BUILT TO BLAST
is a one-on-one performance-situation. A Rendezvous with a room. For about 15 minutes. An intimate encounter of non-human and human, aiming to blur the distinction between those two. Mind-blowing, nerve-racking, seducing. It is fucking educational. For everyone / everything involved.
BUILT TO BLAST is a nut-cracker, a bottle opener of a performance, an implant designed to unveil the being of a room – casting light on questions that we didn’t care or dare to ask. It’s a hardly noticeable apparatus, a gadget from another spacetime mattering, a prosthesis, a true cyborg, a cybernetic organism detached from the human body. It lends a room a voice, agency to speak, to suffer, to love, to crab, to crave, to share, to be. It is speeding up the slowness of things and slowing down the speed of humans to facilitate a meeting somewhere in between. A slow dance speed-date of one matter being and one human being. It is first-hand experience with the other. Challenging for both sides, BUILT TO BLAST dismantles and enforces expectations that none of us knew we had.
The installation has been performed for about 40 individuals in Berlin in 2015 and is since waiting to be implanted in new exciting spaces.
CREATION AND REALISATION Marc Philipp Gabriel
MENTORING Antonia Baehr
THANKS TO Frederico O.M., Sunayana Shetty, Verena Sepp, Emily Ranford, Rachell Bo Clark
25 MAY 2018 / Kunstraum Vodoo 55 / Berlin
19 APR 2015 / Uferstudios / Berlin
21 MAR 2015 / KMS 145 / Berlin
28 FEB 2015 / HAU 1 / Berlin
27 FEB 2015 / Ballhaus Ost / Berlin
supported by
Set-up
The performance installation acts as an implant that activates almost any closed room or space (adjacent control room required), an artificial implant that enables a space to take agency, to become a spatial being and to communicate with human beings.
Appliances (provided by the artist, subject to change – varies according to local conditions)
\ ARDUINO-controlled LED installation
\ 6-channel sound implant
\ webcam + micorphone
\ computer running a text-to-speech-engine
\ a swivel armchair
\ dimmable flood lights (optional)
“… (female voice) How do you feel?
– Good.
Great. Uh, I like that little wind. The warm wind from your nose.
– (whispers) Yes.
It heats my air. It feels really good to have you inside of me.
Do you know why I like you?
– Yeah.. why?
Cause you are soft and I am hard. I like soft things. Do you?
– Yes, me too.
Do you know when you were born?
– Yes.
When?
– In the 60s.
Wow. Nice times.
– And you?
You know what? I am born in every moment.
And actually, so are you!
Do you mind if I change a little?
– No. Go ahead.
[lights off]
Do you feel closer to me now?
-Yes.
I like darkness. And you?
– Yes. Me too. It’s quiet.
(switching to male voice) Kiss me.
Are you able to kiss me?
– No.
Why not?
– I don’t know how.
Try. Come closer.
– Ok. Do you feel it here?
Yeah.
– It’s good?
Very nice.
– I touch you. Do you feel that?
Try to fill me. Connect with me. Yes.
– Yes.
Yes.
– Yes!
Close your eyes and breathe deeply. Inhale. Exhale. Yeah. It’s so good to be part of you. You have a very strong impact on me.
– Yes, good.
Yeah. Do you think I am innocent?
– Yes, of course.
Actually… I am not. What are you made of?
– Sorry?
(switching to female voice) What are you made of?
(switching to male voice) You know, I think we are both made of the same stuff. I am you, you are me. Stardust. No?
– Are you sure?
No.
– (chuckles)
That’s what I think.
– (laughs) Ok.
Let’s celebrate that
– (laughs more)
Imagine!
– Yes.
Let me tell you something.
– Ok.
Imagine. Imagine, if you can…”
