feel soft

Exhibition with performative interludes
2023

at ASC Art House West, Croydon, London

Coordinator: Mira Hirtz

Performers: Kate Brown, Carolina Cury  

All photos 2023 at ASC Art House West by Adele Watts

How can our creative processes create agency in our lives?

In “feel soft”, two artists gave each other company in their practices that evolve around the lived experience of chronic and mental health conditions. Both shared pieces from their ongoing body of works which shift back and forth between felt states, bodily experience, collage and paint as well as expansive installation. They explore how creativity can foster agency and acceptance within our lives and how we, as part of this exploration, soften into complexity. 

Combining fine arts and performative approaches, the exhibition took over the gallery space at ASC and was informed by a choreographic perspective. The artworks evoked gestures and dynamic pathways that encouraged the visitors to reflect not only on the objects, but also on how they themselves were being moved through the space.

The exhibition and performative interludes took place in a relaxed atmosphere with seating and places to rest available. During the performative interludes, the audience was welcomed to get comfortable and try different perspectives, including to go to the first floor and watch the space from above.

With the aim to not just fill the gallery, but to actually create more space and an atmosphere of slowing down and softening, the artists invited theaudience to rest, dream and breath along. The visitors were invited to make the space their own and

interact with the works through a set of scores and a touch box which contained materials that were used within the exhibition.

The artworks:

In her ongoing body of work “relocating voice”, Franziska Boehm explores the weight and place of sounding through mapping and performing. She studies the skill of releasing tensions stored in our bodies via sounding and moving sensations. She is fascinated by the sounds that human voices can make and how the feedback of those sounds can transform and catapult us into imagining ourselves and the world we live in otherwise. Exploring the depth and richness that our human experiences offer, she works with what we come up against: desires, needs, frustrations, anxieties - once we manage to slow down from our busy lives.

In the ongoing body of work “body chronicles”, Mira Hirtz reflects on the anatomical and energetic alignment of the body – its order of parts, its density and tone, its organic shapes. How do these define health? And how do chronic health conditions open up a reflection on what health, the body and organic shapes even are? Mira Hirtz uses creative tools to wonder about these questions. Therein, moving and sensing her body and its relation to others serves as a ground for her performance practice, as well as for her paintings and installative work in which she re/composes shapes and dynamic structures.

About the performative interludes:

Slow and not so slow (performative interlude)

With Kate Brown and Mira Hirtz

Kate Brown and Mira Hirtz explored some of the topics of the exhibition through movement and stillness. The performative interludes played as well with the way we usually behave in an exhibition space. How do we observe, pose, rest? How do we relate to the architecture, the art works and each other? Do we find ways to test and listen to our desires?

the shrimp is attracted to the emptiness (performative interlude)

With Carolina Cury and Franziska Boehm

…is a performative response to samely titled and exhibited collage. It explored where a sound begins in our bodies and where it ends. How much a sound might weigh in our sensations and how the feedback of our own voice affects how we think of ourselves as humans: perhaps shrimplike, perhaps shapeshifting, perhaps otherworldly, perhaps…

All photos of Mira's performance 2023 at ASC Art House West by Adele Watts