Fishing the Sun
Curated by Prisca Meslier, with Dumé Marcellesi & Basile Isitt | Dance: Maeva Lassere | Music: Tom Chiapplone
Presented by De Renava | At Centre Pompidou, Atelier Brancusi, 2025
How do we perceive the infinite in the finite, the spiritual in the material, and the whole in the individual?
Fishing the Sun is a resonant field mediated by water, light, frequency, and vibration—a ritualistic interaction connecting the resonance of the Earth, the rhythm of the Sun, and human perception. It builds a pathway between the visible world and the invisible cosmic order, inviting the viewer into a resonance that is deeper and grander than the Earth.
The audience’s experience begins at 7.83 Hz (Earth’s resonance / meditation frequency). As the vibration of the water spreads, they gradually enter the “primordial rhythm” of the Sun’s high-frequency pulsating light (600 THz), moving from low-frequency resonance to high-frequency awakening, and completing the leap in consciousness.
In this process, light waves are transformed into pulsating, data-based, structured energy experiences, and water becomes the medium for light energy propagation. Light and shadow spread, project, and synchronously manifest on the water surface and throughout the space, creating a dynamic perceptual field in constant flux.
The fluctuation of water, the leap of light, and the resonance of frequency intertwine to form an experience that is both a physical reality and a dimension of consciousness. It mirrors the vibratory field of the universe, connecting matter and spirit, the visible and the invisible. The audience is immersed in pulsating light, experiencing a triple sensory impact of sight, sound, and body, entering a dynamic energy field and feeling its flow and transformation.
The pulsation of light and the resonance of water are synchronized and amplified. A dancer’s figure emerges and dissolves between light and shadow, wandering between the invisible and the tangible, the ordered and the chaotic, presenting the liminal state of existence. The interplay between material and transcendence forms an eternal yet ever-changing state of transition—a surreal and dreamlike perception of levitation, akin to the fleeting and sacred transformations between dawn and dusk. As the dancer’s movements slow and the performance nears its end, the golden sun, a radiant symbol of infinity, eternity, and the sacred, begins whole. Yet, it shatters into countless shimmering fragments, dissolving into the water. This is not annihilation, but a revelation of impermanence—the whole disperses into the many, yet within this dispersion, the infinite lingers. Form unravels into emptiness, and emptiness manifests as form. The golden shards do not vanish; they transform—becoming specks of light scattered across the water’s surface, minute yet permeating everything. The sun’s fragmentation coincides with the dancer’s final movement—solid dissolves into void, presence into absence, the tangible into the intangible. The water, both mirror and vessel, holds the sun’s remnants, reflecting and absorbing its light. No longer separate, light and water interpenetrate, coalescing into a single field of resonance, a quiet diffusion of the eternal into the ephemeral.
This installation invites the audience to re-experience the ancient and eternal rhythms of the Sun and Moon, the alternation of yin and yang, and the cycles of light and shadow. These elements form a system of interwoven resonance, allowing viewers to feel the synchronized relationship between human consciousness and the cosmic order.
In the finite experience of the senses, we glimpse a higher existence beyond them. Consciousness flows, and the individual is no longer isolated but reverberates within a larger energy system.
This resonant field is not merely a sensory encounter, but a revelation of reality within illusion, form within formlessness. As the Heart Sutra illuminates: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” The shimmering light on water and the dancer’s silhouette, now fragmented into golden specks across the surface, are not fixed entities but fleeting manifestations of a deeper, boundless essence, arising and dissolving through the interplay of conditions. Here, emptiness is not void, but a vibrant unity of cause and effect, a wondrous presence woven by energy and vibration, where the sun’s scattered light evokes the diffusion of the finite within the infinite.
The rhythm of the Sun and the pulse of the Earth, once perceived as separate, are merely facets of the same cosmic breath, echoing the Daoist dance of the virtual and the real, where shadows give birth to light, and light returns to shadow.
In this space, there is nothing to grasp, nothing to possess—only a letting go that unveils the infinite. The leap from the Earth’s low hum to the Sun’s radiant frequency, marked by its shattering into countless golden points, mirrors the shedding of attachment, a silent turning toward the “unattainable” state that the Heart Sutra honors—a space beyond duality, where the seen and unseen, the material and spiritual, pulse as one. The water reflects not just the sun’s scattered light, but the mind’s own nature—ever-changing, yet ever-present—whispering that all phenomena, in their transience, are thresholds to the eternal.
Through this interplay of light, water, and rhythm, Fishing the Sun becomes a quiet meditation on interdependence, a bridge between the individual’s fleeting gaze and the vast, harmonious order of the universe, where the finite fades into the infinite, and the self hums as the whole.
photo by @louis__maurel @iziana_g @Juliette Colas @vodesaintpierre @Jingma @colomba_giovanni @mairewauq @Natsumi710_