performance/drawing
6-9.06.2013
kvir feminist actziya Vienna
In the name of the father
is an impossible physical performance in which the body of a woman
confronts the oppressed position which she occupies through
self-violence. By violently enacting the specificity of a womanly
body, this body (my own) speaks to „the father”, an entity
encapsulating multiple oppressive entities: the father – head of
mononuclear, heterosexual family; god – head of christian religion;
capital; empire – as the geo-system of colonialism and
neo-colonialism.
The performance initially proposes a
seemly submissive posture – on knees, head covered – performing
an equally submissive ritual – a prayer only to try and appropriate
them in an emancipatory dimension. The anti-prayer is a ritual of
revolt and killing, of empowerment and rejection. Not a curse, the
anti-prayer is a painful ritual in front of an icon representing the
ideal physical expression of the performer. The performance
ultimately addresses some key radical feminist debates: emancipation
through violence, essentialism and culture-based identity,
cisidentity and queer. Also it opens the question of the
intersectionality of the oppressive structures sketched above from
the character of „the Father”.
>>> Fragment from the text: >>> The icon, drawing.
„In the name of the Father.
In
the name of the Father.
In
the name of the Father.
I
look for You, I dig You out.
How
much pleasure can we afford?
A
maximal and total pleasure that annuls me
A
woman turned upside down.
Self-Canibalization.
Darkness.
How
much light can you afford when the light is not yours? It is someone
else's.
The
thick fingers are not enough, the long arm not even, your whole body:
sink it back and it won't be enough.
The
whole world remains to be devoured. A destructive desire.
A
hand. And with the other I'm making a cross.
In
the name of the Father.In
the name of the State.
In
the name of the Empire.
In
the name of Capital.
In
the name of You, Masters, I clog myself.
I
silence myself. Cover myself. Blind myself.
In
your name I turn my refused gaze in myself.
The
lacking Rib? But I am Lack itself.
(...)”