DressT-tube
Performance/Live-sculpture
The Dresst-tube is a Performance centered around a plastic ‘bridal dress, where the dress doesn’t refer to the feminine symbolism it might be associated with, but is used as a reference to the clothing as a subject for people to disguise, hide, cover, transform.
Seemingly simple, steady, familiar as an object, the costume in Dresst-tube, however, implies a deep personal philosophy. Sewn also at the bottom, it places two dimensions of its translation - being transparent, the dress actually losses its original function, or rather disrupts this function, on the one hand, on the other, the movement is impossible, opposing again the normal use of the clothing. Isn't that a way that the person, the women puts restrictions on her onw, unconsciously, as certain manners, appearance, signifiers are acceptable or not, and labelled as such by the norms and perceptions in our society.
The work is a delicate, intimate way to question the norms and their validity, but also to trace the personal role that the women, in this case, has in responding to or modelling those assumptions as well.
It is a test - showing the implicit through the explicit, on a psychological level. Once dresses, the figure is imprisoned and could not 'run away' from that choice.
Filled with flowers
Another version of the DressT-tube is the exposition of the plastic gown filled with flowers. Here, the theme of the feminine is directly expressed with the symbolic expression of the flowers, but at the same time this interpretation addresses the correlation of the body in such state with another properties that flowers have. Cut off, enclosed, they wither, their liveliness and beauty fades away shortly. In this process, having decorated 'the body' or rather 'being' the body, they transform its appearance during the time of 'confinement' - from colourful, aromatic, exuberant 'bucket' it will soon decay in a shabby, lifeless, needless mound. Signifying vulnerability, this a code explicating that, as flowers, the human being, the female, 'extracted' from her natural 'roots', the natural needs of the body, of beauty, of freedom, will loose also power, confidence, independence.
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Planned as a Live Performance, the piece will include exchange of flowers with the audience as an act of 'giving' when revealing this vulnerability.
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Including video-projection.
The original Performance and its first presentation showed the performer dressed in the plastic gown which was filled with water to the knees. The projected water falling down the body was a metaphor of the constant increase of the water level when it pours out in a closed 'vessel', threatening to drawn, to suffocate. Again, since this 'dress' is voluntarily chosen. the scene bears the ambiguous meaning of the intimate processes as a purifying act, when 'closed' means isolation and shelter in one, against 'transparency' of the philosophy that the invisible might be visible.
/video recording is missing due to inappropriate studio conditions during lockdown./
Victorine Müller
Timeline
In her piece Timeline, the Swiss Artist Victorine Müller, stays incased in a weightless PVC structure, often depicting that of an animal.
'Her presentations are very much oriented around a spiritual or emotional dynamism where her presence inside the air-filled creature often emits a tangible aura – breathing animistic energy into the beast she inhabits. this unusual medium fosters a thorough and almost halcyon contemplation for her viewers, each piece created to impart abstract ideas and somewhat invisible forces.'
Creating moments of 'sensitivity', she connects with the audience through philosophical and metaphorical force, aiming to transport people into a different state, so that 'things hidden may become visible, accessible'.
This a clever, illustrative way to address the concept of visible and invisible, raising many assumptions of whether and how 'the hidden' is really accessible. How much this state comforts or tortures the 'prisoner'. the hiding one? And how much this depends on the beholder.
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Marina Abramovich
The Artist is present
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With a direct reference to Abramovic outfit in this Performance, DressT tube confronts the idea and the function of Marina's dress. Sitting gracefully on the chair, she expresses firmness and tranquility in her feminine appearance - what her body and mind experiences is invisible. In contrast, my work reveals what is happening 'inside' - the body is 'desguised' and exposed at the same time. The presence, the duration, the tension operate with invisible forces and feelings, but what happens when the comfort of the familiar 'cover' misfunctions, the presence is 'undressed' and its fakeness and fragility is revealed through the body?