City of Women
While
bearing a pre-eminent concern for the gesture, the performative in relation to
gender, as well as other theatre and performance related elements, Stefanie Seibold´s work manifests
itself in various formats. She is specifically interested in shifts of meaning
through a re-contextualisation of images and other signifiers that point to
queer readings. In 2005 a site-specific series of installations entitled City of Women
was initiated at a gallery in Liège (Belgium), and will be continued
this autumn at the lesbian club Monokel. The title refers to the concept of a
separatist utopia, while the installations are comprised in such a manner as to
form a specific narrative from elements of Stefanie Seibold´s work at a
specific moment and place. It is also intended to react to the club aspect of
this venue with an opening night DJ/VJ event in collaboration with Marthe van Dessel from bolwerK
interrational (Antwerp).
The
City of Women installation in
Monokel will include a performance video entitled I Am Not Half the Man I
Used to Be (Utrecht,
2005). In this work Brussels-based actress Tara Casey performs a fragmented
version of a piece of text trying to make sense of the concept of the gaze. The
text discusses that female spectators eventually have to perform a lesbian
gaze, which has been largely omitted by theory. Another part of the installation shall be the Suffragette
City / City of Women series (2004), which consists of eight
video-performances cut from a long improvised performance session. The scenes
take place in a room in front of a wall. Two performers appear as hybrid
creatures, and are different versions of the same thing. They wear red wigs,
body stockings, black nylons, and garters. Erotic references and props are used
to casually create a space for carnevalesque attempts concering representional,
love, sex, and similar such relations.
A
visual archive A Reader, produced
in 2006, is to be distributed in various contexts and venues throughout this
year, the first of which was the Utrecht
Feminist Legacies and Potentials in Contemporary Art Practice symposium
held in March. The three posters – A Reader – an independent visual
work by Stefanie Seibold, also functions as a context for her work in general,
and as a queer and feminist fanzine in particular. The idea is to
illustrate a facet of desire through a combination of images and other
materials that exists only in an in-between, that has to constantly
re-install itself in the fissures and gaps that any hegemonial discourse – like
heterosexuality itself – leaves. The posters are also meant to represent a realm
of politics that deals with the development of strategies to de-naturalise
normative concepts of identity, the body, sex and gender. The posters
will be distributed with specified tickets purchased at the 2006 City of Women Festival.
Stefanie Seibold
Organisation: City
of Women
In collaboration with: ŠKUC-LL-Klub Monokel
With the support of: MOL-kabinet županje
