An impossible wardrobe for the invisible - 2011

A research project based on an experimental approach in which the outcomes of all the actions are not foreseen (as in John Cage's notion of the term). Each piece is unique and can’t be repeated. Lara Torres presents the recordings/documentation of seven performances in a video installation. These films are based on the creation of temporary clothes that are produced with the aim of being destroyed. They refer to the loss of the object and the documentation of this loss. The action of effacing the clothes leaves a trace (the seams) translating a strong relation with memory and forgetfulness.

The process of disappearance is a design process in itself, leaving sometimes only a drawing on the performer’s bodies, the ‘skeleton’ of a particular garment. The lines of the seams against the performer’s body induce a sense of the private, a feeling of loss that is very intimate. Water is also a ‘designer’ here; water will change shapes and produce the final result. Water has a central place in the practices and beliefs of many religions, water does not only purify objects for ritual use but can make a person clean, externally or spiritually. In each of the situations filmed there is a performer, who becomes an archetypal character that the audience can relate to when watching each film. The clothes worn make him/her an identifiable character. When he/she wears his/hers outfits, he turns into the businessman or any other familiar character that has crossed our daily path, so he becomes a mirror image: a recognisable self projected in a film, bringing to the wearer the consciousness of his own mortality by using design processes that translate the mechanisms of memory into film as a way of communicating these concerns. The interpreters contributed to the collaborative nature of the project, creating the need for establishing a connection between the people and sequences filmed. The result of the films would depend on the collaboration of Pedro Fortes who was filming, and co-editing with me and the team of performers giving their contribution to each film, in the end this relates to a collaborative authorship between me, the co-direction of Pedro and the intervention of water that was decisive for all end results. As in all film practice, it is collaborative by its nature. The films are based on the creation of temporary clothes that are produced with the aim of being destroyed; leaving only the ‘memory’ of the pieces in film documentation relates to the ephemeral nature of fashion and is also a metaphor for the quickness of the fashion processes today.