Artist of mixed-media installations
Scriptwriter, Animatronics Designer
www.esmeewitsel.com
@TheRealEsmaniac
esmee.witsel@gmail.com
Arms, Legs
Putting on paint overalls
Fingers tying shoelaces
Shoes once yellow, stained sticky
The wax manufacturing plant glooms with dissonder
Dissonder is a mixed-media installation centered around a wax factory and one of its workers. Layer by layer, their body is repurposed for labour. Now, echoes of a factory continue to drive them. Memories seep into wax, and whilst the individual becomes its surroundings, the world becomes dissonder.
About Dissonder
Dutch writer Hella Haasse writes: History is immortal, as it takes shape of all that moves. What has “really” been, will be “reality”, always.” Our past supposedly grows next to ourselves. But what happens when a circumstance leaves our past frozen?
The installation invites the audience to experience a pivotal event not ordered by time, but ordered by which the events are relived through. We step into a mind that is trying to make sense of what is happening, and see here, the role that the imaginative and associative mind takes when doing so.
Wax is temporary and sticks all at the same time. It is malleable, and even when it melts away, it leaves something behind.
