“The eye of the beholder is at the center of Ofelia Jarl Ortega’s activist approach. The choreographer deconstructs a voyeuristic and sadistic conception of the woman’s body. The intensity with which the dancers fix their gaze/focus upon the audience and their participation in the construction of this new aesthetic, the female body is ranked as subject and not just as sexual object.” Amalia Dévaud, Mouvement magazine
Shredder has been described as seductive and deliciously unpleasant. How can power and desire at one and the same time produce a potent, seductive and unpleasant atmosphere? Ofelia Jarl Ortega questions our concept of eroticism and invites us to explore an extended understanding of pleasure in this discourse of of female desire.
Shredder was developed in a collaboration between Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Alexandra Tveit (dancer) and Patrik Patsy Lassbo (composer); a staged exploration of voluntary objectification as a subversive weapon in a hypersexualized world. Suggestive glances and erotic undertones create a space where three bodies, surrounded by pulsating light and music, orient themselves in the concept of post-porn, an artistic movement for a sex-positivism that celebrates sex as a liberating tool. In this production, female sexuality is recognizable, but the object has assumed the role of subject.
+ Afterwords with Ofelia Jarl Ortega and Brynjar Åbel Bandlien after the show 31. January.
+ Read: A new kind of freedom is a commissioned text by Karin Cerny about the three artists, Florentina Holzinger, Eisa Jocson and Ofelia Jarl Ortega. The text was written in German, and translated to English by Caroline Wellner. Read the text here (pdf)
