Choose Mutation
Accelerator’s spring programme is imbued with elements of play, games and the celebrational as subversive strategies for empathy, and survival. With a wide range of practices, this spring’s artists come together in their interest in expanding normative social systems. The presence of play manifests itself on several levels, from the desire to create meaningful encounters with open ends, to an effort to loosen up accepted conventions in dance, film, and audience relations.
CHEAP and Xiu Xiu. From left: Angela Seo (Xiu Xiu), Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), Vaginal Davis, Susanne Sachsse and Marc Siegel. Photo: Hector Martinez
About the exhibition
Choose Mutation, with Photographs by Annette Frick
17 MAY – 15 SEP (summer break 17 June – 20 August)
Accelerator presents CHEAP: Choose Mutation, with Photographs by Annette Frick. CHEAP is a Berlin-based art collective with the following long-time members: artist and performer Vaginal Davis, translator Daniel Hendrickson, actor and artist Susanne Sachsse and academic Marc Siegel.
CHEAP’s work materialises as performances, videos, festivals, concerts, talk shows, installations and radio programmes. In any format, their practice combines theory and pleasure, politics and whimsy, aesthetics and sex. The exhibition title is inspired by writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado’s article, “Learning from the Virus” (Artforum, June 2020). CHEAP says, “choose mutation. Don’t wait for it to choose you.”
Choose Mutation, with Photographs by Annette Frick is an exhibition at Accelerator that features a new video presented on a silver-leafed, motorised billboard with a site-specific surround sound. The sound and image installation is accompanied by nine larger-than-life-sized black and white photographs by Annette Frick with portraits of CHEAP from some of their earliest projects, including CHEAP Klub.
The exhibition culminates in the performance Original Sin performed live at Accelerator on September 14 by Vaginal Davis, Susanne Sachsse, Marc Siegel, and Xiu Xiu (Jamie Stewart, Angela Seo). Tickets for the performance will be sold via Moderna Museet (more info TBA).
The experimental video Choose Mutation combines found and original footage in a propaganda-like, dystopian collage about paranoia and the effects of social and political control on language and the body. With a layered soundtrack that includes text and lyrics by Susanne Sachsse and Marc Siegel, found sounds and original music by Xiu Xiu (Jamie Stewart); the moving image work treats sound as code, text as images and vice versa.
About CHEAP
The art collective CHEAP was founded in 2001 in Berlin by translator Daniel Hendrickson, actor and artist Susanne Sachsse, and academic Marc Siegel. Artist and performer Vaginal Davis has worked with the international, transdisciplinary group from its early days, first as a guest, then as a crucial collective member. CHEAP currently collaborates frequently with artists such as Jonathan Berger, Pola Sieverding and Xiu Xiu, and has previously worked closely with Phil Collins, Annette Frick, Wilhelm Hein, and Bruce LaBruce, among many others.
Credits
Concept for exhibition at Accelerator: Susanne Sachsse, Marc Siegel, Martin Siemann
Photography: Annette Frick
Performance: Susanne Sachsse, Marc Siegel, Vaginal Davis, Xiu Xiu (Angela Seo & Jamie Stewart)
Curator: Richard Julin, curator and artistic director Accelerator – in dialogue with Hendrik Folkerts, curator Moderna Museet
The exhibition Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product is initiated by Moderna Museet and extends across several locations in Stockholm: Moderna Museet, Nationalmuseum, Accelerator, Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Tensta konsthall and MDT (Moderna Dansteatern). Each institution highlights a different aspect of Vaginal Davis’s expansive practice.
Video Credits
With: Maximilian Brauer, Vaginal Davis, Salome Gersch, Gotthard Lange, Susanne Sachsse, Şenol Şentürk, Angela Seo, Marc Siegel, Martin Siemann, Pola Sieverding, Jamie Stewart
Camera: Susanne Sachsse, Şenol Şentürk, Martin Siemann
Montage: Susanne Sachsse
Animation and visual effects: Martin Siemann
Script: Susanne Sachsse & Marc Siegel
Music: Xiu Xiu (Jamie Stewart)
Audio direction: Susanne Sachsse
Sound recording: Utku Sahin
Sound mixing: Boris Wilsdorf @andere Baustelle Tonstudio Berlin
Additional video material: Miriam Gossing and Lina Sieckmann, Peter Haas, Thomas Lambertz, Ruth Schönegge, Walter Solon
Music for the song “Vom Virus lernen” by John Blue
Selected texts borrowed from: Kathy Acker, Gloria Anzaldúa, William S. Burroughs, Paddy Chayefsky, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Hollaender, Gertrud Koch, Paul B. Preciado
Audio produced by: Susanne Sachsse, Marc Siegel and Xiu Xiu in co-production with steirischer herbst ’20
Video produced by: CHEAP and Accelerator 2024
With support from:
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