alive and dying. (working title).

Site-specific live movement/poetry performance with puppetry and improvised music. Out the Box Puppetry Festival, 23 March 2010. Iqonga Performances, 15 min. Production period: already in process.

"in the wild / you have no power over anyone else / / now that we're civilized / we create our own wild / / maybe when we have all this power / the only choice we have / is to destroy ourselves / /and so we do".
American performance artist Janet Kuypers, "Everything Was Alive and Dying" (1995)

INTRODUCTION
survival and self-sabotage

In a lucid blend of experimental cinema, poetry and movement, humanoid sponge puppets become both props and performers in the small rituals and behaviour addictions that keep us one step forward, one step back in the quest for life awareness. We are estranged from the living system around us, because we are
estranged from the living system inside us. In a time when our very existence threatens the survival of our planet, this live video performance interrogates the borderlines in the urge between libido and mortido, life-instinct and death-drive. (read and see more below)

Up to 8 positions. All skills and ages are welcome. Seeking versatile and multi-talented artists / performers / vocalists / movers / instrumentalists / puppeteers, and one production manager. Audience guaranteed and all tech covered by festival, but due to the nature of this production no remuneration can be offered. Artists must be able to commit during February and March 2010.

To apply, please send motivation and a brief summary of skills and experience to:

Kai Lossgott
visual performance artist, filmmaker and poet
Recent commissions & collaborations: Infecting the City 2009, Cape 09, Badilisha Poetry X-Change 2009
BJourn (Dance Theatre, Directing & Documentary Film) (Rhodes 2002)
Adv Dip Visual Art (UNISA 2004)
MA Creative Writing (UCT 2008)

t: 0721198300
e: kai.lossgott@gmail.com
w: www.kailossgott.com

BACKGROUND

Would you live if you could? Would you live fully? And what would it mean? And why don't you? And would you sometimes die if you could? If you could choose to die sooner? Would you? And what would it mean? And why don't you? Indulging the power of both the dark and the lighter side of the human
psyche, performance artist, filmmaker and poet Kai Lossgott directs an intimate site-specific multimedia experience which promised to be both sublime and chilling.

Besides the use of puppets and a symbolic approach, the use of video allows for a greater exploration of the materiality of the sponge puppet, the act of making and unmaking it, as well as integrating more site-specific work. Some images that come to mind: A man hugs a sponge puppet in the street and coloured liquid oozes out. They take long walks in the rain. A woman sews up the seams of her sponge lover with thread. Walking on sponge people, pressing the liquid out of them. A baby that fits into a fist and suddenly explodes into the room when it is opened. Tearing sponge, eating sponge, sponge people, performers, puppets - the line blurs.