Give Rise To Sunny Pfalzer & Marshall Vincent

Rub your face onto your shoulder

10.–11.9.2022

How can you bring back the physical memory of an embrace? Rub your face onto your shoulder (2021 – ongoing), a performative installation presented within the series Give Rise To… at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, tells stories about togetherness, vandalism, and romanticism. The installation consists of textile objects and an audio meditation. The materials of these objects were originally worn as clothing by six actors during Pfalzer’s performance Hold a Ghost (2020÷21), when they protested, flirted, played, and danced in them. Then the clothes were cut into pieces and sewn together again as cloth sculptures that invite the audience to stop and look. These objects thus bear a memory of the bodies that once wore them. Instead of moving along a street, in Rub your face onto your shoulder these bodies are now at peace. The performative aspect of the work consists of a number of exercises that are also used in contemporary dance in order to increase the dancers’ sensitivity for their own bodies. While Pfalzer communicates with the audience, the space is filled with Vincent’s music. The two alternate in an organic flow, creating an open situation characterized by collective participation and experience. In this work, the dimension of the political is not only contained in the narrative element that tells of protesting bodies but also in the active decision to create a space for lingering and contemplation where it is possible to slow down and feel your own body and the bodies of others.

Curated by Cathrin Mayer