Wesen is not a what, but a how of perdurance.

60kg of Iranian soil
(The dynamic process of perdurance)

This performance is an invitation to stillness, to standing, to a dynamic and active being-there—or a turbulent presence—mediated through a heavy tethering to soil and earth. For what sustains human life is not merely physiological needs, but intangibles such as identity, memories, language, home, relations, social bonds, habits, fears, hopes, and aspirations. The soil contained in this suitcase bears precisely these invisible necessities, which are paradoxically profoundly weighty and untransportable. The performer repeatedly attempts to lift or displace the suitcase, yet the dense mass of cultural-identitary entanglements precludes movement. This performance and its interaction reveal that essentials are defined not by functionality, but by their existential bonds to the human. This suitcase contains soil inseparable from our very being.

WesenThe German philosophical term “Wesen,” in Heidegger’s ontology, diverges from its common connotation of “essence” (translated as essenceor substance in English). It denotes a dynamic process of unconcealment (Unverborgenheit), whereby an entity is defined across all temporality. For Heidegger, Wesen is the mode of persistent presencing (Anwesenheit) that constitutes and sustains an entity through the flux of time.