“Hide in Plain Sight Play in Hindsight”
An ongoing performance by The Disengaged Free Jazz Orchestra
The performance will be shown outside of Köttinspektionen and in the foyer
March 22, 23, 25
Weekdays 15 -19, Weekend 12 – 16
Free entrance
The precarious social conditions of our time demand constant availability, total flexibility and endless creativity, but do not offer any security, recovery or togetherness. Hide in Plain Sight Play in Hindsight is a new performance by the artist duo The Disengaged Free Jazz Orchestra scrutinising anxiety as a public secret.
The Institute for Precarious Consciousness describes the current era as an age of anxiety, caused by neoliberal capitalism.Furthermore, they argue that this affect has become a public secret, a sanctioned ignorance, something that everyone knows, but nobody admits, or talks about. Instead of acknowledging the discomfort of anxiety as a structural and political problem, it is dealt with on an individual level with yoga, mindfulness and positive thinking.
Overtaken by the discomfort of anxiety, The Disengaged Free Jazz Orchestra tries to stuff the holes, control whatever possible, meditate, hide in plain sight, pack their 72-hour survival bag and make plans, plans, plans to escape.
Inside a tent-like parasitic hideout that is attached to Köttinspektionen, the artists perform texts, sounds, rituals and actions relating to the precarious social conditions of late capitalism. Inside the foyer of Köttinspektionen, the performance can be watched on video from four surveillance cameras surveilling the artists and the surroundings.
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The Performance duo The Disengaged Free Jazz Orchestra (Maria Stiernborg and Kajsa Wadhia) has investigated precarious working conditions, neoliberal capitalism and the artist as worker through various experiments and research areas. With their backgrounds in choreography and scenography and visual arts, the duo has developed a unique expression, combining strong visual elements and playful experimentations with language, voice and text. Their performances are characterised by an examination of the relation visible-invisible. Their first work investigated how indifference can be used as an artistic strategy and laziness as political resistance. In the commissioned work ”The Blob”, they used parasiting as a method, quoting and improvising with other people’s texts. ”Jackrabbit Parole” focussed on paranoia as a reaction to increased surveillance of the individual, and scrutinised the neoliberal paradox of western society, consisting of the promotion of free movement at the same time as a revival in wall building.
www.vimeo.com/disengagedfreejazz
Supported by The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and The Nordic Culture Point
Kajsa Wadhia (1975) works as an artist and curator in the fields of performance, text and choreography and holds an MA in New Performative Practices from DOCH, Stockholm University of the Arts, 2015. Together with Maria Stiernborg she forms the performance duo ”The Disengaged Free Jazz Orchestra” developing an experimental artistic practice dealing with neoliberal capitalism, precarious working conditions and the artist as worker. Between 2007-2014, she worked with, and co-directed the performing arts collective Arena Baubo. Since 2016 she co-directs Köttinspektionen Dans with Tove Salmgren, an artist run platform for experimental dance and performance practices.
Applying techniques such as performance, textile and text, Maria Stiernborg investigates resistance to flexible and precarious working conditions. From an anti-relational position, she looks for lines of flight leading away from demands of efficiency and constant presence. In an over productive and semiocapitalist machinery her main concern is how art can be as useless as possible and how that practice can communicate with an audience. Maria Stiernborg holds a BA degree in set and costume design from Stockholm University of the Arts and an MA degree from Konstfack, Art in the Public Realm. Since a few years she is directing the art platform Förlaget in collaboration with Ludvig Uhlbors and the performance duo The Disengaged Free Jazz Orchestra together with choreographer Kajsa Wadhia.