The banal idea of associating emerging product designers with the inherent valley below phenomenal intelligence was controversially diverted away from the digital podium during the Dutch Design Week 2020’s latest edition.
Artists Greta Desirée Facchinato and Raquel Sánchez Gálvezand’s video FLESHQUAKE spotlights the idea of dematerializing designs away from the body, which is so often perceived as a product. This was translated by movements of freedom, encapsulated by three dancers: Federica dalla Pozza, Alkis Barbas, and Saskia Wieser.
Italian born designer Silvia Sandri worked with artists Greta Desirée Facchinato and Raquel Sánchez Gálvez to expand the idea of agitation and movement, traveling through the nerves of the viewers as an explicit extension of joy. This prosthetic balancing gave anatomical allusions to an ever-critical society that must learn how to train its eyes in hopes of attaining the intimate inclusion of any type of body on both the individual and systemic level.
What does femininity represent in Western society?
How does this inform the way bodies should move and how they should look?
What if cosmetic implants were made of a fragile material?
How would this redefine the perfect body?
Are we spectators, recipients or critics of how others choose their own bodily metamorphosis?
–Greta and Raquel, the artists
Blind zippers on skin colored lycra that holds new gelatinous extremities (butt-pockets & breast-pockets) brought to mind the beauty of Vanessa Beecroft expressing Matthew Barney’s studies on biology through dance. But FLESHQUAKE looked beyond biology and explored the collapsing of form– medical silicone seems to have a shorter lifespan than we think.
What really makes this video a straight shooter is the internal way of exploring the space by letting bare bodies melt together to form one sculpture. The rapid fluttering of the camera’s lens shuttling between the real shaking flesh and the artificial one begs the constant question of whether we are looking at the real one or the jelly one. Ending in a gyratory roller coaster experience, the viewer has a sudden realization: when the body is weak at the knees, as casco, it has no need to carry any additional weight. It is solely responsible for itself.
Best,
Marcelo Horacio Maquieira Piriz.
DUTCH DESIGN WEEK – @dutchdesignweek
Costume design: Silvia Sandri
Prosthetics design, camera, colorist, editing & direction: Raquel S. Galvez
Prosthetics design, choreography, colorist, editing & direction: Greta D. Facchinato
Soundtrack: Valentino Russo
Camera, photography and lighting: Alberto Omiste
Lighting: Martijn de Wolff
Performers: Federica dalla Pozza, Saskia Wieser, Alkis Barbas
Film development: Super8 Reversal Lab
Film scanning-digitalization: Onno Petersen
