Lay Down In Rest is a photographic installation created for the Cultural Olympiad 2024 at CENTQUATRE PARIS.
Here, the artist highlights the relationship between learning and assimilating movement through the practice of stillness. Whether in dance or daily gestures, muscle tension alone is not enough to initiate movement: to move, for example, an arm extended horizontally, one must first release the tension. It is this release that allows the arm to extend again.
Movement, which has no foundation other than the body, arises from the oscillation between tension and relaxation. Lying down, or offering one of the body's two sides—front or back—to another surface, represents a state where the center of gravity reaches its maximum stability; it is also the most fundamental state of relaxation, as the body completely surrenders to gravity. In this state, even the slightest movement of a body part—be it a foot, arm, or head—creates tension, and when it is released, one can understand how much the body is subject to gravity, and how each part has weight.
The scene is the horizontal plane that appeared when humans stood upright and began walking on two legs, discovering verticality; it is the archetype of horizontality encountered everywhere in life. It is the seat where, through the contact of our feet, we engage in a dialogue with gravity.
LDIR also references protest movements through stillness called Lie-Ins and the refusal to support the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in the context of ecological, economic, and societal issues. Elea Jeanne Schmitter, continuing her work on the invisibilization of women, also presents a rare scene of a woman at rest—peaceful.
