To “Place Dances” Guerin adds further parts of herself, further places, further voices. She addresses the audience, and sometimes she gives voice to what appears to be her internal thought processes. Just as places, our memories of them, our experience of them, our telling of them, are never solid, composed of various pieces, they shift swiftly, emulating and of life. As Guerin speaks in conversation with herself, part said in real time, part to another overhead recording of herself speaking, this time in the same room, she comments, with the same frankness, “why haven’t you finished this already? Other people would have finished by now. You’re taking too long.” “I know. But it’s really hard.” “You always say that, but if it is really hard, why do you keep doing it?” “Because sometimes it’s like cutting wood, piling logs, restacking, and it keeps tumbling down, and other times a space opens up in my mind. And it all falls into place and it feels amazing.”[4] Place can also be in relation to forms around you. Your place in the world. What is your place in relation to history? In relation to those around you?

Having moved through the space on the diagonal, the longest line of the black box, there are times when Guerin cannot be seen—by column or costume—and she playfully hides from view. Beneath a long black veil, Guerin encircles the space, her train, long and windy. A tail, in part, and a memory, it assumes its own path behind her, not merely copying. A slight deviation here and there as she moves left and right, fast and slow. As Guerin turns back to face her lineage of a tail, she aids it to form a circle, a shape perhaps the veil had never thought of assuming. She coils it around, not with her hands, but with small bodily movements. Small movements that have big responses, meanings, results. Later she lies prone on the floor, her upper body and head consumed by the very same veil, now knotted like a hood and encasement. Part caterpillar, she inches forward by propelling her body along the floor with her feet. A visual representation of the artists’ struggle, perhaps, or broader still. The embodiment of the hard slog.