The dancer and therapist Julia Cima performs her third and final ritual within the exhibition “The end is in the beginning and yet we go on”.

Within the exhibition devoted to the five senses, the designer and researcher Jeanne Vicérial joins forces with the dancer and fasciatherapist Julia Cima to reinterpret movement and vulnerability in a dedicated installation called “Athanor”.

We discover a sculpture in progress which takes shape until the end of the exhibition thanks to a collaborative robot (cobot), which knits and weaves on a mannequin in rotation on itself. It is a body, a presence that is gradually created with its epidermis, its muscle fibers and the joints that bind them. The weaving echoes Julia Cima’s work on fascia (fibro-elastic membranes that envelop an anatomical structure) and fasciatherapy, a manual therapy based on touch and the ability of the hands to feel the micro-movements of the body.

The progress of the black thread on the white skeleton responds to the movements of the dancer Julia Cima who comes to dialogue with this organic fabric, on the occasion of moments that she calls “rituals” and which integrate the notions of consciousness, presence, attention, listening, availability, letting go, commitment and trust.

For this third and last ritual, after “this is my body”, and “this is my spirit”, Julia invokes the soul for its ability to connect. In “this is my soul”, she invites each soul to recognize itself with sincerity and vulnerability.

Let’s bear in mind that the name “Athanor” refers to the alchemical oven which was originally intended to transmute basic metals, in particular lead, into noble metals: silver and gold through three techniques: distillation, sublimation and alchemical digestion. The subject of experimentation is therefore the individual himself: his body, his psyche, his consciousness.

The work of the alchemist on himself is done internally, no one can intervene for him, no answer can come from outside. It is an intimate process, a slow maturation that allows one to pass from adeluded man to a free man, from a rough stone to a philosopher’s stone without any addition or disappearance of substance. Unfortunately, no alchemist has succeeded in transforming lead into gold. However, we should not conclude that alchemy has failed, nor that the Athanor is nonsense. Indeed, the experiments of the Renaissance alchemists concealed another objective : the transformation of the alchemist himself.

Installation developped in partnership with the company Ingéliance for robotic engineering.