The performance area was spare: A wide roll of gray paper created a backing against one wall of the studio. The paper draped down and rolled out to cover a space on the floor. Additional pieces of white paper were cut and placed on the wall, forging layered, linear segments that ran horizontal and vertical, with an additional smaller sheet positioned just off of center and flush with the floor. The affect was geometric; the perpendicularity (floor to wall/horizontal to vertical) evoked the fundamental bearings of three-dimensional alignment (up/down, left/right, forward/back).

Maurer took her place in the chair and initiated a series of "test" activities. She pushed the balls of her feet into the ground, forcing the chair to lift back on a hinge. The slight angle, with the chair tilted back, already created a vector, implying a widening division of space where none had been. She held her arms out to the side to check balance. She stretched her arms in front of her, attempting to touch the card table that was just out of reach. She then stood up to rearrange the table and chair in alignment with the wall. With a roll of tape, she fastened a few sheets of writing paper and some pencils to the tabletop.

The first of several short videos was projected against the wall above her. Stop motion photography showed a representation of Maurer, in the same outfit, circumnavigating the four sides of a white room, her body skipping forward with each frame, seeming to defy gravity. You then realize that she is being filmed from above, and that what appeared to be the floor, ceiling, and two side walls of a white room, are really a white floor that Maurer is lying on.

After this, Maurer stood, as if giving a lecture, and announced her "theory:

"A: Is. R: Edge. M: Mine. D: State of mine. E: If. N is not D."

She also repeated certain words. Of course, this is all a syntactic play on associations. The letters that she announces are all found in her name, and the words she associates with each letter create new relationships, much like the leaning back of the chair, that seem to force wedges between our conventional linguistic associations. Your mind is challenged to reorganize around the new syntax, or, to reorient.

Again, Maurer rearranged the space, picking up the table-with the paper and pencils still clinging to its surface-and attempting to hook its legs over some invisible fishing line that was attached to the ceiling. But, after several tries, Maurer gave up, and instead, simply leaned the table at a twisted angle to the wall. After doing so, she began to describe a space. "The box has five meeting edges," she continued, speaking and gesturing with her hands, to invent a purely abstract space that our minds jump to imagine: mental space.

After this, she squatted against the small sheet of paper, tucking her feet behind the roll, and let her arms stick to the wall above her. Another video played, this time in three columns, showing Maurer's body bouncing up and down in canon.

In a final section, she pushed the roll of paper away from the wall. There were outlines in pen of a body all along the paper. Maurer lay over them, took out a pen, and began to trace her body in various positions, leaving more contradictory accounts of her physical shape. When she had done this, she rolled onto her side and used her muscular memory to make her body rigid, as if she were standing. Then again, she molded her shape to appear as if she were sitting in a chair.

This culminating image - an upright chair, a tilted table against the wall, Maurer on her side - summarized the skill with which Maurer and Brandstaetter defamiliarize situations, to question orientation and perception. Through simple juxtapositions of alignment, suddenly three or four spatial realities coexisted in the space. And one realizes the freedom to see from a new perspective-for example, suddenly imagining that a body is, in fact, stuck to the side of the earth; not standing on top of it-and that one can play more active roles in determining that orientation, to see more than ever imagined, even in a little studio in Brooklyn.

In a final video, the photographic image of Maurer's nimbly moving body dissolves into black lines, like the pen drawings on the roll of paper. Eventually, it curls up, and mischievously finds its way out of a hole in the paper.

With such modest means, Maurer and Brandstaetter were able to present complex experiences.

Essay by Ryan Tracy
Photos by Chris Woltmann

Lise Vachon created "Bliss" in conjunction with Chez Bushwick's "FORCE MAJEURE" program, which is designed to foster international dialogue in dance and performance by offering residencies to artists from around the world.  These residencies, which will be fulfilled from September 2007 through May 2008, culminate in free public presentations of the work created by the artists-in-residence.  Lise Vachon's performance was presented on Saturday, November 3 at Chez Bushwick in Brookyn. The production is co-produced by Compagnie Michèle Noiret/Brussels and Chez Bushwick.

You hear footsteps swishing across the floor. Lithe, hurried swipes, then nothing.  Then they start up again. The dense darkness before you is the smallish studio space of Chez Bushwick. You believe the moving person must be choreographer Lise Vachon, but you can't tell for lack of light. Then you hear a woman's voice speak.

This is "Bliss," Ms. Vachon's work in progress presented as part of Chez Bushwick's artist-in-residence program, FORCE MAJEURE.  This, the second of nine residencies, brought Ms. Vachon and her collaborators from Brussels to Brooklyn for four weeks; just enough time to figure out your surroundings, find your materials, and present work.

To say "Bliss" is about light isn't entirely accurate. The work is more about controlling light-designed and directed by Arnaud Gerniers and Benjamin van Thiel-and allowing our reliance on illumination, and the crisis that occurs when light is in limited supply, to shape our experience.  For when you first hear the swishing sounds through the darkness, even without sight of eye, you glean certain information just from listening. You can tell there is, mostly likely, a person making that sound; a biped.  You can also guess the general weight and size of the body.  You can also determine from where in the room the sound is coming.  So when the sounds move from left to right, you can follow them, and your mind triangulates the position and gives you a three-dimensional awareness of space.