At the Threshold (2015)

Exhibited in the 14th Istanbul Biennial, At the Threshold is a self-reflexive melodrama provoked by the question: 'Can a mother experience too much empathy for her child?' It is also the second of three short films created by Martin inspired by her research into a form of heightened physical sensitivity called mirror-touch synaesthesia. People with this neurological condition feel a palpable sensation of touch on their own bodies when they see another person, or even an object, being touched. A movie's fight scene batters such a synaesthete; a glimpse of a father hugging his child imparts the sensation of warm, encircling arms. Many people with the condition also experience mirror-pain, mirror-cold, mirror-movement, mirror-breathing, and mirror-emotion, extending the sharing of senses to a kind of blurring between self and other. Martin aims to capture some of these feelings and ideas in the structure, words, and images of At the Threshold.