MAREAL

2011 UNFOLD – Performative Envelope Piece
Work in Progress
Juliana Herrero: Motion’s Form | Ivana Reyero: Form’s Motion

Statement | Progression

During the performance, we incorporated an audio excerpt of a text by Jacques Derrida, sourced from YouTube (found footage), referencing The Monolingualism of the Other. Derrida, born in El Biar and raised in Algeria, then a French colony, spoke a mother tongue that was neither entirely his own nor simply an adopted language. His reflections on fractured identity and deferred belonging resonate with the piece’s exploration of temperament — shifting between calm and wild — and the fluid nature of transformation.

Dance, in this work, unfolds space as an envelope of mutable self-reflections, where movement becomes a language beyond speech. Forms emerge, dissolve, resemble, and differentiate — their meanings shaped through what they are not, and constantly deferred toward other possibilities. The piece deconstructs traditional boundaries between mind and body, treating thought and movement not as separate realms but as entangled, co-creating forces.

An ethereal structure frames this interplay: a large triangulated foil mirror surface, assembled with varying densities across its triangulation. Beautifully articulated and held together with tape, this reflective skin becomes a living envelope — a shifting architecture within which the body interacts with its material counterparts: sculptural forms, fabric, inert matter. Within this glimmering, folding space, the dance weaves its magic — folding and unfolding itself into transient configurations of difference and resonance.

Concept / Idea: Juliana Herrero