Incarnate
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Performance: Oct 6-8, 2022
Incarnate explores the notion of power and its embodiment through a performance structured into a prologue at the Museum and five chapters. A set of scenic elements—arch, column, and throne—represent the symbolic attributes of a fantastical power. Like Baroque theater, which is based on the idea of a world in precarious balance and on the verge of tipping into chaos, the artist depicts bodies on the brink, in a contemporary world at the crossroads of crises born of anger, unpredictability, and anxiety.
Science, Love, Religion, Violence, and Money are the central themes anchoring each chapter of the performance, forming an epic narrative woven with twists and dramatic moments. They seek to question the foundational principles of power: how it is gained, distributed, overcome, and lost.
Isolated bodies wrestle with existential quests but ultimately merge into a collective and powerful energy, where forces emerge and abruptly shift. Much like in fantasy tales or Netflix dramas, the quest for the throne fuels the narrative with anticipated twists. Kings (here understood as masculine since power remains fundamentally masculine) follow one another, achieving supreme rewards only to then be quickly dethroned. This mirrors Macbeth's prophecy, reminding us that "life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage" and is ultimately "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Science is the first concept addressed, conjuring images of medicine, the cold analysis of bodies, and their evaluation.
From this cold analysis arises Love, an upheaval to which one cannot resist. Scenes of “rom-com” poignancy reveal a desire to bite and absorb the other’s being, as the power of love contends here.
Incarnate and carnal love, however, furtively passes to that of Religion, and its quest for purity and transcendence. Love then assumes an idealized version, unattainable without doubt but never truly denied for those who cry out to it, even as it never fully materializes.
From religion’s mystical scenes, the performance shifts to Violence, isolating and shielding itself through acts of self-contraction. This includes paranoid control scenes, glove palpations, and lasers that project fear. Yet, “there is no armor against fate,” as James Shirley wrote in his poem “The Glories of Our Blood and State.” Maintained by violence, power can thus be overturned.
Money becomes the final chapter, embodying greed, avarice, and the neoliberal need for ever more.
Performers:
Magdalena Mitterhofer, Roman Ole, Daena Phan, Lukáš Hofmann, Nico Walker and Inti Wang
Clothes:
Lukas Hofmann’s “Let It Go” was part of the performance programme Move 2022, curated by Caroline Ferreira. Text by Caroline Ferreira.
Photographer: Hervé Veronese
Videographer: Kryštof Hlůže
Incarnate
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Performance: Oct 6-8, 2022
Science is the first concept addressed, conjuring images of medicine, the cold analysis of bodies, and their evaluation.
From this cold analysis arises Love, an upheaval to which one cannot resist. Scenes of “rom-com” poignancy reveal a desire to bite and absorb the other’s being, as the power of love contends here.
Incarnate and carnal love, however, furtively passes to that of Religion, and its quest for purity and transcendence. Love then assumes an idealized version, unattainable without doubt but never truly denied for those who cry out to it, even as it never fully materializes.
Money becomes the final chapter, embodying greed, avarice, and the neoliberal need for ever more.