This is the Place Where We Pray
The Fonderie Darling invited the public to explore the work of multidisciplinary artist Lara Kramer during their Place Publique performance series of 2024: Les caresses qui nous unissent.
July 18, 2024
This is the Place Where We Pray aims to uncover new modes of expression and a wide spectrum of stories through Kramer’s visualization, renewal, and embodiment of the original piece. Although the artwork isn’t displayed, the project creates a space where time, memory, and space intersect, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the unfolding narrative and transcend conventional limits alongside the performer.
In the repetitive wiping of surfaces, “a total cleaning before we can even think of heading into places of prayer,” the body schema might suggest a dialogue between action and materiality. However, this cleaning is more than a phenomenological act. It is ritualistic, an invocation. “To clean the surfaces and be cleaned” becomes a way of aligning with something greater than the self, something more-than-human. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s concept of perspectivism challenges the singularity of Merleau-Ponty’s schema, emphasizing that Indigenous cosmologies perceive the body as existing within a network of spiritual and material relationships. The dancer does not merely clean for herself; she participates in a reciprocal act with the land and the forces it holds.
This is the Place Where We Pray is a durational exploration that delves into silence and stillness. Inspired by the 2022 visual artwork (Baptiste and Kramer) of the same name, the project employs the original artwork and its creation process as a reference point for the performer’s instinctual engagement of a site-specific location. This work and activation seeks to expand the sensory and dimensional reach of the original piece through experimental experiences and knowledge of place-based relationality.
