Performa 09 / The Italian Academy at Columbia University; developed in residency at The Watermill Center, October 2009; The Arts Arena / American University of Paris / Door Studios, May 2010
created by Carlos Soto & Charles Chemin
installation Christian Wassmann
music Tristan Bechet
performers Nicolas Cartier, Jennifer Dees, Clara Galante, Elke Luyten, Joshua Seidner, Alice Stern, Anne-Laure Tondu, Mai Ueda
texts J.G. Ballard, Umberto Boccioni, Kenward Elmsley, F.T. Marinetti, Valentine de Saint-Point
produced by Luisa Gui
duration 50 minutes
the creation of GIRLMACHINE was made possible by the generous contributions from the following individuals and foundations: Nancy & Fred Poses, Sonia Raiziss Giop Foundation, Andrefo de Palchi, Marella Caracciolo & Sandro Chia, Amy & Ronald Guttman, Naomi & Irving Benson, Solange Fabiao & Steven Holl, Annie Ohayon, Meredith Palmer and Eric Schaub
Performance directors Carlos Soto and Charles Chemin took the Futurist ambivalence toward women as their subject in GIRLMACHINE, an evening-length performance held in the Teatro of the Italian Academy at Columbia University that kicked off the two-day conference Beyond Futurism: F.T. Marinetti, Writer. In the words of Soto and Chemin, the Futurists “feared and loathed” women, “reducing them to a pure object, a pleasure tool”—but were also “secretly enraptured and entrapped by the feminine.” In GIRLMACHINE, a text compiled from diverse sources—including writings by Marinetti, French playwright and filmmaker Sascha Guitry, and New Wave science fiction author J.G. Ballard—formed the basis for a gradually unfolding series of tableaux. Eight black-clad performs moved through the space, exacting slow, sometimes mechanical, sexually-charged choreography beneath monumental silver mylar inflatables, special designed by architect Christian Wassmann to transform the neo-Renaissance-style Teatro with their moving, reflective shapes. The ongoing scripted dialogue mixed Marinetti’s odes to violence with Ballard’s techno-erotics, hinting at a series of lovers’ quarrels and the fragmentation that results. In this associative journey through poetry, novels, manifestos, obsessions, and stereotypes, GIRLMACHINE revealed the many layers of Futurists’ conception of gender identity and its relation to contemporary ideas.
— text from RoseLee Goldberg’s catalogue, Performa 09: Back to Futurism (2011)
performer Elke Luyten; photographs © Pavel Antonov and Marc Scrivo
performers Mai Ueda and Joshua Seidner
installation view
performer Alice Stern
performers Joshua Seidner and Clara Galante
Performa 09: Back to Futurism by RoseLee Goldberg (Editor, Introduction), Lana Wilson (Editor), Hal Foster (Foreword); Performa Publications, 2011
program for Paris performances, designed by Carlos Soto