live performance

20 min

Performance score in the woodworkshop of Iso. Three performers conjure the spirits of the liveless woodworking machines, using elements like smoke, metal sounds and texts about love and relationality to create a wedding-like scene. The machines are connected to piezo mics allowing the performers to play them like instruments, resulting in an eery noise piece.

This performance is drafted from another work in an old sugar factory turned museum in Zeeland (NL). In it three performers have an intimate encounter with the out of duty machines and offices of the industrial museum. They use strings of thought from Object Oriented Ontology to find ways for a person to meet a machine without the specific desire to control it. It’s an emancipation of the relationship between machine and operator.

The performers wear hand-knitted outfits, referring to the fashion trend on social media platforms where small makers are selling their hand-knitted «amateur» outfits. These garments are often intentionally poorly made or ‘distressed’ so it looks like they are falling apart. I see this as an interesting new anrachist easthetics that is in resistance to the standardized industrial grade finishing of objects that we are surrounded by. A cutified contemporary punk movement in which stitches are intentionally dropped to break away from the polished world that industrialization has brought us.

curated by Florence Parot

performers Elise Ehry, Kitty Maria and Lizzy Langedijk

Live Art Series, Iso

Amsterdam, NL (2024)