Playlist + Smartphone, Headphones, Cardboard, Wood, Marker, Duration: Battery of the Smartphone
Digital Video + Photography
2016
I put a spell on you is a performative protest created in response to the sadness felt after I was dumped. Appropriating a symbolic object, I used protest signs as a tool of my personal fight against loss. During the performance, I produced these signs out of cardboard and wood, writing messages with a black marker. My slogans were song titles picked from a 727-song playlist, created for my former girlfriend, which she never knew about. Throughout the performance, I listened to the playlist through headphones. Starting by listening to one song and using its duration to pick the next, and making a single sign: then repeat the process. As a performance item, my headphones isolated me from my surroundings and gave me a feeling of intimacy, separating myself from the audience as I was the only one able to hear the music. The battery of my phone limited the duration of the performance, which took roughly three hours and thirty minutes. I placed the protest signs in the garden in front of the sculptor building during the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts’ annual exhibition in 2016.
Initially I used a battery run sound system for my performance. Mimicking teenagers with ghetto blasters, I played the songs loudly to random audiences on the streets of Zurich.
Both forms of my performative protest happened within the framework of Manifestina, a self-organized group project alongside of Manifesta11 in Zurich. Manifestina was initiated by Maurizio Cattelan to deal with forms of manifestation and demonstration in an artistic manner. It consisted of actions and interventions in the public sphere of Zurich.
15.06.-21.08.16 „Manifestina“, ArtBox and in Zurich, CH
15.07. – 17.07.2016 Annual Exhibition 2016, States Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, DE
28.09.-31.09.16 „Manifestina goes Palermo“, Palermo Gallery, Stuttgart, DE
