The chase to be among men

(2018)

Performance / 30 min / Performed by Raluca Croitoru, Michelle Mantsio and Clara J:son Borg

Performed as a part of 13thFestivalen, Konstepedemin, Gothenburg, Sweden.

In The Chase To Be Among Men are parallel narratives of evolutionary changes of the human body, human attempts to increase its body’s physical capacity and an overview of Swedish defence identities presented. The presentation is taking place between storytelling and non-representational movements where bodily notions and defence identities are mapped out. The mapping includes for instance the evolution of the human arms and their importance in how humans have defended themself; how dance training was used within the military to train better killers;  how drugs are used in contemporary warfare to enable soldiers to perform over their own capacities. 

The work attempts to establish an intersectional view of defence from both an embodied and subjective perspective. To converse about how nature and political performance strategies become shaping factors in how we build up our physical ontologies and how that in terms shapes our social choreography.