hide and seek

2025, TWINSKIN® disposable face mask, reusable silicone practice makeup board, leather gloves, microphone, speakers, mixer; approx. 20 minutes
 
In hide and seek I examine how voice, masking, and naming intertwine to produce meaning and regulate bodies. Through distortion, repetition, and reduction to sound, language loses its stabilizing function and transforms into rhythm and breath. At the same time, names appear in series, interchangeable and seemingly random, drawn from dating sites and spam mails. 

Within this constellation, the masks operate as active skins. They modulate visibility and access, intimacy and distance. Gestural fragments from Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz surface as memories. Song and archive converge: Die Lorelei, a German folk song sung a cappella, collides with the recorded voice of Robin Morgan from The Network of the Imaginary Mother, listing women subjected to violence during the witch hunts.
The lyrical and the documentary, seduction and withdrawal, inhabit the same (vocal) space. 

Performance documentation We are all Mermaids - Meerjungfrauen, Grenzgänger*innen und die Schönheit des Fluiden 2025, Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Wilhelmshaven (GER)
Photos: Rainer Goehringer