SPOOKY BUTT
Co-Curated with Šimon Kadlčak
Graphic design: realitycongress & ver
With: Csaba Kis-Róka, Kinke Kooi, Markéta Wágnerová, Štěpán Brož, Marek Delong & Anna Slama, Kea Bolenz, Frank Yunker, Daniela Ponomarevová, Judita Levitnerová, Saon, Julie Villard & Simon Brossard, Chin Tsao, Leon Eisermann, Sebastian Mittl, Laura Lintrup, Petr Nápravník, Lukas Posch, José Eduardo Barajas, Denise Palmieri, Borsos Lörinc, Pille-Riin Jaik, Stred Sveta, Asfast, Pope Sangreta, Daphna Horenczyk & Jolyane Langlois
From July to September 2021, the underground space of catacombs situated beneath the Centre for Experimental Theatre will be transformed into imaginary (in)human intestines. This environment will serve as a scenic background for an international three-part exhibition project focusing on the topics of the human body and our unresolved relationship to our own physicality. Human body has been historically tied to an array of requirements, expectations and aesthetic norms. It is associated with categories of beauty, youth, health, and also their opposites, ugliness, aging, and illness. Despite the contemporary emancipation strategies, such as the body positivity movement and gender analysis, trying to free us from the dictates of these categories, we can view the human body from yet another perspective. As such, the human body is seen as an autonomous complex system of automatic processes including digestion, excretion, or blood circulation, which we only control to a little or no extent.
Spooky Butt presents the human body as a horror story in three acts. The first act, Bio-Organic, views the body itself as a source of anxiety and feelings of alienation. The terrors behind the mask of technological enhancement are revealed in the second act - Bio-Efficient. The final part, Co-Parasitic, shows us that our bodies can also be seen as a collective shell and it will hopefully offer a way out – just as spooky as the rest. The individual site-specific exhibitions together with the programme of side events aim to create a shared body of the exhibiting artists and the participants of the exhibition.
2–11/7 Spooky Butt 1: Bio-Organic / Somatic Digestion
4–15/8 Spooky Butt 2: Bio-Efficient / Recursive Procession
4–12/9 Spooky Butt 3: Co-Parasitic / Microbial Regression
Our Bodies are events of matter vitally transforming in time. Biological emissions forged in the midst of the universe, seemingly born out of nothing but the pure virtuoso potency of life. Meant to inhabit the empty space for approximately one cosmic second, to grow, to fold into themselves and create new forms of darkness
– Spooky Butt -
