saliva production beat acid released but nothing arrives down direction gets sticky beat down this chewing mass has no future repeat until it is dull down beat
Full of pessimistic ambivalence and following the beat, two performers chew gum and offer the audience to join them in this everyday act. What comes out is messy, shape-shifting and unclear such as performance art making in the current times.
DOWN BEAT is a 1-hour playful dance and performance work where two performers chew gum together with the audience and move to techno beats. It begins with a 25-min accelerating dance show that oscillates between being rigorous and sloppy and continues as a happening including audience participation.
The work is revisiting 1970s American artist Hannah Wilke’s artwork series S.O.S Starification where she also used chewing gum to criticize the instrumentalization of the female body, particularly in the male-dominated art world.
MTBF deconstructs and reimagines this work, in which they look at both the metaphorical and material relationship between chewing gum and the body. As performance artists—one a transmasc non-EU immigrant, the other a Finnish female-identified artist—we navigate the complexities of labor, identity, and consumption in a post-optimistic world. The ambiguity of the gum—its messiness, its refusal to be neatly controlled—echoes the anxiety of living in an era where resistance feels both necessary and futile, offering no tidy resolutions, only the uncomfortable persistence of failure.
DOWN BEAT re-thinks the use of chewing gum in relation to 21st century late capitalist ruins and queerness. Chewed gum, disposability, image production of the audience and soundscapes that draw from commercial tunes to heavy beats create a bizarre festive event: let’s dance and chew like there is no tomorrow… but wait, what?
In November 2024 DOWN BEAT was performed at Au JUS gallery, Brussels, BE and at Aterlier 2, STUK, Leuven, BE (as a part of the STUCK art residency).
Credits:
Dash Che & Suvi Tuominen (choreography, performance)
Oula Rytkönen (sound design).
The work was made with the support of the Kone Foundation.
Video of the performance can be provided upon request.