PHASES

PHASES is the Diplomproject from Kendy Garcia. Garcia seeks to challenge the perception of women in strength sports with a multichannel video installation which displays four woman performing the olympic weightlifting movement of the Snatch. In one side of the room stand the women side by side in an orchestration of strength, speed, power and concentration. On the other side one can see five reflections. These showcase a reflection on the state of mind of the athlete, emphasizing that the movement is not generated by the body, but by the mind that fluctuates between ambivalent thoughts. ""To perform a Snatch one needs to follow a sequence of movements that together generate the power to pull a barbell from the floor to overhead in less than one second. As well as the body, the mind of an athlete oscillates between thoughts, it goes through its own phases during every training, every day, inside and outside of the gym. It fluctuates between thoughts of glory and the shadow of failure. We often describe periods of our lives or choices as phases, ripping them off of their validity. As if a phase wasn’t something authentic, as if a phase didn’t deserve acknowledgement, as if a phase was defined solely by its ephemeral condition, as if a phase didn’t embody the present that you breathe in and the heartbeat that you feel. Will you keep masking your reality as a phase?""