Everything brings us back to the body

‘Everything brings us back to the body’, wrote the philosopher Achille Mbembe in response to the first corona lockdowns. He emphasised the vulnerability of the body and how all living beings are connected through their physical existence. That same year, Ehsan Hemat began making this performance, in which he dances with an eighteen-kilogram copper plate.

Hemat also draws inspiration from the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi and the Gaia theory, which views the earth as a self-regulating system where all living and non-living elements work together. Hemat uses these ideas to play with reflection and echo. The result is a performance in which human and object dance together as equals, but also a story about exploitation, environmental damage, and the right to breathe freely.