Me’ brings these two opposing forces – unbridled narcissim on the one hand and a deep longing for connection on the other -together in one object through reinvention of an age-old instrument: the mirror.

Alone Together

The phrase Alone Together describes a nature of personal relationships and relating to one another that I have found to be characteristic of an experience the generation I am a part of encounters, if not others as well. The phrase in context of communication calls upon the experience and realization that your mental state is completely unique and solitary. There is a push to connect with others as well as to find someone to spend your life with, and along with this push comes the expectation of a complete and total togetherness. There is an eventual point of realization and discovery of your own mental state and its perpetual solitude, transcending physical closeness with others. The photographs in the series evoke contemplation of this experience, through imagery of the mundane, capturing a quiet departure into a somewhat bizarre disconsolate self-investigation. The photographs play with the association of Alone Together to intimacy and love, with an alternate interpretation or redefinition according to newfound phenomenon.

Skid
Pushing further his exploration of a more intense and intimate relationship of the body to the force of gravity, Damien Jalet created “Skid” (2017) for the Gothenburg Dance Company. The dancers performed for 40 minutes on a 34 degree inclined platform of 40 square meters. Together with dancer Aimilios Arapoglou and other members of the company, they developed an alphabet of new physical possibilities, alternating control and surrendering, of accelerations and slow motions, to be performed alone or with partners.