PERFORMANCES

PERFORMANCE DAY & NIGHT on the occasion of Kulturmeile* 

3, 5 and 8 pm

Ja Jess: by the use of its displays

Ja Jess’s (they/them) practice evolves from performative research involving the assumption of a collective social role, which unfolds as a treatment within a context-specific, locally and socially exhibited interdependence. They scripts these roles into textual bodies that theatricalize their contexts in a documentary manner. Through the fragmentation of these figures, Ja Jess re-vocalizes and phantasmatically expands them. These roles, as form-shaping glitches between their fictional and physical presence, open a discursive space for the body as a resource for identity de/construction and its landscapification within socially constructed realities.

Under the name Jane Doe (the bureaucratic term for anonymously identified deceased women in the U.S.), Ja Jess began working as a mortician in a funeral home in New York City and Münster, performing as a social drag-character. Jane Doe’s work involves undressing, washing, dressing, applying makeup to, and laying out the deceased. She re-enacts the identities of the deceased on their bodies, which are in the process of becoming part of the landscape – a camouflage of death or an imitation of the living. After each shift, Ja Jess transcribes Jane Doe’s ritualized theatrics of laying out into a script.

The treatment “Jane Doe: by the use of its display” took place at a tree—the oldest at the center of the square in front of Dortmunder Kunstverein—around which the entire architecture of the square is arranged. The grassy area around the tree is slightly recessed and resembles an amphitheater. Ja Jess invited an actress and gave her the role of Jane Doe along with the script. She enters the area in metal heels that sink into the ground with each step, while Ja Jess stands on elevated platform shoes—stage footwear known as kothurnoi. Dressed in a linen garment made from the same fabric as burial shrouds, the actress/Jane Doe climbs onto Ja Jess’s shoulders and veils dey. In this configuration, the actress reads from the script, her lips alternating in sync with both Ja Jess’s voice and her own – an image that references the mythological figure and ventriloquist Pythia. According to legend, her name derives from the Greek verb púthein (“to rot”), referring to the decaying body of the serpent Python. Pythia was said to speak from and to the dead. The monstrous figure sits on a tripod made of wooden sticks, from which Jane Doe’s clothing hangs—unwashed work garments still carrying the scent of decay. This image echoes the “catwalk macabre” of the 1700s, during which the clothing of the deceased was carried on poles behind the laid-out body during mourning rituals. What remains are the holes Jane Doe punctured into the stage of the treatment through her path.

Text: Ja Jess

8:30 pm
assume vivid astro focus: all videos are floating 

Video Intervention

Zoe Williams, HYDRA (anna gloria flores), Serafine1369, Daniella Valz-Gen: 
Algol Dissolved: blood, pain and seafoam

Unfortunately, the performance by Zoe Williams and guests cannot take place.

*On May 11 and 12, the Kulturmeile 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 on both days between noon and 6 pm. - further information on the participating cultural venues and the program can be found at kulturmeile-dortmund.de

With the kind support of

<< Back