Escape Act

Does gender have a voice? Or can we observe bodies without ascribing a gender or age – in short, value – to them?  In Escape Act, Alexandra Bachzetsis invites Anne Pajunen, Sotiris Vasiliou, Jia-Yu Corti, Tamar Kisch, Owen Ridley-DeMonick, Gus Solomons, Philippe Beloul, and Johanna Willig-Rosenstein to investigate the mechanisms of desire, working with philosopher, activist and dramatist Paul B. Preciado’s poem entitled Love is a drone.Using drag, vogueing, striptease, YouTube tutorials as well as the triadic ballet by Oskar Schlemmer, seven bodies and many more objects try out new constellations, like surrealist ready-mades. Within the dominant logic of desire, bodies are male or female, real or fake, successful or failures, and objects serve as disposable prosthetics. Can we overturn that logic? With a great sense of irony, the production presents hyper-stereotyped gender identities, only to deconstruct them completely. What Escape Act demonstrates is that signs are not to be trusted.

• Alexandra Bachzetsis is a choreographer and visual artist. Her multidisciplinary oeuvre focuses on the construction of images and bodies in mainstream popular culture. Her work has been shown in theatres, museums and art biennales. In 2010, she presented Dream Season at the Kaaistudios, as part of the first WoWmen.

‘Rather than representing the productions of desire from the point of view of identity, of the norm and the normal, Escape Act invites us to pay attention to the failures and the cracks, but also to the lines of flight, to the escape acts.’ – Paul B. Preciado