Give Rise To Omsk Social Club & Alexander Iezzi
Fucking Hardcore Self-Divinization Weekender
11. – 12.6.2022

The video shows a montage of the 4th performance in the series _​Give Rise To_​is a collaboration of Omsk Social Club and Alexander Iezzi. _​Fucking Hardcore Self-Divinization Weekender_​was presented as a live installation on 11 & 12/06. 
 

The artists were inspired by the work of the French dramatist and theater director Antonin Artaud, who joined the surrealist circle in Paris in the 1920s. Artaud coined the term ​“theater of cruelty,” which represents an attempt to create a form of anti-theater using various strategies including abolishing the border between stage and auditorium, using strong physical gestures, and also non-harmonic sounds and effects. His works and writings often contain apocalyptic scenes that inspired Omsk Social Club & Alexander Iezzi for their own script. In this, a dialogue on Artaud’s theater serves as a starting point, whereby an actor proclaims the end of the world and another actor replies that there are two worlds that collide in the action unfolding.

After this scene, eight characters residing at a secret place called Mu are sent out on a journey tasked with collecting ​“all the sounds of the universe,” which are released when the two fictitious worlds collide. Mu stands for a hypothetical or fictitious sunken continent, also known by other names such as Lemuria, and which science fiction and esoteric literature situate somewhere between Madagascar and India. Here, it is claimed, is the place where human civilization really developed. In order to do justice to this idea of a mystical world, over a period of two days each character is played by two people. Right from the beginning, each participant is given to feel that they have the leading role in this play, a situation that leads to each character creating experiences for all the others. The film made of this is the basis material for the installation on show in Graz, and during the performance the camera is a tool that thus facilitates analysis and contemplation of the action. On the first day of the roleplay only sound recordings are made, and on the second day only film without sound.

For the presentation within the Give Rise To series, these recordings are merged to form the immersive installation. In order to activate the installation, one of the characters from the roleplay travels to Graz to be the ​“gate keeper” who opens the ​“doors” to Fucking Hardcore Self-Divinization Weekender. Entrance into the cosmos of this work is initiated by a singing performance for the audience, which takes place at two-hourly intervals between 6 pm and midnight.

The Fucking Hardcore Self-Divinization Weekender project not only draws on a subversive and eclectic concept that challenges our concept of reality, but is also an example of how media-specific borders between performance, re-enactment, and video can be transgressed in contemporary art to create complex systems and contexts.

Curated by Cathrin Mayer

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