In the Name of the Father. An anti-prayer

performance/drawing

6-9.06.2013

kvir feminist actziya Vienna



In the name of the father is an impossible physical performance in which the body of a woman confronts the oppressed position which she occupies through self-violence. By violently enacting the specificity of a womanly body, this body (my own) speaks to „the father”, an entity encapsulating multiple oppressive entities: the father – head of mononuclear, heterosexual family; god – head of christian religion; capital; empire – as the geo-system of colonialism and neo-colonialism.
The performance initially proposes a seemly submissive posture – on knees, head covered – performing an equally submissive ritual – a prayer only to try and appropriate them in an emancipatory dimension. The anti-prayer is a ritual of revolt and killing, of empowerment and rejection. Not a curse, the anti-prayer is a painful ritual in front of an icon representing the ideal physical expression of the performer. The performance ultimately addresses some key radical feminist debates: emancipation through violence, essentialism and culture-based identity, cisidentity and queer. Also it opens the question of the intersectionality of the oppressive structures sketched above from the character of „the Father”.






 >>> Fragment from the text:                                                                                                                                                                        >>> The icon, drawing.



„In the name of the Father.

In the name of the Father.
In the name of the Father.
I look for You, I dig You out.
How much pleasure can we afford?
A maximal and total pleasure that annuls me
A woman turned upside down.
Self-Canibalization.
Darkness.
How much light can you afford when the light is not yours? It is someone else's.
The thick fingers are not enough, the long arm not even, your whole body: 
sink it back and it won't be enough.
The whole world remains to be devoured. A destructive desire.
A hand. And with the other I'm making a cross.
In the name of the Father.In the name of the State.
In the name of the Empire.
In the name of Capital.
In the name of You, Masters, I clog myself.
I silence myself. Cover myself. Blind myself.
In your name I turn my refused gaze in myself.
The lacking Rib? But I am Lack itself.
(...)”