Dirty

From Plato’s allegory of the cave to the empirical knowledge of the Enlightenment: visibility was (and is) seen as the gateway to truth in Western society. In Dirty, Juan Dominguez presents sound and touch as alternative ways to create new ways of connecting and disrupting hierarchies, and thus radically destabilizing capitalism. Marx predicted that, in our capitalist society, labour would become increasingly alienated from the body. Today, digital interactions increasingly replace physical contact. 

In such a world, touch is an act of resistance. Dominguez draws on ‘ayni’ – a concept from the Andes that states: you touching the land means that you are also touched by it. The cosmology of the Yoruba is also inspiring. In this worldview, sound is not a passive but an active force that mediates between people, their ancestors, and the divine. It is reminiscent of Pauline Oliveros’ deep listening: in other words, a form of attention that is slow, deliberate, and communal. These new forms of touch and listening create spaces for collective healing, recognition of the agency of matter, and cultivation of empathy. 

This is precisely what the artist aims for as he guides the public through an exhibition, a sound installation, and a clay laboratory. Each phase stimulates different forms of touch and listening. The exhibition focuses on pre-sculptural clay faces and text fragments in clay. Neither figurative nor representative, they evoke the ambiguity of human expression. In the lab, the audience become makers, shaping clay without technical expertise or toward a fixed result. They work in a collective, organic process, focusing on shared labour and time and challenging fixed narratives. A final object is not the goal: the act of making is itself central. 

• Juan Dominguez is an artist, maker, and organizer in the field of choreography and performing arts who lives in Berlin and Mexico City. He sees himself as a conceptual clown, a magical porcelain cowboy, a model poet, an unbound storyteller, and a curator of pleasure. He has been producing his own work since 1992, exploring theatre as a medium and redefining the parameters of dance – body, time, space, and language. His work emphasizes the participatory aspect of live art, seeking new ways to understand responsibility, involvement, and co-authorship between all those involved. His recent move into ceramics marks a new dialogue with the visual arts. Over the past 24 years he has carried out projects that can be classified as extended choreographic practices or as being at the intersection of dance and live art.