Some sailors dock in a port. There is no welcome, no expectation. In this suspended space, far from the rituals of navigation, their gestures lose their purpose, yet remain marked by a maritime choreography that still defines them.
On the ship, they were function and role, instinct and belonging. On land, they become something else: almost illusory figures, relics of a submerged world that resurfaces in the way they light a cigar, tighten a rope, gaze at the horizon, rub a dampened hand across their forehead. It is a mythology of gesture, a theatre of loss.
Their institutionalized identity is underscored. The sailors seem to lose pieces of themselves, as if their time ashore undermines the coherence of their narrative. The sea, for them, is not just a place: it is the only context that gives meaning to their existence.
DAMP, SATURATED, ALIENATED, PERFORMATIVE, CLEAN
