ERNESTYNA ORLOWSKA

The Performance Make Your Body Your Machine investigates the relationship I have with my own body. This relationship becomes visible in the interaction with my surroundings, in this case a big bouncy corporate backpack with a slogan that fits the title of the performance perfectly.

Why are we talking about our bodies as something that we have, and not as something we are?

The title is borrowed from a self motivational fitness bracelet.

The body is socially and politically in many fields of tension. How should a female declared body move and present itself?

It should be: productive, reproductive, beautiful, seductive, strong, independent, fragrant, smooth, maternal, soft, gentle, airbrushed. But maybe it is: confused, irritated, clumsy, silly, gangly, too tall, not feminine enough, stressed. In this field of action I move as a performer between the states. The norms and requirements also clash with my queer appearance, which is given by my above-average body size.

I assume that an explicitly dualistic view of body and mind renders the conditioning of the body visible. I am interested in the tension between the social conditioning of the body and the body's own embodied knowledge.

My hypothesis is: if one thinks of the body as a temporary address for the living person, the contingency of all bodily norms of movement and constructs of action becomes visible.

Photos: Margot Roth