bits of self, at once, in fragments

Akari Komura and Hannah Marcus

2021. Video. 7 minutes 14 seconds. Video described by the artists.

bits of self, at once, in fragments. 2021. Live performance & digital media work on Zoom between a bedroom in Ann Arbor, MI and a basement in Chicago, IL. Two human beings, three cameras, one handheld mirror.

The video unfolds over Zoom in real time. A woman of Japanese descent with shoulder-length black hair carries a colorfully ornamented, handheld mirror. She is wearing a red sweater and sits in her room. The mirror in hand reflects a scaled down image of another seated performer, who is a white female with long, wavy brown hair, wearing a buttoned down denim shirt and jeans. 

The performer in denim initiates a casual conversation with herself about the weather, as the first performer chimes in intermittently with sounds of acknowledgement, sans words. She moves away from her seated position, and an aerial shot replaces the frontal vantage point reflected in the mirror. The first performer begins to speak in fragmented sentences sourced from the original one-way conversation. She overlaps her consonant sounds and transforms her words into melodic phrases. A drone sound made up of the performer’s humming lingers in the background for the entire piece, entering softly and swelling in intensity.

The second performer eases into gestural movements of the upper body that begin in fidgets and eventually grow into limbs escaping outwards. The movement falls into repetitive loops that take her down to the ground to explore the edges of her space. The final moment of the piece leaves her lower legs in the frame, still and limp.