A rope stretches between two trees, five metres off the ground. Halfway along the rope, a chrysalis made of cling film hangs lengthwise. Through its many layers, translucent in places and opaque in others, the chrysalis reveals a human form, the naked body of a man lying on his back. The man is motionless and will remain so for several hours, waiting to be transformed. As the performance goes on, for some reason the cocoon begins to sag. Changes in light expose some parts of the body and in turn hide others. The audience wanders around the structure, inspecting the cling film and touching it. They ponder the man’s existence: is he dead? Some try to attract his attention with gestures and others with sometimes slightly aggressive behaviour. One man even tries to burn a hole through the cling film with his cigarette.

This archetypal and mythical tableau is reminiscent of the Land Art movement of the 60s and 70s, as well as of the minimalist amorphous sculptures that lie somewhere between natural integration into the landscape and an industrial graft.After several hours, the cocoon begins to shake. Like a predator, a woman climbs one of the trees and lies down on the tightrope. She crawls towards the cocoon and tears at it with her teeth. The whole structure quivers and tenses up.

Still trying to keep her balance, the woman slowly enters the chrysalis through the hole she has created. She stretches out over the man inside and stops moving, creating a new tableau: a dressed woman wrapped tightly around a naked man. A new picture emerges, symbiotic and sensual, to replace the meditative and deathly image of transmutation. After a prolonged moment in this sensual position, the woman starts to move her limbs and to tear through the cocoon with increasingly intense movements. The two bodies slide around to extricate themselves from the plastic shroud, as if in new birth.

Text: Anne Rochat
English translation: AJS Craker