On What Cannot Be Escaped
Matilde Baldassari
On What Cannot Be Escaped is an installation resulting from my research around the bodily condition.
More specifically, this exploration treats the inescapable condition of the human body on a personal, as
well as on a relational level. To this end, the installation comprises of an orthopaedic corset tightened and
tensed through a series of metal wires.
On What Cannot Be Escaped is suspended between the notions of Spannung, tension, Anspannung,
increase in tension, or to tend, and Entspannung, loosening of tension. This linguistic as well as conceptual
understanding, finds its reciprocal in the element of the orthopaedic corset.
Developed under the guidance of orthopaedic technicians, the orthopaedic corset suggests the presence of
an anatomically anomalous figure. Neither can its shape be clearly reconnected to the presence of one, nor
of two separate bodies. Additionally, the orthopaedic corset appears open and emptied out: the corporeal
presence is subtracted, leaving the speculative room around its subject completely open. Within the
installation the corset is intended as an empty withholder, a restrictive container, whose confined host has
escaped, left, or was evacuated.
Within this concurrent condition of corporeal absence, and yet residual presence implied by the aid, the
corset finds itself in a state of suspense: in tension.
It is ultimately through this status of constant tension, increase in tension, and loosening of tension, that
the inescapable condition of the human body is explored.
