herpes

eirini kartsaki

HERPES is a performance about desire, STI's and fantasizing about the Duchess of Cambridge. It considers the ways in which we have been told that we either need to have a baby or stop banging the whole world. And if we don’t, we will, of course, get herpes.

HERPES asks: What happens when you dream of being pregnant only to wake up and find yourself giving birth to a bad shit? What happens when everyone around you is pregnant and they only talk about nappies, pushchairs and motherhood? Herpes is a show about wanting to be who you are, without a big belly.

HERPES departs from an anxiety to do with growing up and not wanting to settle down, or settle in; it deals with a refusal to get on with it, or get it together; it kind of says: I do not want to pull myself together, I do not want to come to my senses. I want to live my life as if it is mine – but it is mine, it is mine and yet I still struggle to come to terms with that fact and ignore my mother’s wishes, my father’s hopes for me, which are easily summed up: get a husband, a good job, have a baby, have a mortgage, be sensible, be sensible, be sensible.

Mullet over: soojin Chang

Mullet Over is a series of informal chats accompanying Double Thrills. This month we'll be joined by Soojin Chang.

Soojin Chang’s artistic practice is led by an enquiry into political and individual trauma, particularly the way these are internalised and inherited in the body schema. Her performance and video works are examinations of agency and fertility of both humans and non-humans, deconstructing systems of oppression and power in order to rethink ecological destruction. She uses appropriation and subversion to challenge authorship and renegotiate representations, survival mechanisms, and immigration patterns of colonised cultures and diasporas. Selected exhibitions include MoMA PS1, New York; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Microscope Gallery, New York; and the Art/Life Institute, New York.