The Mourner of Buried Days
2 hours, Durational Performance, Created within Black Box Theory.
Blood of my Blood,
Flesh of my Flesh.
Here, I meet you.
The performance action is: Conjure the Father Ancestor through shared bloodline, wash the body, re-bury the body.
The Mourner of Buried Days is a live performance offering a private, reimagined response to the traditional public burial of Kin.
How do we physically meet with our kin after they have passed?
Blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. Our lost kin, reside within us.
Symbolically materialising lost kin through shared blood lines, Ida Sophia gently extracts a psychological materialisation of her deceased Father. Moving through actions of transitioning objects from his life to death, Ida Sophia re-buries her Father in an intimate ceremony.
Performed within Black Box Theory, Ida Sophia invited participants to observe, emphasising the social dynamic of shared and individual grief rites.
Black Box Theory, Arthur Art Bar, South Australian Living Artists Festival, 2020
Black Box Theory - Live Performance Art Site Model
Black Box Theory is a live performance art site model that offers an engaging participatory experience, with a twist.
Think, Schrödinger's cat meets Polaroid.
Developed by Ida Sophia as a response to participatory art and physical distancing, Ida’s model embodies meaningful connectivity with participators, resulting in an experimental co-created work.
Black Box Theory is a term used to describe “a thing that has no immediately apparent characteristics and therefore has only factors for consideration held within itself, hidden from immediate observation.” (A General Black Box Theory, Mario Bunge, 1963)
At 2m X 2m X 2.4m, Black Box Theory is tall and offers no windows. An Instax Fujifilm camera lens is the sole eye on the performance inside, offering the only way to observe it. As Ida Sophia performs, the outside participant/co-creator is instructed to feel the moment and take an image. The photographs are the only record of the performance.