Submitted by Nikyta Palmisani
How has this year of pandemic been for you? What inner explorations have you traversed? What outer explorations of our planet have you traveled without ever leaving your home, mediated by screens?
From 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, come to the Lopez Village Park to see Space Lotus, an interactive performance piece that seeks to explore these questions about our collective experience of this long year.
The Space Lotus is a performance piece that speaks to our collective experience of isolation to mark a full year of Pandemic lockdown. It features Nikyta Palmisani, who is a performance artist and yoga and mindfulness instructor, in a durational performance piece done inside a 4-foot by 4-foot transparent cube made from wood and plexiglass. The transparent box is a symbol that speaks to many people’s experience of life suddenly restricted to the four walls of our own homes. The other two metaphors included in the piece are of inner and out space exploration.
Palmisani has a background in mental health and was constantly wondering how to better help build resilience during the Pandemic for so many struggling with the sudden isolation. She researched two primary groups who have developed working practices for internal self-regulation within isolated environments: astronauts and monks/monastics/yogis. These form the symbolic exploration of the piece: what has been our experiences of inner and outer space during the pandemic? Palmisani will have a livestream through zoom where folks from all over the world can participate in facilitated conversations about these explorations.
During the performance, Palmisani will spend 1.75 hours at a time in each of these two domains: The Lotus, in practices and conversations about mindfulness and our inner experience of the pandemic, and Space: as an astronaut, who spends all of their waking life mediated by screens that connect the small space capsule to the rest of the Earth through virtual spaces of socialization, work, exercise, and dialogue.
Audiences are invited to view and interact with Palmisani in person the day of the event through the COVID safe medium of the transparent cube, or to join the livestream conversations via Zoom. To learn more about Palmisani and this work, visit the calendar on www.nikytapalmisani.com.
