Selin Davasse
Performance
2022
Concept, Text, Performance:
Selin Davasse
Music, Performance:
John Carlson
Videography:
Lukas Seiler
She Pigeon
She’s dirty. She’s grimy. She‘s the nature of the city. Ignored and unloved, she’s always hungry. Currently she may be pretty low in the pecking order of species, but once upon a time she was no different than a white dove. Color matters to humans, and it was humans who domesticated her. She’s feral. She‘s thriving. Humans hate her for not dying.
Contemplating on the politics of disgust, exclusion, and pollutability, Selin Davasse speaks in the voice of a pesky she-pigeon with a cooing cunt. Libidinous leaky literature in vivid and vulgar vulviform verse rains down like pigeon droppings. You might feel slightly dirty after this performance. A pigeon could love you no matter how dirty. Do you think you could you love her back?
Selin Davasse (1992, Ankara) lives and works in Berlin. Her performances repurpose disparate literary and performative techniques to enact and enforce a speculative ethics of hospitality between a bestial feminine stranger and a heterogeneous public. Embodying various narrative selves with distinct syntactical, vocal and gestural characteristics, she transmutes systems of thought into intimate and playful utterances oscillating between speech and song, in a permeable and unpredictable relationship to the viewer. Recent presentation settings include Art Asia Now, Paris (2023); steirischer herbst, Graz (2023); Institute for Contemporary Arts, London (2023); Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2023); Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara (2023); Kunsthalle Bratislava, Bratislava (2022); Wiener Festwochen, Vienna (2022); BJCEM - Biennale des Jeunes Créateurs de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée, Procida (2022); School of Waters, MEDITERRANEA19 Young Artists Biennale, San Marino (2021); Volksbühne, Berlin (2021); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, (2021).
