Upstairs Geology 50/50
August 22, 2019
Winner of the ZKB Acknowledgment Prize 2019- August 2019, Zürcher Theatrespektakel, Switzerland
Theatre Performance, 40min in the evening & Ongoing Installation in the daylight
(UPG) is a continuous commitment to performative manifestations on, with and about Liquids.
A theatrical universe, a cosmology created through the use of thickened and coloured water, ropes, pumps, and soundscapes in constellation with gravity, various weather conditions, sunlight, snow, rain and sometimes people.
UPG is an attempt to de-centralise humans in performance.
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Manifestations
Upstairs Geology VII
June 22, 2018
My reclaimed word for the 21st century is Liquid- specifically starting from thinking about my own life and attitude to fixity.
Upstairs Geology VI
March 22, 2018
An installation on Angels and Liquids, how these two universes collide, and our attempt to control the mess they make when put together.
Upstairs Geology II
October 7, 2017
During the week leading to the 7th October 2017, we adapted Upstairs Geology-I to an unconverted construction site in Strait Street, Valletta, Malta.
Upstairs Geology I
June 1, 2017
Upstairs Geology I, Performance Installation, 20 min. June 2017, Amsterdam, the Netherlands,
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(UPG) is a continuous commitment to performative manifestations on, with and about Liquids.
A theatrical universe, a cosmology created through the use of thickened and coloured water, ropes, pumps, and soundscapes in constellation with gravity, various weather conditions, sunlight, snow, rain and sometimes people.
UPG is an attempt to de-centralise humans in performance.
My reclaimed word for the 21st century is Liquid- specifically starting from thinking about my own life and attitude to fixity, and developing an ongoing artistic research around fluid substances.
My second reclaimed word for the current times is Angel- specifically in relation to constant movement and change inherent in life. Michel Serres’s understanding of angels as messengers, in his book “Angels: a Modern Myth”, had a profound effect on this work. This theatrical universe is a result of me putting these two, at first sight, unconnected categories of knowledge together and insisting on their resonance.
This commitment for me is spending time with the metaphors of floods and natural disasters, with the long tradition of repressing and taming the uncontrollable emanations of a body – its sounds, smells, mucus – with a hysterical will to control and solidify borders, to qualify “leakages” as clean or dirty on a binary scientific scale. In this constructed cosmology human biological (more often female than male) liquids- such as urine, breast milk, ejaculate, vaginal lubrication – are often equated with the notion of a leaking planet with its torrential rains, melting ice, and disturbed oceanic currents.
It is me thinking out loud and performatively that my materials, my books, events of my life are also working- thinking and creating with me. This thought allows me to imagine that it is not only humans that are part of my process. Similarly, it allows me to conceive my audience consisting of not only human beings but also objects, flows of air, gusts of winds coming through the open windows – they perform and they watch.
– Ira Melkonyan –