'Body Memory' by Ülo Pikkov

We’re a bit like trees. Our minds and memories rooted, unseen, in the earth.  Our bodies, like branches and bark, develop, form and harden.  They reveal the scars, lines, bumps and bruises, but not much else. Yet, our bodies do remember and if you look close enough, you can uncover what the mind - consciously or unconsciously – conceals. 

I’ve done boxing training for 16 years. A few years ago, when I was quite ill, I had to step away from it for a lengthy period. When I returned many months later, although I was out of shape, I was amazed at how fast I remembered the combinations and skipping routines. Even though my body had been pummeled with various medications and surgeries, it did not forget.

Like the characters in Pikkov’s Body Memory (2011), the past is wrapped around us, always pushing and pulling. Memories always have a hold on us, especially those we can’t see with our minds. It’s not just our own past. We experience our parents past, their parents past. Our children experience ours. The past can unravel us, if we let it. It can also guide us, if we let it.

During my illness, they removed parts from my body. Sometimes, as Alex Grigg’s Phantom Limb (2013) explores, I still feel aches where there is nothing anymore. I don’t quite know how that can be, but it can. We all know that experience. Think of those times when you’re on a trip, away from your loved one(s). There are moments – as Nicolas Mendard’s Something (2013) suggests, when you feel strangely incomplete, as though you are missing...well… something.

We spend so much time listening to our chit chattering minds when we should be listening to our bodies. That’s where the essence of this ride resides.