The Festival offerings incorporated a series of performances and exhibitions that enriched, while further illustrating, some of its themes. the first appointment is tonight, with a series of performances features very dissimilar approaches to the medicalized body and its relation with the machine.
Claudia Witmann’s performance imagines the language of her body after an injury, by using the sometimes extreme Butoh gestures as her preferred means of communication and by amplifying the otherwise feeble voice uttered by the injured organ through a microphone attached to her body. “Bubble” the title of the piece, is the name she gave to the specific part of her spine where she suffered the injury.
the performance reconstructs in a very dramatic way the process through which the body is talking in its own language and is trying to say something. however, this is a very frustrating experience as the artist as “patient” has troubles translating and understanding the voice coming from within her, while, at the same time, she has to cope with the extremely difficult lingo used by doctors to describe her condition.
On a different level, Bill Vorn and Emma Howes propose a quasi-science fictional scenario where the dancer (Howes) engages and interacts with two monumental robotic creatures. The scenario offered is fascinating and intimidating, as it evokes references from Alien (the dancer wears a black wired suit that reminds of Ripley) from some Sci-Fi Japanese anime.
here are some pictures
