Alexandra Bachzetsis’s new piece 2020: Obscene uses body, text and image to explore the ambiguity of “scene” and “obscene”. Together with four co-performers she is focusing on the relationship between the staging of the excessive body and its consumption by the coveting gaze and the overwhelming textuality. On the one hand, the work examines the problems of theatre as a manipulation machine with regard to seduction, attraction and games of sexual identity; on the other hand, it explores the performing body itself as a place of alienation and limitation of the human being. The performers are confronted with their own corporealities – with the contradictions between intuition and gesture, light and night, score and script, norm and form, conception and action. The piece, thus, not only questions the subversive and the normative in performance art, but also addresses itself to communication through excess as a radical interruption of formats, gestures, cultural patterns and archetypes.
Alexandra Bachzetsis’s new piece 2020: Obscene uses body, text and image to explore the ambiguity of “scene” and “obscene”. Together with four co-performers she is focusing on the relationship between the staging of the excessive body and its consumption by the coveting gaze and the overwhelming textuality. On the one hand, the work examines the problems of theatre as a manipulation machine with regard to seduction, attraction and games of sexual identity; on the other hand, it explores the performing body itself as a place of alienation and limitation of the human being. The performers are confronted with their own corporealities – with the contradictions between intuition and gesture, light and night, score and script, norm and form, conception and action. The piece, thus, not only questions the subversive and the normative in performance art, but also addresses itself to communication through excess as a radical interruption of formats, gestures, cultural patterns and archetypes.
| Concept & choreography | Alexandra Bachzetsis |
| Collaboration concept & stage | Sotiris Vasiliou |
| Collaboration concept & dramaturgy | Dorota Sajewska |
| CREATION AND PERFORMANCE | Alexandra Bachzetsis, Owen Ridley-DeMonick, Tamar Kisch, Sotiris Vasiliou |
| Sound design | Tobias Koch |
| Costume design, research & conceptual advice | Christian Hersche, Ulla Ludwig, Laurent Hermann Progin |
| Communication design | Julia Born |
| Photography | Melanie Hofmann |
| Hair and makeup | Delia Sciullo |
| Technical direction & light design | Patrik Rimann |
| Production & Tour management | Association All Exclusive, Regula Schelling, Franziska Schmidt |
| Production assistant | Juliana Simonetti |
| … |
| Special thanks to | DelgadoFuchs, Jia-Yu Corti for participating in the Open Studio research; Bernhard la Dous, Charlotte Holstein (produktionsDOCK), Alban Schelbert, Jon Brunke |
| Supported by | The cooperative support agreement between the City of Zurich, the Canton of Zurich, and Pro Helvetia—Swiss Arts Council, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Ernst und Olga Gubler-Hablützel Stiftung, Jacqueline Spengler Stiftung // CO-PRODUCED BY Kunsthaus Zürich, Kaserne Basel, Dampfzentrale Bern, L'Arsenic – Centre d'art scénique contemporain Lausanne, ADN Neuchâtel, Tanzquartier Wien, Gessnerallee Zürich. THIS PERFORMANCE IS A CO-PRODUCTION in the frame of the Programmers’ Fund of Reso—Dance Network Switzerland, SUPPORTED BY Pro Helvetia—Swiss Arts Council |
