Salt Water

dir Abe Abraham

USA

Salt Water explores the contrast between the force of natural events and our own need and desire for stability. The work opens with an abstract sculptural mass of more than twenty dancers interlocked with bare curved backs that sway, rise and fall in wave-like motions. Individual identification is only a momentary glimpse. Beneath the abstract form, intimate human connections reside. For the viewer, this negotiation between a distant abstract surface and a face in close proximity evokes a stroke of empathy; call from the depths that is once again swept away. The work's central challenge is to expose the humanity and complexity of the individual as she or he exists within the crowd.

words from the filmmaker

In the video-art medium, I work with dancers to create abstract sculptural forms that evolve over time. Drawing on the processes of various sculptors, specifically those who exploit the physical potential of a single material, I work to create an intricate mass that transcends the recognition of an individual body. To investigate this potential, the living sculpture is set up to respond to a dynamic range of conditions beyond its control, much in the way that weather patterns shift geological formations. Both planned and improvised variations of light placement, lens choice, camera angle, camera movement, and the dancers' dynamics are tools used to stimulate this process. Both intended and unforeseen images materialize out of this variation of circumstances. I leave enough of an opening just past my control so that the structures combined with the circumstances can deliver more than what I have pre-conceived; something I have never seen before.