[ _ ] |{ _____ } Pt. I
Performance, Moving image, Installation
Nov 2019
Performed at Schlacthaus Club on 15 November 2019 as part of Generate! Festival
for Electronic and Performance Art in Tübingen, Germany
Installation view at Goldsmiths, University of London
and at Generate! Festival for Electronic and Performance Art
and at Generate! Festival for Electronic and Performance Art
in vitro [ _ ] |{ _____ } is a research project that in its development takes form in a performance, exploring the beauty and tension of interspecies networks and negotiation of the performative human/nonhuman body, considering the notion of the 'umwelt' and the milieu as an assemblage instead of a closed system. In a dark subterranean space, a performer ritualistically changes the water for a jellyfish by moving it using a small fishbowl among water of slightly varying salinities in a row of seven small acrylic tanks (as SFX prop jellyfish are used, no life forms were harmed during the performance). During certain intervals succumbing to entanglement and destruction, organic derivatives slowly take its place, evoking different stages and problematics of biomaterial transmutation beyond the boundaries of life and death.
An inquiry into acclimatisation, precarity, anthropocentric ethics, dominion, and the loss of agency through the visceral and abject human/nonhuman body and the subtleties of violence within. As the visual presentation of the row of cuboid water tanks recalls the structural compartmentalisation of the train and of the society, the gesture of moving the jellyfish that is ongoing and repeated in aquariums, domestic spaces, the institutional spaces of museums, etc. features a certain form of transgression against the compartmentalisation, and yet the act of making this transgression is with precarity and life at stake.
Acrylic, Gelatine, Refractometer, Reverse Osmosis Saltwater,
Latex Infusion Tubes, Fabric, Silicone, Aquarium Equipment, Hydrophone, Monitor
Aquatic footages filmed with permission at SEA LIFE London Aquarium
Featuring sound by Lennart Wolter
Photos by Vy L, Annika Ott, and Bella Liu
Performance at Generate! Festival 2019, Tübingen, Germany
Film Stills
© Vyvyan y. L. | 2022