The leitmotif of "Cacology" is a fictional dialog with the Czech writer Milan Kundera about kitsch and its existential meaning. In his system-critical novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", published in 1984, the author put forward the following thesis: "Kitsch is the absolute negation of shit; literally and figuratively: kitsch excludes from its perspective everything that is essentially unacceptable about human existence." In the performance, I have Kundera appear as a folding puppet - formed from a large, brown cloth wrapped over his novel - and conduct a discussion with him as a puppet show. The sentences spoken by Kundera are original quotations from the book. The dialog scenes alternate in the performance with the narration of short stories - stories about the care of a paraplegic woman and a visit to a hospice. In these short stories, the protagonists are "literally and figuratively" in the shit, but try to escape their difficulties through kitsch. This raises the question of whether kitsch is a phenomenon to be combated or a necessity. I use the props in the performance as visual, staged narrative devices. Through my interaction, for example, the microphone cable is transformed into a catheter or the brown fabric into a piece of meatloaf.
automatically translated from german
Swiss Performance Art Award
place: Le Commun (BAC), Genf
KuratorIn: Saemann, Andrea
Dokumentationstyp: Dokumentation einer Performance/Aktion / Documentation of a performance/action