decompressed | 2004

Waiting. A lightness comes with the difficulty to move. A lightness comes with floating away. Contradictions and dualities: I’m lost and life continues. Familiarity: A déjà vu is untouchable. It is something familiar evoked inside of us but we cannot say what it is. It is extremely precise yet it remains lost. The feeling is present but it remains absent. We cannot define it. If we cannot define it then is it present or in fact absent? Does it exist at all? Echoes and details aim to reinforce its presence, but despite all the efforts a déjà vu fades away.

Research movement that crosses into a range of familiarity and displace it from its natural context. Integrate qualities associated with an object (a plastic blow-up chair) into the body to make movement familiar but not recognizable. The body becomes self-less.



Blow-up chairs: Plastic blow-up chairs have a certain malleability, supportiveness, firmness, fragility, squeeze-ability, lightness and weight that dictate a certain rhythm, speed, and quality of movement. Transpose that which is evoked by the object into movement. Make the body and the object inseparable. The object is an interactive body on stage. How can the body and an object co-exist? When are the objects essential and not just décor? The chair takes on a personage whereas the “self” of the performer disappears. The chair “eats” the human while the person “wears” the chair.

Details: The details of reality are enlarged by means of live video projections. It is the performance enlarged. There is a closeness that is not physical. It is a closeness that maintains a sense of absence. Familiar movements and the presence of the real space and performers are captured, projected and repeated by video. However we don’t come any closer to defining it. Only its absence is reconfirmed.

Disposition - the room next door: Treat video projection as an expansion of the space that we are in. A parallel and non-anecdotal memory lies in a virtual space next door. We see the activities but in fact it is only an echo, a mirror image of what happens in the room that we are in. Different spaces both virtual and real offer different perspectives to view the same performance. The spectator chooses how to view the work. View the presence or view the absence.

Limitations: Examine the communication or exchange at the boundaries of limitations as opposed to what lies within each limitation. Limitations of integrating an object with the body. How does one pass from self to self-less and back again? Limitations of the video capture frame containing the performers and chairs. How does one pass from real to virtual space and back again?


Decompressed began as a research occurring over three consecutive summers. From August 2004 until its presentation in November 2004, the working process included informal showings each week, with the goal of maintaining a critical exchange.

With Waste Paper Basket, the previous piece of Michel Yang/Gross Details, Michel explored essential improvisation skills such as rhythm, dynamics, and group awareness while remaining mindful of the public at the receiving end. These skills became the key tools used to communicate between different disciplines: dance, music, and video. The project Decompressed continued to explore this form of communication between disciplines, in particular between dance and video.

concept :
Katrien Vandergooten, Michel Yang
performance :
Michel Yang
audio/visual :
Arnaud Meuleman
lights :
Christoph Ragg
production :
Gross Details
co-production :
Nadine, WP Zimmer, frogs OS, Kunst/Werk
support :
Summerstudios, WP Zimmer, frogs OS, Kunst/Werk, Netwerk / center for contemporary art