Jos McKain (Berlin, Germany): we used to eat them
- Duration: 20 min
- Watch: 2nd December 2017 at 0am UTC WATCH LIVE
DESCRIPTION: “We used to eat them” is an ongoing performative research into the politicized body as a spectacle in relation to the omniscience of media as commodity, surveillance and a tool of communication contained under the “Net”. The piece excavates images of maleness from process of “media meditations” that encompass violence, sexuality and authority. It looks at media to form narratives of a culture that visually codes privilege into the male body. Focusing on fluctuations, balancing between the irl & url, it asks how this fracture might apply to systems of fear, guilt, grief, rage, and love. Asking questions of what it means to be male. I’m in process of refining a new solo work titled “we used to eat them”. An ongoing multi-modal performative research into the politicized body as a spectacle. “we used to eat them” uses Western mystic texts, history, queer nihilism and decolonization in tandem with somatics, pop aesthetics, media and meditation to anticipate the dystopia of 5 minutes in the future. The work sifts through “call-out culture” and the violent saturation of political, social and reactionary identitarian politics along with the rise of the right wing regimes in countries such as Poland, Brasil, the Philippines and the USA. The research methodologies of the practice seek to place the information of digital experiences and spheres into the body, making the Internet dance. The Internet is an altered state, a new dimension, a new evolution. A thing of potential prophecy. We inhabit forms of evolutionary potential handed a future that tastes of aluminum and ash where we mistake windows for mirrors and lick each another with bitter tongues. Proceed to the counsel of: no fear no fomo no future The body is the network formed; a tool which extends as branding, chain-liking like chain-smoking, hash-tagging into the void imbued by palm gazing. The world is unalterably different, beyond the eschaton, the omniscience of what is available in our palms extending to cocoon our bodies in the richness of the planet’s knowledge. We face the end of the world, the end of a world where we base our identity on what we recognize as useful, in these days the most useful thing is to repudiate. So we repudiate everything. We are unable to say anything effective about events and things that surround us. We are being colonized by biofinancial capitalism. We must adapt systems to survive or be conquered. The essential transhuman hypothesis is false; the body must evolve through effort, through physicality or become a relic of the past, make the Internet dance.
BIO: Jos McKain is an artist, choreographer and writer with an education and in cinema, dance, and theater working in the visual arts since 2012. He was born to a 3rd generation of Roma immigrants in Kansas USA and spent youth and education in Minnesota, California and Pune India where he began training in Indian Classical Music and Dance. He was located in Los Angeles for 13 years were he found international acclaim performing in both commercials and the avant-garde, immigrating to Berlin in 2016. Over the last 9 years he has made a research into media structures through practice and participation in projects from Taylor Swift to Jerome Bel. His work has been shown at HAMMER Museum Los Angeles, MOMA PS1, Queer Biennial 2014 and Centre Pompidou. He has credits including collaborations with artists and taste makers including Starbucks, Julien Previeux, Emily Mast, Hyundai, Daft Punk, Ray-Ban, Ryan MacNamara, Marina Abramovic, Taylor Swift, Mike Kelley, Jerome Bel, American Apparel and Desperadoes Beer. In 2016 he collaborated with Julian Previeux on the 2014 Prix Marcel Duchamp winning What Shall We Do Next?.