Is technology “a bitch”? Or, more generally, a dog? Contemporary dancer Silke “Silk” Grabinger spends three times 150 minutes in an installation with the (in)famous robot dog model “Spot” from Boston Dynamics. The central question of this confrontation between human and machine is: Who is taming whom? The artistic “prequel” to SPOTSHOTBEUYS has become a classic: fifty years ago exactly, actionist artist Joseph Beuys flew to New York, drove in an ambulance from the airport to René Block Gallery and spent three days and three nights there in a cage together with a coyote. Grabinger responds to this performance, entitled I Like America, and America Likes Me with a highly topical reimagining in which technology demonstrates its superiority as a second nature.
Concept, choreography and performance: Silke Grabinger
Rehearsal direction: Gergely Dudás-Simó
Dramaturgy: Ludwig Felhofer and Silke Grabinger
Costume design: Bianca Fladerer
Lighting design: Max Windisch-Spoerk
Handling Spot: Eva Fischer and Alfred Weidinger
Outside Eye: Michael Stolhofer and Michael Eickhoff
Production management: Gergely Dudás-Simó and Bettina Bakos
Production team: Marie Scholze and Astrid Dober
Video: Karol Kensy
Photography: Meinrad Hofer
This performance was developed as part of the Artist-in-Residence programme at Bildraum Studio/Bildrecht. A production by SILK Cie. & SILK Fluegge KLISCOPE, supported by the City of Linz, Kulturland Oberösterreich and BMKOES.