About the exhibition

Choose Mutation, with photographs by Annette Frick
17 MAY – 15 SEP (summer break 17 June – 20 August)

CHEAP uses methods and formats of the avantgarde and queer subcultures. Their art materialises as performances, festivals, concerts, talk shows and radio programs. In any format, they work in a collective practice that combines theory and pleasure, politics and joy, aesthetics and cordiality. The exhibition title is inspired by the writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado’s article Learning from the Virus (Artforum, June 2020). CHEAP’s core message is to choose mutation and not wait for it to choose you.

Choose Mutation with photographs by Annette Frick is an installation at Accelerator that features a new video presented on a motorised billboard with surround sound. The sound and image work is accompanied by ten life-sized black and white photographs by Annette Frick capturing CHEAP performances over the past twenty years.

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). 

Choose Mutation is an experimental video that mixes 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.
CHEAP: ‘Choose Mutation’, German and English, 56′ 30″, 2024

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.

About CHEAP

The art collective CHEAP was founded in 2001 in Berlin by actress Susanne Sachsse, translator Daniel Hendrickson and academic Marc Siegel. Performer and artist 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 Xiu Xiu, Jonathan Berger, and Pola Sieverding, and has previously worked closely with Phil Collins, Bruce LaBruce, Annette Frick and Wilhelm Hein, 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

With support from:

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