Time to Meet – Carrie McILwain: The Pile and the Pyre
Showing
by
Carrie McILwain
The figure of the witch offers my practice crystal thinking, many faceted and slick for symbolic projection. In my research this year I have been busy with the historic victims and their trials (accusation, interrogation, execution) as recorded in: court documents, theological debates (Malleus Maleficarum) and in woodcuts (from 1300-1800). These documents are starting points for a practice of speculative feminism (Donna Haraway) of somatic fantasy that searches for the knowledge that was situated in the witch’s body and in the wood that was placed alongside her*.
I will be joined this August in the studio by Josephine Brinkmann, Suvi Kemppainen, Johanna Ackva, a pile of wood (Totholz) recovered from Tegeler Forest and together we will move - thinking through textual offerings from Silvia Federici, Jane Bennett and the others mentioned here throughout. We will invite wooden materiality and give attention to agencies, voices, bodies and the gravity of being together as we stack, carry, lean - piling up. The witch offers a character that can move between binaries or realms, situated in cyclical wisdom - phase existence, intersectional and inclusive. A figure that practices power-within rather than power-over (Starhawk) and was condemned because of wielding an illegitimate (access to) power. If this power was not achieved through the acceptable means of inherited privilege, accumulation in capitalist enterprise, or seized through violent force, it is a knowledge, an agency that our contemporary world urgently needs to imagine or re-discover.
The pile is an inclusive and chaotic mass. It is full of spiders, insects, rotting material, freshly cut wood, mold, bacteria, things fallen, things forgotten. The pyre a rearrangement, an ordering of these agents for the purpose of punishment within human culture. With the inclusion of the human subject, it makes for a penultimate collaboration of human and non-human elements. When the flames finish their performance, a pile appears once more this time containing ash, memories in the bones and branches that did not burn away, dust settles and new agents flourish. Through performance we will explore these forms searching for the choreography of the pile and an aesthetic action of reclaiming.
I will be joined this August in the studio by Josephine Brinkmann, Suvi Kemppainen, Johanna Ackva, a pile of wood (Totholz) recovered from Tegeler Forest and together we will move - thinking through textual offerings from Silvia Federici, Jane Bennett and the others mentioned here throughout. We will invite wooden materiality and give attention to agencies, voices, bodies and the gravity of being together as we stack, carry, lean - piling up. The witch offers a character that can move between binaries or realms, situated in cyclical wisdom - phase existence, intersectional and inclusive. A figure that practices power-within rather than power-over (Starhawk) and was condemned because of wielding an illegitimate (access to) power. If this power was not achieved through the acceptable means of inherited privilege, accumulation in capitalist enterprise, or seized through violent force, it is a knowledge, an agency that our contemporary world urgently needs to imagine or re-discover.
The pile is an inclusive and chaotic mass. It is full of spiders, insects, rotting material, freshly cut wood, mold, bacteria, things fallen, things forgotten. The pyre a rearrangement, an ordering of these agents for the purpose of punishment within human culture. With the inclusion of the human subject, it makes for a penultimate collaboration of human and non-human elements. When the flames finish their performance, a pile appears once more this time containing ash, memories in the bones and branches that did not burn away, dust settles and new agents flourish. Through performance we will explore these forms searching for the choreography of the pile and an aesthetic action of reclaiming.
Carrie McILwain
Carrie McILwain is interested in the possibility of artistic performative research to enable other spaces of existence along-side normative structures of reality. During their studies at HZT Berlin in the BA Dance, Context and Choreography (2013-2017), they initiated various collaborative projects, with focuses on being-together (collaboration), applied anarchy, byproducts of the body, ritual and the political character of the witch. In parallel to performance work, they maintain an artistic studio practice in the form of drawing, tattooing and writing.
In 2020 Carrie was invited as co-performer in the series “Late Night Group Therapy” from Susanne Schuda (WUK Theater/Wien). Resulting from a shared interest in the figure of the witch, the Theater Vierte Welt has invited them to perform in the film for the installation/performance “BLOCK| Nuovo Corviale” (planned premiere April 2021) Additionally their text, “For the Love of Dream Boards” was published as part of the collective writing project, “Kultur und Politik im prekären Leben: Solidarität unter Schneeflocken” released by Neofelis Verlag (October 2020)
In 2020 Carrie was invited as co-performer in the series “Late Night Group Therapy” from Susanne Schuda (WUK Theater/Wien). Resulting from a shared interest in the figure of the witch, the Theater Vierte Welt has invited them to perform in the film for the installation/performance “BLOCK| Nuovo Corviale” (planned premiere April 2021) Additionally their text, “For the Love of Dream Boards” was published as part of the collective writing project, “Kultur und Politik im prekären Leben: Solidarität unter Schneeflocken” released by Neofelis Verlag (October 2020)
Free of charge
Required is a proof of a negative rapid test (24 hours citizen test) or proof of a complete vaccination (at least 14 days ago) or an official proof of having recovered from a corona infection (the illness must not have been more than 6 months ago).
Registration via ↪ kommunikation@tanzfabrik-berlin.de
Required is a proof of a negative rapid test (24 hours citizen test) or proof of a complete vaccination (at least 14 days ago) or an official proof of having recovered from a corona infection (the illness must not have been more than 6 months ago).
Registration via ↪ kommunikation@tanzfabrik-berlin.de
Concept & Initiation: Carrie McILwain | Creation & Research: Carrie McILwain, Josephine Brinkmann, Suvi Kemppainen & Johanna Ackva