He Fa on Björk

Three enormous white feather fans spread from one shoulder, while a silver-gray high-necked inner layer stays clearly visible in the middle, and a diagonally pleated skirt and thin waist cord draw the body together. This vocabulary of white feathers associated with Björk has been transformed into a new stage costume. Through it, I think about lightness: when an image seems ready to float away at any moment, which less weightless connections keep it on the body?

Feathers divide the edges into many fine directions, and the eye readily reads that looseness as weightlessness. But the image cannot provide an actual weighing, nor will I guarantee easy wear on its behalf. The shoulder needs to receive the volume, the waist cord to fix its position, and the low-heeled shoes still take responsibility for the ground. Lightness is an organized effect; soft edges alone cannot establish that support has become superfluous.

The structure spreading on one side makes left and right unbalanced. It requires the body to coexist with an uneven appearance, and makes He Fa's calm face seem slower still. I am willing to preserve that contrast: a form may have an impulse to fly away, while the figure has no obligation to follow immediately. If airiness can be proved only through continuous movement, it removes the right to stop and find one's center of gravity again.

Showing the fastenings does not always increase understanding either. If every technical structure is brought forward, the sensation of lightness may become too busy with explanation. I do not ask the audience to count connections constantly. I only hope that questions about comfort, maintenance or safety are not ended with the statement that it looks light. Feeling and conditions can enter at different times without excluding each other.

I leave the feather fans on one side and the white shoes simply grounded. The thin cord at the waist need not be elevated into a symbol; it already does the work of connecting two scales. If lightness allows someone to stay, and still acknowledges these fastenings afterward, it becomes more than a visual trick that has successfully hidden its support.