EIGHT CHAPTERS IN FOUR MOVEMENTS

Eight Chapters in Four Movements is a performance transposed into video. London Bridge is crossed every morning at the same time by thousands of commuters forming a river moving unidirectionally South to North. The scene is iconic and has been impressed many times in the news, films, documentaries, lullabies and poetry. The artists Teresa Cos observed for some time this phenomenon and calculated with rough mathematics the average pace of the commuters, which resulted of 113 BPM. She decided to impersonate this rhythm, walking robotically in the crowd following the beat of a metronome, but developing four movements that engage and disrupt the linear conception of time embodied by the flow. The movements are intended as four different stages of a ritual and are repeated constantly from 8am to 9am. The performance was documented in first person with an unnoticeable video device fixed to her chest and the entire filmed footage is shown uncut in a life-size video installation. The work is accompanied by a sound piece consisting of the key words of Henri Lefebvre’s ‘Rythmanalysis’, spoken continuosly for one hour at 113 BPM and it includes fragments of music mixed with ambience sounds, as well as references to Steve Reich’s ‘Clapping Music’. The recorded action and soundtrack are phased and only synchronise at the video’s start and end.