Clothes for a Summer Hotel
Cecilie Dahl. Clothes for a Summer Hotel, 2004–2006.
Description:
The performance "Clothes for a Summer Hotel" features a berry dress on a woman’s body,(the dress made out of blackberries, raspberries or cloudberries, depending on geographic location, season, site and context), a vernissage crowd, the woman working the room, holding a glass of wine, lime green stiletto heels. The dress partly disintegrates in the course of the performance, trails of berry juice running down the woman’s body, the threads holding the dress together transforming into a pattern of veins on her skin. The juice dripping on to the floor, drawing a path of colored lines and puddles, tracking her movements, blending her physical motion with that of the others, recording a diagram, mapping the interaction between the woman and the crowd.....
Voluptuously dressed, protected, exposing a seductive trait, an attractive inviting woman,
then within minutes undressed, naked, the absurd clothing made out of edibles, a dress of berries melting - a moment covering the skin, hiding the body, then exposing it through a transformation, a visual superficiality, a vulnerable bareness, a shift, an illusion of exposing the inside on the outside, the scent of berries drenching the room as the woman makes her exit.......
A renegotiation of a communicative situation raising a number of issues:
- What is it to be dressed and how does our clothing facilitate
certain communicative roles?
- How are sensuous attraction, eroticism and sexuality
replaced by unpleasant connotations to
improper dress code, bodily fluids, and even to a forensic
aesthetic?
- What connotations surface when one realizes that the dress
is made out of berries, something edible?
- When and where during the course of the performance does
the pleasant experience, both from the point of view of the
performer and the audience, approach an unpleasant
sensation-distressing, simultaneous possibly exciting, turn
into apprehension and a somewhat disturbing incident?
- Where and how do issues of illusion and reality surface in
this process?
- What role does the fragrance of the berries play as the
dress falls apart and the scent intensifies?
- How does physical and psychological proximity work as the
performance proceeds?
- How does the trail from the dripping dress relate to and
communicate with the trails from other people stepping in
the juices?
- How does the work invoke and further explore issues raised
by several of Marina Abramovic/Ulays works, by Jana
Sterbak´s " Vanitas: Flesh Dress for Albino Anorectic" and
how does it relate to the drip paintings of Jackson Pollock?
Medium:
Performance
Tags:
performance, body, woman, feminity, voyeurism, dress codes, uncertainty, illusion, pain, pleasure, joy, emotions,
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