PROXIMITY BY PROXY
Vibe Overgaard
Circuit
September 2022
In the performance, the handling of the thread suggests a relation between the body and greater circuits of the economy and global infrastructure. The work reflects on scale and alienation under capitalism. What are the options for human agency and sense of responsibility in the greater systems and circuits that extend beyond the reach of the human body?
The props for this performance take the shape of industrial machinery. Metallic looking parts with lines of thread running through them.
Threads become the circuits of a machine, local and global maps, development of the textile industry, production chains and economic infrastructure, circulation of money as capital and the flow of rivers and weather systems. ‘Circuit’ traces the flow of large and abstract structures from a place of the tangible and intimate.
The props for this performance take the shape of industrial machinery. Metallic looking parts with lines of thread running through them.
Threads become the circuits of a machine, local and global maps, development of the textile industry, production chains and economic infrastructure, circulation of money as capital and the flow of rivers and weather systems. ‘Circuit’ traces the flow of large and abstract structures from a place of the tangible and intimate.
Vibe Overgaard is the third in our ‘Proximity by Proxy’ performance series at Celsius Projects. After the pandemic there have been a summer of travel disruptions, strikes, and general lack of staff within many professions that are important for the running of society. The flow of people, goods and money has been revealed to be a precarious balancing act that is constantly in threat of falling apart. This has raised questions about how we structure society but also what roles we deem important. Is the importance of a role and the placement of monetary value upon that role sometimes upside down within a capitalist system? Individual governments have played their part in managing disruptions but overall we have realised how globally connected we are.
This is similar to the realisation at the beginning of the pandemic about how fast the virus spread.
Vibe Overgaard’s performance physically reenacts the flow of people and power within the circulatory systems that humans have created. Revealing the ways in which the systems themselves have organised our society and correlated humans with energy; as merely somatic matter to be redirected and shut off depending on the system’s needs. It has always been assumed that the circuit of capital and the systems of production that sustains us could never be disrupted but during the pandemic we were shown that it is possible to totally transform the systems of society overnight.
/ Francis Patrick Brady
Vibe Overgaard’s performance physically reenacts the flow of people and power within the circulatory systems that humans have created. Revealing the ways in which the systems themselves have organised our society and correlated humans with energy; as merely somatic matter to be redirected and shut off depending on the system’s needs. It has always been assumed that the circuit of capital and the systems of production that sustains us could never be disrupted but during the pandemic we were shown that it is possible to totally transform the systems of society overnight.
/ Francis Patrick Brady
The series Proximity by Proxy is made possible with generous support from:
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Celsius Projects, Celsiusgatan 45, 212 14 Malmö