It is reasonable to situate the world on the verge of sense and NON-sense You go round and round and then you stop and you fall to the ground What is deader than dead? (Ligia Lewis)

Originally conceived in 2020 for the Hammer Museum, the creation of this piece began with an intrigue-based inquiry into deadpan, an impassive mannerism deployed in comedic fashion to illustrate emotional distance. Utilizing this expression as a type of stasis, Lewis developed a film that plays on loop, presented online and in exhibition spaces.

The newly developed live version, which was last seen in Mexico and Luxembourg now has three performers. In this new performance the dancers use Macbeth’s culminating soliloquy (‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,’ a reflection on repetition and meaninglessness) as the beginning of a work that unfolds in modular parts, each one an illustration or parody of death, stasis and the void, each one tied to its own carefully selected soundtrack or sample.

The work is full of play but is also a meditation on ‘playing,’ or acting, as well as on tragedy’s recurring cycles and familiarity within Black experience. Also presented as a meditation on touch as an act of both care and violence. The work is built in the form of a musical lament, a protracted complaint on loop performed ad infinitum, decomposing itself along the way.