Performancetag

In the organizer's words:

PERFORMANCE DAY+EVENING

3 and 5 pm: Ja Jess: by the use of its displays

from 8 pm: assume vivid astro focus: all videos are floating

9 pm: Zoe Williams & guests: Algol Dissolved: blood, pain and seafoam

Ja Jess (they/them/dey/denen) understands her performativity as an artist as an actor. In this way, she generates "trans-figurative organisms" that feed on collective social fictions. As an actress and drag character of the female character under the name "Doll", Ja Jess began working as a stripper. "Doll" enters the strip club as a theater of the binary gaze and the capitalization of the female read body. She represents the female figure as a collective, un-dead social figure. After each night in which "Doll" works, Ja Jess scripts the cinematography of this role in the club. In 2023, dey developed a performance from this practice, collapsing notions of sculpture, stage and costume within cross-genre environments. The coffin cushions within the exhibition as part of this environment introduce the continuing narrative of the Doll figure. They come from funeral parlors. As a new persona "Jane Doe", Ja Jess practices the dressing and make-up of the deceased, as a form of re-staging a deceased person on their own body, as a spectacle of themselves, or also as a camouflaging and living make-up of dead bodies. The persona "Jane Doe" appeared for the first time in a funeral parlor in NYC, the name given in the USA to the unidentifiable anonymous deceased. As part of the performance "in the use of its display", Ja Jess is now transferring Jane Doe to the exhibition space of the Dortmunder Kunstverein.

On May 11 and 12, the Dortmund Culture Mile invites visitors to explore the artistic and cultural diversity of cultural institutions in the heart of the city through a variety of free offers. A comprehensive program for young and old will take place between 12 noon and 6 p.m. on both days.