Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

'Songs from the Compost: Mutating Bodies, Imploding Stars', shot in the pine forests and sand dunes of the Curonian Spit, is a hypnotic exploration of nonhuman forms of consciousness and different dimensions of symbiotic life: interdependence, surrender, death, and decay. The images gradually layer, alongside intimate lyrics of a song that channels the desires of an entity shapeshifting across different genders, voices, and beyond-human embodiments. Featuring a cast comprised of local youth, alongside performer and choreographer Mami Kang, the film unfolds through a specially conceived song, choreography and costumes. Horizontality in the choreography undoes the usual verticality of the human figure, unfurling her into the landscape.The performers’ bodies are sites of activity, though they’re often horizontal, pulled toward the earth and one another, moving through the forest, along the sand dunes and water. The song lyrics draw on the work and words of biologist Lynn Margulis, celebrating the role of bacteria in making life and the collaboration between the single-cell organisms possible, as well as concepts by the science-fiction author Octavia Butler, who employed tropes of symbiosis, mutation, and hybridity to challenge hierarchies and categorisation.

Egl? Budvytyt? (b. 1981, Lithuania) is an artist based in Amsterdam and Vilnius working at the intersection between visual and performing arts. She approaches movement and gesture as technologies for a possible subversion of normativity, gender and social roles and for dominant narratives governing public spaces. Her practice, spanning across songs, poetry, videos and performances, explores the persuasive power of collectivity, vulnerability and permeable relationships between bodies, audiences and the environment. Her work was shown amongst others at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Vleeshal, Middelburg, NL, Riga International Biennial of Contemporary art (RIBOCA); Renaissance Society, Chicago, Lofoten International Art festival; Block Universe festival, London; Art Dubai commissions; Liste, Art Basel; 19th Biennale of Sydney; De Appel Arts Centre; CAC in Vilnius, and Stedeljik Museum in Amsterdam. Egle was resident at Le Pavillon, Palais de Tokyo (Paris, FR, 2012) and at Wiels, Contemporary art centre, (Brussels, BE, 2013).