THAT NIGHT, BODIES GATHERED TO DANCE AND DIE TOGETHER.
THE NEXT DAY, THEIR SHAPE HAD CHANGED, THEY WERE RENEWED.

2022
Video Essay

Bodies are set up in an in-between reality, hybrid.
They exist through different shapes, always changing.
Darkness become their playground of emancipation.
Through the night, they renew themselves.
They undress to embody new characters.
They create new landscapes to exist, fictional and physical.
Extreme musics become the background of these spaces.
Experimental sounds are set as sources of new imagery.
Reality become fluid and stretchable.
Bodies become versatile and in constant mutation.
They are celebrated.
They die.
They are born again.

“That night, bodies gathered to dance and die together…” is a visual essay investigating the notion of black as a space for self emancipation and exploration for bodies. It studies darkness and night as a playground for bodies to explore extreme and subversive gestures towards new and fluid expressions of themselves. Divided in several chapters, the narration follow an abstract and anonymous silhouette into its process of transformation, from the banal idea of dressing up to a more extreme and unstable materialisation of a mutation. The silhouette become slowly an abstract shadow through the wear of rigid and austere long dresses. Borrowing inspiration from ancient medieval monastic dresses and minimalist technical wear, these garments materialise the effect of darkness on bodies in a way of transforming them into essential architecture. Coupled with the play on material and the colour black, they become a void from which new gestures and shapes can emerge. This short movie is a part of a larger and on going visual study about new radical gestures using past imageries to create a possible future more open for different kind of bodies to exist.

PAUL COMBEL

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