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Give Rise To Sunny Pfalzer & Marshall Vincent
Rub your face onto a shoulder
10. – 11.9.2022

Video

How can you bring back the physical memory of an embrace? Rub your face onto your shoulder (2021 – ongoing), a performative installation presented within the series Give Rise To… at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, tells stories about togetherness, vandalism, and romanticism. The installation consists of textile objects and an audio meditation. The materials of these objects were originally worn as clothing by six actors during Pfalzer’s performance Hold a Ghost (2020÷21), when they protested, flirted, played, and danced in them. Then the clothes were cut into pieces and sewn together again as cloth sculptures that invite the audience to stop and look. These objects thus bear a memory of the bodies that once wore them. Instead of moving along a street, in Rub your face onto your shoulder these bodies are now at peace. The performative aspect of the work consists of a number of exercises that are also used in contemporary dance in order to increase the dancers’ sensitivity for their own bodies. While Pfalzer communicates with the audience, the space is filled with Vincent’s music. The two alternate in an organic flow, creating an open situation characterized by collective participation and experience. In this work, the dimension of the political is not only contained in the narrative element that tells of protesting bodies but also in the active decision to create a space for lingering and contemplation where it is possible to slow down and feel your own body and the bodies of others.

Curated by Cathrin Mayer

Video: kunst​-doku​men​ta​tio​nen​.com

Artists

Participating artists

Sunny Pfalzer

*1991 Vienna, lives in Berlin and Ternitz

Sunny Pfalzer is a performance and fine artist. Pfalzer studied performative art under Carola Dertnig at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Most recent presentation venues include Kunsthalle Vienna; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Galerie Wedding – Room for contemporary Art, Berlin; Radialsystem, Berlin; Shedhalle, Zurich; Les Urbaines, Lausanne; Wiener Festwochen; ATAR Museum, Tel Aviv-Yafo; GAM, Santiago de Chile.

Marshall Vincent

*1991 Waukegan, Illinois; lives in Berlin

Marshall Vincent is an R&B and pop singer, songwriter, and composer. He has performed in the program of the magazine High Snobiety; the TV Channel Arte; CTM, Berlin; Creepy Teepee, Kutná Hora; Creamcake Berlin; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; His last EP, In No Particular Order, was published in 2021 by SA Recordings, London, and in the same year he issued the remix Saving Face with Gaika.

More contributions

Performance Total Romance: Partial Repair
Isabel Lewis, Dirk Bell with vocalist, performer and artist Rupert Enticknap and performer and pole dancer Yann Slattery 

Video

The performance Total Romance: Partial Repair is the centerpiece of Isabel Lewis and Dirk Bell’s joint exhibition Ever/​Repair at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, and is performed by four performers. In… 

Performance Total Romance: Partial Repair Isabel Lewis, Dirk Bell with vocalist, performer and artist Rupert Enticknap and performer and pole dancer Yann Slattery