Here's what intrigued me: The surreality of the room; devoid of personal artifacts but wired to the max. The wall of mysterious doors, with wires snaking out of the middle. Brought to mind an artist, Gerald Guthrie, who is here at UIUC in Art and Design. He creates environments that suggest the everyday and the weirdly otherworldly simultaneously. One wonders what is around the corner. At one point you are clipped to calipers that make you part of the 'wired' world; at another you are tethered temporarily to the blind cords, another kind of wiring. The siren sounds; is something going by outside? For a moment we think about the outside space. The obliquely-projected film on the angled screen in the closet is deliciously inviting.....we recognize movement, black and white shapes changing, and it is another unknown....but satisfyingly so. The frames are more about spatial arrangement than movement; even though they jiggle with the sound. The movement is very subtle.You are close to us but you are alone. We witness your snaky emergence from the closet, a birth of sorts. Your fingers. We see too much of you, and too little of you at the same time. It is a harsh, stark place.

I didn't know where to look, as the intimate space and the ubiquitous technology caught me up in the piece, so I felt cornered myself (I literally was sitting in the corner) and desired to ease open the door and slither my way free from enclosure, only to find that I'm caught up in the wired world, surrounded by screens, even in the other secret closets. There was no place for escape, so best to crawl back into the cupboard of my mind, the top shelf where it's dark and quiet (safe?), and close the door behind me.
I lived the piece that way, experienced the birthing, the mobility, the jolting electric world, the framing of all reality in multiple shuddering rectangles, wailing sirens and threatened by pulses in the background, and watching/being watched all the time. Only sleep, and utter aloneness, offers respite, but that is a known illusion, as the relentless connectivity (human and technological) is inescapable, is part of my being, defines me and confines me, and so I long for true freedom, freedom from others, from the technological framing, from desire itself, and then find this longing itself is my desire and I'm trapped, caught in the perpetual cycle of opening the doors, emerging into the world, wiring myself to the wall, and so on, trapped on the wheel of perpetual longing, fear, interaction, escape, motion, rest, flickering images, shivering frames of reality, and so can only find comfort in that connection to the dancer, to the dance, to the audience. Love it, Hallie. Thank you for your wonderful rhizome!