The performance is based on the poem Dead in the Land by the late Israeli poet Yona Wallach.

At its core are two performers: one transgender (FTM) and one heteronormative. The transgender performer wears a mask made of digital tablets, each screening a video of a hand digging into the earth until a source of light appears. The heteronormative performer lies face down, his head supported by a suspended black cube. A third projection shows the ceiling of a cave, its camera movements following the rhythm and intonation of Wallach’s recorded voice reading the poem.

The sound is a duet between Wallach’s recorded voice and Danino’s. Absent from the physical space, Danino listened to the performance in real time. When the duet between Wallach and himself ended, he called a phone connected to a microphone in the gallery, and one of the performers answered. Through this gesture, his voice entered the space for the first time and was broadcast into the gallery, creating a direct conversation with the audience.

The work explores transformation across body, language, voice, and identity, questioning how the absent can be made present: how to make present absent sex and gender, an absent body, an absent language.