People are crawling on the floor and a woman has just freed pythons into the space.
Culture, when the administration is sophisticated (as it is here), will often leave us trembling; our knowledges questioned, comforts challenged and consumerist engagement practices interrupted. In such instances we find ourselves situated at intersections of unknowing, asking questions and being all too aware of our vulnerability and itinerant positions within the complexities of life. At such intersections one had better not be basic. At such intersections, lines become blurred. Things collide.
Experiencing an installation by visual artist Dominique Pétrin is akin to viewing contemporary life through a dayglo, pastel kaleidoscope. Add to such visual cacophony two live Chihuahuas, three albino pythons, a flautist, sound and film installation along with the movement interventions of dance artists Antonija Livingstone, Jennifer Lacey and Stephen Thompson - and you begin to approach the inter-disciplinary dynamism of ‘Culture, Administration & Trembling’.
This work is innately (intimately) queer as all lines of territory and practice are crossed. Last night I dreamt of snakes and now I am in a room with pythons. I realise I have slept with the person opposite me who then joins the choreography and requests that my friend do the same – who is who in this place, what do the objects signify and how do we relate to each other? Performers speak casually to sound technicians as film interrupts movement loops, proclaiming; “This work will not save us. This work is as a Mc Muffin” and a three legged Chihuahua rides on the back of a crawling man whose loose, web-weave clad arse is bare, as performers embrace audience members and slowly draw them to the ground, undressing.
Questions of power, consent and desire hang in the air mirroring the drift of the helium filled balloons present (twisted together but not resembling any familiar form). Pétrin papers an up-scaled illustration of a human ear (which she will later tear down) to the wall as a sound scape of hollowed out synths and ruminating base tones builds. I am simultaneously over-stimulated and numbed by alienation. Black out, hand bells ... ACDC’s Hells Bells.
The thing about queerness is that it can be a knowing subversion of itself; looping a process of becoming/un-becoming where no two iterations are, or can be the same. ‘Culture, Administration & Trembling’ is a subversion of its own form; a curation of moments that destabilise our understanding of how things relate to other things and why. ‘Culture, Administration & Trembling’ is not comfortable or easy yet evokes a sense of jouissance and insists upon a further reading.
ACDC fades out and another wave of audience are permitted to enter the space. This in turn prompts some current audience members to leave. I stay, this needs another read.
Loop:
People are crawling on the floor and a woman has just freed pythons into the space.
, will often leave us trembling; our knowledges questioned, comforts challenged and consumerist engagement practices interrupted. Benjamin Sebastian reviews){kind=link}