Tearing Up

Tearing Up is an evocative exploration including scattered slide-shows of movements and strained breath. The practice contains suppressed emotions, the sensation of tearing up into eternity, as well as the desire for a release.

The practice stems from the draining and exhausting experience of containing the need to cry. It manifests itself into the limbs and moves through distorted images of someone tearing up. We look at tearing, as a way of breaking apart and slowly dissolving. It’s the potential of withholding, as a resistance to shedding, to whom or what might not serve. An impossible quest, standing on the verge of overwhelm while the flood of tears approaches. The world of Tearing Up contains friction and self-regulation, where we look to the moments in-between our breaths, sighs and empty sobs.
We move between number 1 and number 2, the non-what, the almost, and the impossible.

I tried to see if the tears would ever appear, but they didn’t. “Where did the tears go?” - Filip Vest for Bastard Blog, 2025