Tanzquartier Wien

Lubricating, fisting, greasing – a black plastic jar that looks like the packaging of muscle boosters – the vaseline-like substance extracted from it makes the skin shine in the spotlight and oscillates with the movements of the four performers, who smell it, slide, slip – between lubricant and hormone gel, body fluid and protective layer.

Gel is neither liquid nor solid nor gaseous. The substance is somewhere in between. Lau Lukkarila, Claudia Lomoschitz, Gleb Amankulov and sound artist Manuel Riegler look at each other inquiringly and then nod to each other, because it’s a good idea to foster consensus in a team and it’s also a good idea to warm up before doing sport. In their black polyester tracksuits they start to jogg side by side, from one end of the stage to the other and back, over and over again. Rhythmic sound patterns and repetitions in the video editing emphasise the unvarying movements of the sport. Spoken keywords accompany the quick cuts like fragments of thoughts and set the contentual framework for the artists’ explorations: “sound of hormones / touch is like food / I’m hungry / sensitive in public transport / it comes in waves / will this happen to me too / discourse runs in my blood / stress / medical stuff / menstruation / ejaculation”, etc. – physical and psychological states by means of which they negotiate themselves and being with one another.

And so the training continues, from football and contact improvisation to taking care, fighting, cuddling, raving, solo-performing Latin American couple dance in tassel trousers through to turning in circles like children, holding hands. The performers’ bodies pulsate and tremble on the floor in a blue-red light cone, casting membrane-like, colourful shadows and looking like coloured cell cultures in Petri dishes that are usually cultivated on a gelled nutrient medium too, like agar, which enables easy visual checks. Accompanied by Riegler’s sound, the movements, some of which are predefined, negotiate bio- and socio-psychological factors and sound out the body’s own as well as external communication systems. The performers’ interdisciplinarity and their physicalities, which are shaped by different contexts (professional football, ballroom dance, sound, visual arts), as well as the influence of their existence on one another are consciously and not unironically displayed: they use infrared massage dolphins to apply pressure on certain points of the body for relaxation purposes or to distort their voices. Putting on the same training jackets, which are personalised with each performer’s name embroidered, not only indicates the team-like cohesion but can also be understood as incorporating the others’ contexts.

The frontality of the stage situation and the separation from the (virtual) auditorium are frequently dissolved by a change in distance and the perspective of the camera. This means that touches, gestures and facial expressions are experienced more intensively. Brief moments of collective pauses, which usually mark the transition between two scenes, create a kind of cessation – before exhaustion sets in, the performers hug each other. A hug to provide comfort in the face of an internalised pressure to perform? This impression of critical withdrawal, if not refusal, is reinforced by the stage space, which remains white and clean and shows no visible traces of the projections or the physical activity. In this sense, the full stops in the title of the performance G.E.L. also become pauses, which break the word ‘gel’ down into its components. The individual letters could be abbreviations for other meanings such as ‘General Endocrine Life’, ‘Group Element Laboratory’ or ‘Generated Emotional Level’. Actually, however, they put a full stop, or rather three full stops, precisely because of the in-between they leave open.

Gianna Virginia Prein works as an artist and writer. In her trans-media practice, she examines overlaps of physical and technological phenomena with posthumanist concepts. Degree in Scenography at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Linguistic Art and TransArts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and Print & Time Based Media at the University of the Arts London. Publications e.g. in Spike Art Quarterly, in the catalogue for Tanzplattform 2018, on viereinhalbsätze.com, in Jenny; contributions for various artist’s books.