PERFORMANCES 2019

Mette Ingvartsen (BE/DK)

7 Pleasures

Now they are all finally presented together: the four extra-sharp Red Pieces by Mette Ingvartsen, to come (extended), 7 Pleasures, 21 pornographies and 69 positions. In her series, the Danish artist reflects on the history of sexuality, as it has been shown in performance and performance art since the 1960s to today. In her pieces, Ingvartsen deals with nudity and gender relations in very different artistic compositions, with the cultural construction and manipulation of bodies up to the ways how we have sex together. Ingvartsen encounters all this with wit and sensuality, political sensitivity and great candor.

We no longer want to be hemmed in by anti-carnal puritanism. But is what commercialism is currently selling us as gratifying really all there is to it? In the third part of her Red Pieces tetralogy, Mette Ingvartsen sets out to prove that there is still a lot more to discover. Her 7 Pleasures could well be the gateway to new notions of sensual enjoyment. Ingvartsen has twelve performers cuddle together, on top of and intertwined with each other. Skin on skin, breath in breath and emotions on emotions: seven forms of sensual gratification and pleasure, seven different and not-so-commonplace ideas about the human ability to enjoy not merely being an end in itself of perception but also, potentially, political dynamite. Because whoever has answers to sensual needs has an instrument of power at their disposal that should not be underestimated.

Duration: 100 min

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