Projects
Photo: Elektra Stampolou
Building on the often perceived as naïve and benign figure of the mermaid, in my current a practice-as-research project I investigate mermadeness; a trans-species consciousness. I produce different forms of presenting this embodied consciousness using performance as story-telling, movement practice and visual mapping.
I use the term ‘made’ instead of ‘maid’ and ‘mer’ which means ‘part of something’ in Greek, to signify a process of ‘becoming with’ as coined by Donna Haraway. While my performances are based on my own cis-gender identification as a woman, I perform a queer body in terms of species identification between human and non-human that results also in different forms of sensuous materialities. These are part of my research together with daily rituals of interpellation of non-human beings.
Residency Project 2022
This residency themed ‘PICTURING DEMOCRACY’ funded by Stiftung Berliner Leben, explored the dance floor and city as a place of freedom of movement in the context of democracy. The dance floor was considered both a physical space and a metaphorical space that included the studio and the formerly physically divided city of Berlin. In numerous micro performances I addressed formal borders between states and informal forms of movement restrictions such as gender, sexual orientation and taboo professions such as sex work.
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STRATEGIES OF RESISTANCE IN POST-FORDISM
Over-identification with Benign Evil
Practice-based PhD project (2015 - 2021)
The central concern of my practice-based research project was how to create resistance from a feminist perspective by exploring and developing strategies in performance art. This resistance was aimed at the current economic and political conditions of post-Fordist production, in which an increased precarity of the workforce is accompanied by a shrinking autonomous political sphere and regressive gender politics, led by ‘sexual decoys’ (Eisenstein, 2007). In my practice, I performed and recorded political speeches which I circulated online; I also held live talks and presentations where I introduced utopian performance improving technologies that replace the physical female body with a virtual one. Central to my investigation was the exploration of over-identification where the performer overtly affirms the position of the subject of critique instead of articulating an open direct critique. Through my practice I explored how to deploy and transform this strategy effectively from a feminist perspective, to create an agonistic space as the location for resistance and disrupt rather than harmonise contradictions within post-Fordism.
Liquid Institution
formal Online Museum
2020
DENISEUM was created during the first lockdown in spring 2020 when all art and culture institutions were closed; recorded in my living room with Green Screen technique, it owes its visual identity to a design for a Guggenheim Museum in Helsinki, which was never implemented after a dispute over funding between the Guggenheim Foundation and the City of Helsinki. In addition to its virtual dimension, DENISEUM reached its visitors with printed toilet paper invitations by post.
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From 2020 - 2022 the DENISEUM had its own website but due to funding cuts for (public) institutions world wide the website had to close its doors. The online tours are still available.
