MODE SIRENS & THE HIDDEN ENTITY
My name is JC Candanedo, UK-based Queer and Migrant Visual Artist. In early 2022, I was approached by my long-time friend and collaborator Max Gershon to work on a multidisciplinary project that he had been putting together in his mind for a while. The concept involved combining dance with visual art to explore vulnerability, sense of loss, breakdown, separation, rebirth and reparation. Max wanted to create a performative art presentation inspired by the collection of Mode Sirens by artist Shane Bradford, who uses paint and pigment on canvases that he then tears and repairs, creating slits, holes and apertures that are like wounds that are continuously opened and healed. With this, he explores the relationship between the error and the repair.
For a long time before Max approached me, I had been trying to create images that told stories outside of the boundaries imposed by the photographic medium. Photography had started to become limiting because when we take photos, we freeze the moment and tell only the part of the story that fits within the borders of the frame. After our conversation, I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to continue this exploration of how to create images by breaking away from the constrictions of photography.
The performative piece that Max suggested would take place at a disused building in South London, a former publisher and book works that had served as Shane Bradford’s studio for a decade and was due for redevelopment at the end of that year. There was imminent pressure to produce this work before the building disappeared forever.
My first instinct was to familiarise myself with the building where the performance would take place since I hadn't seen the space nor Shane Bradford's work. After meeting the artist and his beautiful paintings, Max and I planned a session to get acquainted with the building. During the planning phase, we also discussed the current state of humanity and how millions of displaced people roam the planet in search of a safer place to call home. While the countries that became richer by exploiting their regions of origin now shut their borders on them.
This conversation brought ideas of restriction of movement and displacement. And with these ideas in mind, Max explored the surface of the building with his body, creating movement that responded to the textures and shapes of the space. I followed him with my camera, reacting to his every move while documenting our surroundings image by image. At the end of that day, we created a body of work that I entitled Migration which highlights the difficulties faced by anyone who finds themselves in a situation where they are forced out of their countries, only to find borders shut in front of them as they try to seek refuge in a new land.
Migration helped shape the ideas that we had about the performative piece. The resulting performance would be created out of shapes that the dancers would create with their bodies responding to the different concepts that we were exploring. They would all perform these shapes constrained within a small area that would make the whole piece look like a living sculpture. With this in mind, Max put together a group of very talented young dancers from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance of the University of Greenwich: The Ensemble Project.
Over the course of a month, I met with the dancers one by one and we talked about the ideas that inspired the work. I gave each of the dancers a series of keywords and prompts taken from my conversations with Max. In turn, each dancer had to create shapes with their bodies that responded to the ideas that I was presenting. And once all these shapes were selected, Max proceeded to put them all together in one single performative piece inspired by the impending demolition of the building. The resulting piece highlighted how our communities and our history are being eroded by the new structures of capital, as they are made invisible and obscured by the rapid redevelopment of our cities.
The presentation of Shane Bradford's collection of Mode Sirens, of my photography work entitled Migration and of the performative piece that Max and I created which we called The Hidden Entity, took place on May 7, 2022, in front of approximately 150 people.