‘Manageable Matter: Maces I—IX’ explores ideas of gravity and grace through different sculptural variations of glass artichoke hearts—closed, in the process of blossoming, and in full bloom. Combined with silicone, metal, wood and light elements, these forms will be embraced by club-like stems; beginning as medieval clubs, drum major maces will transform, branch and ramify, to become elongated driftwood sticks. These figures will continue to grow and evolve into phantom limbs of bleached coral that develop a fluorescent luminosity before they die. The result will be massive, yet mutable, flexible prostheses that will be used as performative objects for a series of events on the theme of ‘Optimistic Incrementalism’— ‘incrementalism’ refers to a strategy of action characterised by trial and failure, expansion, and improvement.

The series of medieval, parliamentary, and ceremonial maces will explore a conflation between Ciro ‘The Artichoke King’ Terranova (July 1988—February 20, 1938) who was a mobster who dominated the artichoke trade in America; the play ‘The Resistible Rise of Arturo UI’ by Bertolt Brecht, which is a detailed analysis of the economic and psychological roots of fascism that is based on the above story (although artichokes were replaced by cauliflower); ‘Glitch Feminism: a manifesto’ by Legacy Russell (Verso Books, 2020); and radical fashion from the ‘Schembart Carnival’, 15th century, Nuremberg, where artichokes were set aflame with fireworks embedded in their fleshy forms.

The nine forms will be contrasted by the dynamism of nine performers’ gestures, to explore a friction between response and reaction. Combined with the recent speculative score ‘Shifting Tethers or How to Conduct a Flustered Symphony’—that will serve as a print on dance floor as scenography for this study, the working process will culminate in a ‘hyper-glitch’ opera as a time-based installation, and will be further adapted for the medium of film.

Credits

• Blacksmith: Bartholomäus Kinner & sons
• Glass Assistance: William Faulkner, Berlin Glas e.V.
• Silicone Assistance: Caterina Veronesi
• Movement Research : Katrina Bastian, Matilda Cobanli, Yuri Fortini
• Composer: Jacob Stoy
• Dramaturg: Maire Glassl

Related Publication

• DIAPHANES Magazine No. 11
  surrogacies
  2023
  Ed.: diaphanes
  Diaphanes
• Scores for Daily Living
  2020
  Ed.: Mark Soo
  K Verlag
• Ankyloglossia (n.tongue-tie)
  2014
  Ed.: Emma Waltraud Howes & Franziska Morlok
  Co-published by K. Verlag and Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH.
• Ankyloglossia (n. tongue-tie) e-book
  2015
  Ed.: Emma Waltraud Howes & Franziska Morlok
  Rimini Berlin