CONCEPT:

Our performance is a critical response to contemporary ideals/models. Using tragicomical sparkling/glitzy figures we attempt to expose the critical condition of modern consumerist society. The visual performance and installation applies concepts of the body, deformation, kitsch and space.

By covering our bodies with glitter we transform them into objects. This sparkling transcends aesthetic dimensions and transmutes them into their opposites. Our bodies become freakish/monstrous, no longer a part of this world. The kitsch emphasises that artificial body which is driven by an unquenchable thirst/desire for something more, for something that is in fact unreachable/unbeneficial. Kitsch is a form of momentary materialistic gratification, which in the long term reveals an individuals’ dissatisfaction.

The performance is supported by projections. Upon our moving bodies enlarged human fragments appear that in contemporary society represent attributes of the ideal human body. These projections at the same time deform the performing figures and intensify the impossible/unreal/plastic body.

Our starting point is the body with its important connotation within art history as the key link between the inner and outer worlds. The body is an intangible and ambiguous concept here primarily to inspire an inquisitive thought process about its nature.

In our work we seize the body’s capacities and allow for their physiognomical deformation. Through this action we depict the infinite human desire to be sovereign over our bodies. This aspiration stems from the individuals’ tendency to compare their body with socially constructed ideals of the body image presented via mass media. This idealism of perfection is highly unrealistic, the ideal body therefore fictional and unattainable. This is precisely why we constantly yearn for perfection, the obsessive pursuit for the ideal body always leading to dissatisfaction. Eating disorders (e.g. bulimia, anorexia) and the manipulation of one’s appearance (excessive make-up, plastic surgery) are among the many consequences.

The installation accentuates the relation between I/We/They. The kitschy bodies move through the space independently and create the aura of the individual. Respective bodies merge into a collective body through physical contact, bringing together individuals with similar aspirations in relation to the space they act in. The mirrors in the space multiply the figures and enlarge the space. Therefore WE transforms into THEY, every body multiplying infinitely and thus becoming alienated from itself.