“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”
Edgar Allan Poe
A powerful aerial and physical theatre performance using the Japanese art of shibari, exploring mental health cycles of repetition and the struggle to break out.
Obsessive inner voice that doesn’t let you be at peace.
Pulling you back into your head.
At times it feels like being a prisoner. It feels like drowning in a thick slime, dark and cold.
And yet, at the end of the day, despite the your inner suffering, you have to put your mask on, your uniform nice and clean, and get out. Go to work, school, for a meeting, walk the dog, shopping.
Duties calls.
We are not alone in this.
REVIEW by Execute Magazine https://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/review-manipulate-festival/
Ill-lit
“When we first see Kasia Zawadzka she is seemingly cocooned in slime – which in reality is plastic sheeting and some black paint that looks black and oozing and visceral on camera. When she breaks out of it she is already in the air, spinning and stretching, suspended from her midriff by ropes knotted using the Japanese art of shibari. Even when she is on the ground, the ropes guide her movements, both lifting and constricting her movements as she crawls and writhes on the floor.
Between the moments of suspension is a section where we hear, seemingly, a session with a psychiatrist. A (literal) empty suit takes the place of the psychiatrist and Zawadzka embodies the patient Walter, who receives a number of instructions. Fascinatingly, Zawadzka always follows the instruction just before it is given, creating a sense of repetition, even though we’ve only seen what is happening once. It feels like she is repeating an act that she has had to perform many times before, an impression increased by her dressing in the suit and ripping up the stage at the end of the performance.
Of the three performances, Ill-lit has the least purposeful relationship to the way it is filmed, being a documentation of a live performance, but this presentation still gives an interesting added atmosphere to what we watch. With handheld cameras occasionally shaking, filming from unexpected angles, or cutting suddenly, it feels like found footage of some secret ritual.
It’s typical of MANIPULATE’s 2021 programme, which offers a fascinating look at not just how the human body and the objects around it can be manipulated, but at how space and presence can be manipulated through film.”
