Lara Salmon:The Currents in PULSE
Writer: Yiwei Lu
Editor: Jiani Wang
In stark contrast to this dim, smoldering scene, the other end of the gallery is flooded with daylight. Through the scaffolding-wrapped floor-to-ceiling windows, sunlight falls on a pair of solar panels on the floor. Two black wires extend from the panels—one connects to a pressure matrix mounted on the gallery wall, the other leads directly to electrode patches attached to the artist’s body. Dressed in a sheer white robe and shorts, she sits on a chair draped in white cloth. She appears fragile, almost translucent. This was my first encounter with Lara Salmon’s work at brief histories. The two pieces were It Feels Like and PULSE.
PULSE is a durational performance by Lara Salmon that took place at brief histories over eleven days, from May 7 to 17, every afternoon from 2 to 4 PM. Lara constructed a highly vulnerable feedback system, inserting her body into a loop of everyday intervention. The solar panels across from her captured natural light to generate electricity—an uncontrollable energy source. These dual circuits, one artificial, one natural merged within her body in what became a daily experiment in neural “short-circuiting."
It Feels Like is a video work—a poetic visual attempt to depict the perception of chronic pain. In the film, fire, metal, electricity, and flesh entwine and collide, oscillating between the symbolic and the real, constructing an embodied experience that eludes verbal expression. I have to admit: on that dazzling, scorching early summer afternoon, I entered the space feeling a bit unsettled. I hadn’t anticipated the artist’s unflinching gaze meeting mine—not in the way I usually imagine walking into a gallery. Especially not when her body was wired into the entire room. Yet she spoke to me gently, saying, “There’s a dial at the back. You can control the current.”
Do you think there are different kinds of pain? Like, is there such a thing as “deep” pain and “shallow” pain?
Yes I do. Shallow pain is short lived, like a paper cut or even broken bone - pain that has remedies and an end date. Deep pain is much darker - the “cause” is mysterious and it stays on for years. It becomes part of your identity. Deep pain rewires your body and mind to be of service to it. In my experience, pain at its deepest makes one lose touch with purpose outside of lessening constant physical agony.
Yiwei:
It sounds like deep pain becomes something colorless and tasteless—like part of your
bloodstream, or like penicillin through an IV.
How do you think about the idea of a “perpetrator”? Is it always a specific person or event, or can it be more of an abstract opposition? And when the one causing the pain is also the one experiencing it—does that change the meaning of the pain itself?
It took me a long time to accept that physical pain is multifaceted and multi formed. It is both concrete and abstract, and what worked to assuage it one day - say taking a walk - may cause a flare up the next. Chronic pain has been the most formative experience of my life. Since I was a little girl, it taught me empathy for other’s struggles, and in this way informed my path as an activist. For this perpetration I am thankful.
It’s also given me a lot of loneliness and uncertainty. My adolescence is riddled with memories of feeling that my body was on fire and screaming into pillows in the middle of the night so as not to wake my parents.
Western medicine is so fixated on finding a cause, a cure and fix. I’ve actually found some of the Buddhist teachings around acceptance/nonreaction and Ayurvedic methodologies to be much more useful in long term pain management. Sometimes I wish I could exit my body (and mind) to get more of a perspective on the pain. It often feels that I am still too in to make sense of it
It sounds like deep pain becomes something colorless and tasteless—like part of your
bloodstream, or like penicillin through an IV.
How do you think about the idea of a “perpetrator”? Is it always a specific person or event, or can it be more of an abstract opposition? And when the one causing the pain is also the one experiencing it—does that change the meaning of the pain itself?
I’m sorry for the late response - I got married this month!
There was certainly a relinquishment of control to the audience during PULSE. It was exhilarating to “let go” as most of the time I feel hyper vigilant around pain management. Living with pain has made me constantly aware of how my body feels and how outside factors affect pain levels moment to moment. Giving others control over this is actually really nice for me. I have a high pain/ discomfort tolerance which leads to the physical intensity of my work. My life is undoubtably training for my practice.
Your question on seeing pain is interesting because I feel in general people don’t know how to reactto it. Pain is so personal and it’s hard to know what to say or to do for someone in it. When we experience pain in semi-public spaces it’s often just awkward - like what do you say to the person in tears at the grocery store. My journey with pain has been lonely and isolating, so using it as a means to create a collective consciousness is something I certainly aspire to do. I’m not sure yet if that ultimately leads to its intensification or dissolution. But I also don’t believe I will ever be pain free.
Congratulations on your wedding! Wishing you a lifetime of love and happiness ! ❤️ I saw the post on your social media—it’s truly the sweetest thing.
I really resonated with what you said about pain being personal. Showing pain feels, in some way, like revealing vulnerability—and that goes against something instinctual. In nature, most living things avoid showing weakness, to protect themselves from being hunted or hurt.
But for human, showing pain in intimate relationships—playing the role of the soaked, shivering puppy—can also be a form of closeness. In public, though, maybe it becomes something else—almost a metaphysical protest, a refusal to hide what hurts, a challenge to those who caused it. In semi-public settings, I feel like pain starts to create a kind of push and pull between self and other.
Am I expressing it willingly? Or is it leaking out?
Am I afraid of how the other person will perceive it?
Does their gaze soften the pain, or intensify it?
Pain almost becomes a form of deep talk.
Thank you again for making such inspiring work and for sharing your journey with us. Talk soon. 🌱