Home is where the Heart is
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS
Home is where the Heart is Pt.1 - Mirror Exercise
Long Durational Performance
2017
dreisechsfuenf festival - MASC Foundation Vienna
Home is where the Heart is Pt. 1 - Mirror Exercise is the first part of a work in progress tryptich performance series, that uses the psychologigal terms "dissociation" and “projection” as an impulse to explore the effect of trauma on the mind and body.
The article "Posttraumatic stress disorder and the nature of trauma" by Bessel van der Kolk, MD in the journal Dialouges in Clinical Neuroscience from the year 2000 (!) opens with the following statement:
"The human response to psychological trauma is one of the most important public health problems in the world. Traumatic events such as family and social violence, rapes and assaults, disasters, wars, accidents and predatory violence confront people with such horror and threat that it may temporarily or permanently alter their capacity to cope, their biological threat perception, and their concepts of themselves."
This performance tried to gain a deeper understanding of how exposing a traumatized mind and body in its most primordial form [naked] to the remaining "concept of self" as well as to an audience through a virtual mirror affects the viewer as well as the presenter. A premise of this performance is, that all humanity is traumatized on a certain level.
The performance was broadcast live on Facebook March 30th 2017, 7.00 pm - 10.00 pm CET.
The Facebook live video and comment section were projected live at the exhibition space during the performance.
The performance is experimenting with transformatory processes of the physical body. While running the projected live image through the "high stakes evaluation system" of social media and it's algorithms, the performer is aiming to influence her mind with the help of hormonal reactions in the body, that are said to occur by remaining still in various poses for a certain amount of time. These so called ‘power poses’ are said to raise the testosterone levels and lower the cortisol levels in the body. This theory is backed by a psychology study at Harvard Business school. Named study was conducted by Cuddy, Amy J.C., Caroline A. Wilmuth, and Dana R. Carney. "The Benefit of Power Posing Before a High-Stakes Social Evaluation." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 13-027, September 2012.
The performance lasted three hours in total. Poses were changed every 10 Minutes. Two hours into the performance facebook cencored and took down the live video broadcast.
