Trifecta ... the visceral, the virtual and the vulnerable

Writer and performer velvet leigh (DAI Art Praxis), and theorist and educator Jules Sturm (Zurich University of the Arts) join together for an evening of performance and conversation, addressing themes of vulnerability, body, temporality and the chronic.

A trifecta is a group or series of three; a triad. It is also a type of bet, in which a wager is made on a particular outcome. It involves risk, endurance and placing one's 'fate', as it were, into the future unknown. What happens when the physiological functioning of a body slides into deterioration or breakdown? How does the experience of being in a body that is unreliable create temporal rifts and elisions, where the chronic becomes not only a stretching, or expanding, of time, but also of perception, of interoception: the sensations and experiences from inside the body. The performance of trifecta, by velvet leigh, proposes to take us along for a deep and vulnerable dive.

Following the performance, velvet and Jules will co-host a conversation delving further into the evening's themes. This English spoken event is hosted within the frame of ArtEZ studium generale's program The Body and Power(lessness), and takes place as part of the exhibition Someone Lives in This Body at P–OST.

The exhibition Someone Lives in This Body, curated by Marieke Folkers, focuses on the imaginary and problematic dichotomy between states of ‘health’ and ‘illness’, which has become more apparent during the pandemic. This problematic division raises urgent questions about power structures, normativity and inclusivity: When is someone 'healthy'? Where is the line drawn of what is healthy and who has the power to determine that? The participating artists, Phelim Hoey, Ajla R. Steinvåg and RA Walden, dissect the relationship between physicality and psyche, between identity and the prevailing norm regarding health. After all, someone’s body cannot be reduced to a medical, political or societal subject: someone actually lives in that body.

This event is part of our theme of this study year The body and Power(lessness), on how we physically experience autonomy, power(lessness), (in)justice, care and collectivity.