For the first time, South-African artist Jessica Doucha and German artist Marco Miehling come together for a collaboration. Together, they inaugurate multiple temporary starting points across the Nirox grounds.
A durational, multi-site response to a sculptural object conceptualised by Marco Miehling. The performance sites between the beginning and the end are unknown. The duration spent at each location is indeterminable. The day culminates with an evening bonfire brimming from the depths of the Earth.
Beyond the binary nature of our human existence, rooted in our genetic and ancestral cognitive patterns, lies a fundamental survival mechanism. The fight or flight response. Only by this, we survived the cold of night. Here again we find ourselves verging on the locus of the cradle of humankind. Between gravity and will let curiosity determine the experience.
The sites are determined by the lay of the land in which the acclivity (an upward slope) is a central element to the unfolding of the action based performance. Each unknown parameter invites a sense of curiosity, as a methodology, in relation to the nature of the given sculpture. A new threshold of self (re)flection is (re)created again and again, as she replicates the actions leading to the fight or flight response, which naturally occurs in the face of an imminent physical danger.
Within this new physical and cognitive paradigm of exploring the threshold of human responsiveness to fear, she cannot fly in the face of the socio political dialogues, which keep her stuck in the unknown. It is in our collective human nature to constantly adapt; no matter how subtle, as long as there is movement there is change.
“The course of humankind periodically pivots due to a moment of insightful genius: a lightning strike – or perhaps the friction of two stones – was once transformed into the first controlled fire, a critical evolutionary landmark in the development of society. The control over energy is, and will always be, defining the history of humans, providing at once the wonders and the controversies we face today.”