"Shedding"
Kat Macdonald (London/UK)
Continuous sound installation/performance
parallel zum Experimance Festival und im Rahmen der Ausstellung „Lost in Transition“
Continuing performance - Sunday, 14th July - 4pm - 8pm
Johannisstrasse 3A, 66111 Saarbrücken
Sound/Performance Concept: Kat Macdonald // Couture by Inflationary Assets (Agnes Cameron)
curator & introductions: Johannes Birringer Johannes Birringer
Gallery Puzić lädt Sie zu einer besonderen Aufführung der britischen Soundkünstlerin Kat Macdonald am Sonntag, den 14 Juli ein – parallel zum alljährlich stattfindenden Experimance Klang-Festival (dieses Jahr im Osthafen) und im Rahmen der kürzlich eröffneten Ausstellung Lost in Transition (the works of 18 international artists remain on display in the gallery).
Kat Macdonald’s artistic work draws on a complex web of experiences of trauma, queerness, heartbreak, social structures and gender. The work explores what it means to live a life intertwined with various forms of loss.
Through various media - performance, sound art, visual and written forms – her work asks audiences to reflect on their relationship as observers, with Macdonald decoupling traditional presentation formats and giving audiences a tactile sense of a body of work and its creation or unveiling.
Watch a short documentary video
shedding shedding (2024) is an exploration of the Jungian persona, the layers we impose on ourselves in order to achieve, in the artist's opinion, inauthentic and superficial connections, love and attraction. Can these masks ever be fully shed? Are we ever truly ourselves or rather assemblies of broken fragments of our selves created decades earlier? Does the pursuit of impersonal interactions with others really blind us to the reality of the world?
"Shedding" is a hybrid artwork that combines performance, audio design and play. The piece builds on the work "Shedding Femme" (2021) with a broader perspective and will premiere for the first time in Germany on July 14th.
Photos from the performance © Johannes Birringer
Artist Statement & Einführung in die Performance
shedding is a reworking of the piece shedding femme from 2021, an examination of the ways in which feminine archetypes around fashion and presentation can entangle and constrain us, even lead us to a lost concept of the self.
Fashion and cloth are an amplification of the persona. They hide and shape our forms to present us the way we ideally would want to be viewed. They are the perfect tools for an artist looking to explore a break from the persona and the pursuit of freedom. As both an artist and a human being - I look for routes away from constricting and limiting myself. I want to be seen beyond the deceptions of projected personalities.
You’ll notice this black space-sculpture in the gallery. Throughout the next 3-4 hours, I will slowly cut my way out of it, one small hole at a time. The piece will be complete once I have removed the dress at its centre, from the curtain of fabric.
You are welcome to come up and look through the small holes that I create, however, please refrain from clutching the fabric as it may fall down prematurely. The dress and its design were created by Inflationary Assets, a small Community Interest Company in the UK run by artist Agnes Cameron. You can find both this text and our websites on the screens by the technical desk.
The sound of this piece is twofold. As I cut small holes in the dress, there is a microphone inside that takes that sound and delivers it to software of my design. This software does a process called granulation, which you’ll hear through the fragmented sounds sent back.
The other part of the sound is a pre-recorded piece of music I composed called “internal_revolution” (available online), which will have its playback speed and direction altered every hour. The harmony of the two sounds forms the thematic backbone of the piece, perhaps conforming to the film music ideal of informing an audience of how to feel.
The piece will be live-streamed and broadcasted on Instagram via a camera in the corner.
You’ll notice some scissors distributed around the space. Please feel free to take them and cut a small hole in the dress, by pinching very gently before cutting.. The audience is welcome to come and go as they please, leaving the gallery and returning at different points to see how the piece has progressed.
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