site-specific performance on a short of English Channel facing France with a horse plushie, brioche mold and digital print on paper accompanied by an installation of messages in bottles and a looping church bell sound, 5 hours, 2024.
performed for QUEERCALL on Sunny Sands, Folkestone, United Kingdom.
video documentation by Marco Berardi and Baiba Sprance.
photo documentation by Manuel Vason and Tiff Cryer.
translation by Sergio Reoberto Gratteri.
translated into .command10-17/text, pencil and digital print cutouts on tea0soaked paper and handwriting on paper, rolled in bottles, 27.5x35cm, 2024.
translated into Gace (study of Evil I), pencil drawings cutout on tea-soaked and digital print on paper, 21x.29.7cm, 2024.
Oh ho ho ho ho. Viens, à genoux devant moi.
Oh, c'est l'heure du thé.
A wide sandy beach with an ever vaster view of the English Channel facing the shore of France on clear days. A male figure standing by the steps leading to the beach, as he slowly enters the performance stage. As he walks barefooted, he leaves a print of a cartoon-styled eye, adorned with a blue iris, almost like a sapphire on his left footprints. As he approaches a toy horse waiting idly in the middle of the beach, he leaves a trail of blue dots, as a visible remnant of the journey he has just taken, or even a constant reminder of the way back home.
Parce que je te protégerai, tu devrais continuer à sourire.
Approaching his performance companion, he ties his right foot onto the horse plushie, imbalancing his entire body posture. Slowly he scoops the sand around him into a piece of brioche mold and stacks them around a chosen spot. Over the duration, the molded sand accumulate and become a small pedestal for his left leg to stand on, restabilizing his body.
Le goûter d'aujourd'hui est une brioche.
Over the period of the entire performance, a gentle church bell could be heard omitted from his body while audience is also invited to explore the messages in bottles installed around him. The messages are handwritten in French, as if they were sent from across the channel; which is also all this while has been directly on eyeviews of both the performer and audience, an apt backdrop for the natural stage.
Si seulement nous pouvions renaître, jouons encore alors, d'accord?
Si nous pouvions renaître, ce serait bien de naître à nouveau jumeaux...
Euh... Je veux renaître en tant que cheval!
Aku の̶on Josephine is inspired by the Evilious Chronicles (2008-2016), an expansive dark fantasy multi-media series conceptualized by Akuno-P (also known as moth) originally told in songs using the VOCALOID software. As a wordplay, Aku refers to first-person singular pronoun in Indonesian but also the phonetic for 悪 which means evil in Japanese. hence the piece explores and criticizes personal reflection of values and virtues but also notion of masculinity and its sovereignties. approached through the use of playful sand sculpting and childlike companion of the horse plushie, the nostalgia is contrasted by the solemn hopes within the bottles. Echoing the artist's personal experience of growing up, or perhaps, now being a grown up, Aku の̶on Josephine recollects his inner selves and a hopeful projection of what could be coming next; perhaps an inevitable feeling of regrets.
Je te protégerai, même s'il faut pour cela devenir maléfique.