How Far Can We Stretch
performance with Icaro López de Meza
2025 Zentrum für Kunst, Bremen
the way my body inhabits space and relates to other bodies generates new perspectives about human relationships. I begin to understand –by the development of my artworks and the continuous conversations among my peers– the possible differences, new perspectives, ideas, the encounters and misunderstandings between identities or people who are rethinking their sense of self. In this context, migration becomes one of the forces that destabilise and redefine the bases of relationships, and the body, the vehicle that is always there, trying to transport, cope with, or adapt to these new bases.
many of these situations cause the body to feel frustrated and exhausted. For example, the desire to be understood when exchanging ideas and the underlying emotions that arise when this is not achieved. We can try it –like the rubber band: stretching and pulling back– many times until we reach the point of exhaustion, if we don’t manage to do it.
I have realized, too, that at that stage, the impulse to retreat toward what feels familiar, toward spaces where we feel in control, becomes stronger. In doing so, we avoid the abyss of the unknown, which is often less about the external world and more about an internal confrontation. Thus, among the countless ways in which we can mutate and deconstruct ourselves –stretch, contract, and expand– in order to belong or to connect with something, there is also the possibility of becoming entangled. If these movements are not performed with the necessary emotional awareness, an entanglement of thoughts or feelings can form within ourselves or between the people involved.
The elastic band is a metaphor through its own materiality: its expansive quality allows it to stretch only through an external force, applied here by two human bodies.
Beyond interpersonal relationships, there are also contexts and displacements that force us to expand beyond what is desired or familiar. Migration, for example, makes this process of expansion inevitable, affecting the body, language, relationships, and the way we inhabit the world.
How far are we able to expand or mutate under external forces? Where does the limit of maximum stretch begin? How long can we keep that tension or entanglement? Or do we allow the elastic to break?
Thanks to the amazing Icaro Lopez @nenedelsolar, who helped me develop and perform this piece.
This performance was part of the Kein Signal performance series at Zentrum für Künste, Bremen, June 2025.
Photos by Jimi Liu (ig @jimiliu_)
Videos by Alethia Pinzón-Rodrigues (ig @hyperrealitysucks)