In 2007 my partner and collaborator, author Ingrid Rojas Contreras, was struck by a car on the way to pick up her wedding dress three days before our wedding. She suffered a concussion and temporary amnesia. In this performance the we host a non-scripted conversation revisiting that event while suspended halfway in a dark pool of water. Our speech creates ripples in the water surface, disrupting the reflections that complete the image of our bodies. The performance is illuminated by two lights that cast a reflection of our embryonic silhouettes on the wall.

In the performance we speak of submerged knowledge of ourselves and each other—dreams, fragmented memories, and family stories that shape our realities. There are the acute limits of memory and the ones we determine for ourselves. Rojas Contreras shares details of the accident she has never told anyone. Barber reads palindromes half-written on paper:

I SAW A CROW, ORCA WAS I
DID I DO, O GOD, DID I AS I SAID I’D DO? GOOD. I DID

In the video excerpt above, the artists consider the moment Ingrid, knowing that her memory is lost, considers escaping her identity and starting life as a different person. “Other Half Orbit” presents consciousness and awareness as half-truths, our capacity for self-knowledge as bound as our knowledge of others.