Show & Tell

xx FOCUS SIMONE AUGHTERLONY

Switzerland/Germany/Great Britain / 2013 / 70'
Performance

Show & Tell sets up an experiment that challenges
the fragile relationship between what is said and what
is done. Phil Hayes and Simone Aughterlony consider
the supposed pecking order between these two modes
of communication and establish a dialogical practice
whereby sensing and sense making have equal status.
What may initially seem like a forced separation is
actually an invitation to the audience to experience
two different kinds of attention. We encounter the (his)
story of a body and a body evoking (her)story. Phil and
Simone do what they say, and they say what they do.
This paradox is not redundant. It is a playful strategy.
Starting from separate territories Show & Tell opens
up a shared space for negotiation in which word and
movement enter into a complex politics of interaction
outside of habitual hierarchies. While she articulates
as many bodies he tries to hijack the organism of the
audience in a heartbeat. Contaminating his voice
with her presence she is taken apart and away with
its suggestive meandering. Both storyteller as well as
show(wo)man, she and he map out the generic hi/stories
of a possible body that is never simply given as a whole,
but steps into our consciousness mostly in moments
of break down. This body is the silent prota gonist, the
imaginary third of this duet. Its biography inscribes in
eloquent scar s and significant sicknesses. It bleeds and
heals, grows and falls apart – authentically spectacular.
Or was it fantastically real?

In English.

Tickets: € 7 / € 5

A production by Verein für allgemeines Wohl, in coproduction
with La Bâtie – Festival de Genève, Gessnerallee Zrich, Hebbel am
Ufer Berlin. Supported by Stadt Zürich Kultur, Fachstelle Kultur
Kanton Zürich, Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council.

The Biofiction Trilogy is supported by the NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (NPN) International Guest Performance Fund for Dance, which is funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media on the basis of a decision by the German Bundestag, Stadt Zürich Kultur, Kanton Zürich Fachstelle Kultur and Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.