Horizons is an embodied poetry piece centering on the frailty and joy of the human body on the concrete backdrop of New York City. This piece captures the right to privacy and contemplation through unscripted movement (to dance as if no one were there). It sheds light on the rarity of those moments where one is “left but a little to themselves,” in the words of Othello. Reclaiming privacy in a public space is a dialogue with the role of technology in mediating our experience of reality today. Privacy and leisure are no longer to be taken for granted when every moment of our attention can be co-opted as a financial resource by technologies we use daily.
The point of performing privacy in the middle of the constant barrage of stimuli that is a 21st-century megacity is to open a window into Other ways of being, other ways of existing as a human in an urban habitat.
“Machines may fuel our minds, but they will never feed our bodies.” — David Abrams.
Directed and shot by Donaldo Prescod.Written and performed by Sofia Kavlin.Original music by Noah Franche-Nolan.Edited by Jalen Jackson.
Horizons
I had never been entirely sure what a horizon was - One of those vague words that hangs over our heads; And somehow touches the softness of being human.
Perhaps horizons are deliberately liminal; The gap between the thighs of the earth, Where water drips through stone and breath, Makes itself known to being.
They say that all that has sap has singing, And so this wandering blood must sing working songs, To paint blue skies on jail walls and still find rhythm in broken drums, For the promise of nature, Is that after winter, Spring always comes.
My blood will leave maps for those still unborn, To weave threads of moon-tangled yarn, Finding their way out of a labyrinth of our own making.
We have looked up for guidance, Since before time had a name, Finding north through scattered stars: A game, That shaped the fate of navigation, And whose song passed down myth, To this and then the next generation.
We will summon home like an incantation, Raising Souls from their dwelling place, Where space touches matter and breath is born, Where we brace ourselves for Culture’s scorn: For we dare blow on joy’s dimming embers, Where universal laws efface to drive this Grid, Back into the ground where it came from, Once again turning time horizontal, In relation to sound, (And space.)
Positionality
This is an embodied archive,
This body was born into metaphor,
And it was meant to move.
I am meant to move like my life depends on it.
Because it does.
It always has.
The loose threads that make up my being only come together because those who came before dared to move. Someone lit fire to Santa Rosa de Izcanal, and they set the old match factory ablaze, so we got in boats, and we got in planes. We learned new words, new metaphors, the air grew thinner, and our lungs grew bigger. We adapted. We fled to find ourselves, and then, we passed our tongues over the taste of new slang.
Yo nunca fui de aquí,
Pero tú tampoco.
I’m starting to understand nakedness as a feeling:
Over half of me is water, so the stories that mold me, Like the blood running through me, spill into restless ribs and can only be divided with centrifugal force.
Life is metaphor alongside sensation,
and I’ve become the archetype of myself —
Something like but not quite real.
An amalgam of the little things that shape me,A fractal collection that someday would be,
My Life.
Life is made of the same raw material: time set in motion wholly intractable and ethereal. And somewhere in that perplexity must be Art.
I nestled on a crescent moon, on a bottomless night to shed small pieces of self;
The hair and the nail clippings,
the dead skin,
and the sweat dripping off my forehead,
and onto the land that birthed me,
and the one that raised me.
Meanwhile, I vow to dance and fall, and dance and fall, and dance wildly with abandon.
I lived a whole year without a bra during the global pandemic. Everything seemed looser that year. My hopes hazy. My sense of purpose paused. It was a sandy year, spent growing green things in the desert, and laying in the sun, sticky and braless in the golden sand.
I have no regrets, only lessons.
But oh, to be a stone, oblivious to the passing of time; Forgetting to take stock of it, it’s a curious thought to entertain. A life without experience.
But I am so excitable and take note of every desire:
Like this dance adorned with lunges, panting, stomping.
Sounds the body makes when it yields,
to gravity, lunacy, pleasure, and decay.
Meanwhile, I’ll smear the sun on my chest like war paint,
And I’ll let the light drip off branches like syrup,
And I’ll wear my red dress and spin myself dizzy,
And lay down by the oceanside,
Watching the crow fly north,
To plant a single seed,Of knowing in the soil,
Of self.
We remember in rhythm.