Making a cinematographic experience without a camera or a screen:

 

Teresa Brennan talks of “transmission”, "what to feel the atmosphere is. Can we receive all the anxiety and psychological burden from a specific space in conjunction with a reenacted event? Are we bodily changed? Can the “atmosphere” literally transmit into the individual?. ̈

Teresa Brennan, The Transmission of Affect, ed. Cornell University Press, 2004. pp.1. The Transmission of Affect deals with the belief that the emotions and energies of one person or group can be absorbed by or can enter directly into another.

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The performance took place during the exhibition event at the art residency Hospitalfield in Arbroath, Scotland. While the public was going through the program, the artist would discreetly invite one visitor to “escape” the situation, put on a pair of headphones to listen to a recorded soundtrack, and join the planned/scripted way out. The journey (from Hospitalfield to the beach, 6min +way back, 15min) is formed of three very distinguished scenarios:

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Hospitalfield: included a summary of some of the most picturesque rooms of the building, exiting through a back door and followed by a run-out through the gardens of the complex until one of the walls (2 m high) that confine the facilities of the Residency.

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Empty Field: The previous stone fence led to a vast empty ready to be seeded field. This vacuum space would have to be run by the artist and the companion still while listening to the recorded soundtrack. On the other side of the field, again another wall (very similar to the previous one) that had to be climbed. After reaching the other side, the person could finally remove the headphones.
 

Camping: it consisted of rows of PVC bungalows. In this part, both people could finally walk calmly alongside the plastified houses until their exit to road. On the other side of the road, the beach was waiting.

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Beach: final destination. After arriving at the shore, the spectator could decide what to do, when  and how to come back.

(one to one performance, 4h30min in total, 20-30min per viewer)

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No documentation was allowed by the artist.

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