The Monuments | Chapter 12 | Your Foot In My Mouth
Kühlhaus Berlin
25.5.2024
Site-specific Installation and durational performance
Chapter 12, titled Your Foot In My Mouth, transformed the raw, industrial atmosphere of Kühlhaus into a charged space exploring the boundaries of intimacy, coercion, and consent. Presented as a sustained, multi-performer intervention, the work centered on acts of physical proximity and controlled discomfort, examining the fine line between shared vulnerability and aggressive intrusion.
The performers utilized minimal sculptural elements—low, unstable platforms and tightly-bound materials—as physical anchors in the vast space. These structures demanded constant negotiation, forcing bodies into awkward, interdependent relationships that mirrored social and political negotiations surrounding voice and silencing. The piece questioned where the individual ends and the collective begins when speech is obstructed or swallowed.
Duration became a tool of attrition, forcing both the performers and the audience to endure moments of acute, prolonged tension. This chapter served as a primal, visceral predecessor to the themes of isolation and care explored in later installments, framing the voice—and its potential for removal—as the initial political monument.
Project by: JAŠA
Performing: Mattias Gimigliano, Camilla Barbera, Gáspár Bálint-Hazai, Jean-Charles Vallet, John Shades, Laura DeAngelis, Slobodan Malić, Tjaša Bucik, Harshini Karunaratne, Vincent Schneider
Sound with: Zlatko Shirol, Mario Babojelić, Junzi
Foto by: Carolina Genoni