As an artist, I need to rest is a very intimate piece, an exhausting performance in which I emphasize the creation of my own work in front of the public over time.
I’m lying still in fetal position on the floor of the exhibition space; I’m exhaling through a long cable, which departs (with a thermistor) from inside my left nostril and it ends at the center of the main screen, suspended from the floor.
My work, a digital creature which I call feather, is entirely generated and brought to different states of being from my exhaling into it, constantly and cumulatively over time. Also the range of the carbon dioxide levels in the exhibition space is monitored and revealed by the feather, which might lose the initial range of colors, heading towards black in case of higher concentrations in the air. During the performance one can hear the fatigued sound of my respiration over time.
Being in control of my own work through my breath, I need to rest to find a symbiosis between me and my work towards a single unit, the piece. A psychological and bodily stamina is needed to fight against the risk of hyperventilation, in which I might find myself breathing consciously deeper or faster to control the behaviors of my digital creature. In this piece, breath, as the giver of life, represents keeping each other alive, a metaphor of interdependence between the artist and his own creation.