15 minute live performance/intervention part of event curated by Lap-See Lam & Jin Mustafa.
" - a tiny bit dangerous and above all humorous. It also moved towards a kind of performance art that moves beyond the metaphoric that often, in a too circumstantial way but also to simple way tries to show something other than the mere sensation of the work to the audience (I say this but I mean that). Not to talk of the political performances than oftentimes does nothing more than smears a few layers of artistry on to a political stance or message that had been easier to convey through a lukewarm debate article.
We was shown was nothing more than what we saw and heard. There were no hidden debts to uncover to reach its meaning.
But, what was it that we saw? Two life-forms, dressed up in earth tinted bathing suits, with clusters of potatoes hanging from the crotch; acting according to a logic dictated by the task to, as fast as possible gather and carry away a number of sticks tied to the walls. A sort of manic and violent state, whose end is nothing other than the actions themselves. A sort of absurd [male, potatoes=testicles?] insanity. A negative dialectic only producing the self reflective vacuum that encloses the action without pointing to an external end.
It wasn’t hopeful, or a balm for the soul, but a brutal showing of a process active on many segments of our existence. On a higher level of abstraction, I would argue that the above described dynamic is that which rules over the circulation of (economic) value and labour, in other words: Capital.
But I also think that this movement is reproduced on the micro levels that constitutes the higher grants it its means of sustenance. All could be described as ruled by the same negative dialectic – in the smaller games of gestures on which our institutions are based: work and reproduction, family. But now, my mind is wandering.
I have to mention mental illness or addiction, which are good images of the same destructive circular movements of which I’ve talked above. I also praise you for daring to bring out these states from inside of yourselves, and show it in the way you did.
Herein I also find the humor. The laying bare of the arbitrariness of certain processes, revealing the absurd laws governing the world. And absurdity is fun, fun is laughter and laughter is fun."
- Artist Karl Sjölund
