Chantal Spapens

Created during the residency at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France, this video is inspired by Baudelaire’s masterpiece « Les fleurs du mal », a collection of ‘cursed poetry’, encapsulating the French Decadent movement. Decadence, in the context of womanhood and feminism, holds relevance in its essence of refusal—an opposition to the norm. This manifests as a rejection of art historical ideologies (such as the use of craft), gendered norms, traditional feminine roles, and discourse around excessive consumption of food, alcohol, and drugs. Chantal purposefully embrace this ‘excess’ as a deliberate and liberating aesthetic, contemplating the obsessive, violent and addictive nature of desire. In conclusion, decadence is far from obsolete; we live in undeniably ultra-decadent times. The performance navigates and challenges these decadent complexities, offering a contemplative lens on the refusal of societal norms and the liberation found in embracing excess.

“How am I to protect my wax-built castles of love From the devouring heat of your fires?” Sayat Nova In the tradition of Louise Bourgeois’ “Femme-Maison”, the utopian/dystopian atmosphere of the domestic is reconstituted. Black wax-built forms like houses floating in the air that the artist melts down, uncovering their skeletons one by one, leaving behind a floating graveyard of the houses she once built. As Alva Gotby argues in her book “They call it Love: the politics of Emotional Life”, in a capitalistic society, reproductive and emotional labor is celebrated through the image of the self-sacrificing mother-wife and through a narrative solely devoted to love, where happiness and self-fulfillment overlay with conjugal romance, a stable and fertile household, and a crowd of well-behaved children. In practice, these ideals turn out mostly as a zero-sum game with women on the losing end. To change the way we relate to each other will require revolt and a radical restructuring of society.

For centuries, the Mediterranean Sea has occupied a central place in the evolution of human society and Europe. It is both a physical barrier to human mobility and an element that connects land and continents. Odysseus pursued his hero’s journey around the Mediterranean basin. Today, the Mare Nostrum is a precarious, tragic space where immigrants, attracted by the siren’s song of salvation and sanctuary in Europe, embark on a perilous journey that could lead them to exclusion or inclusion. The word siren stems from the Greek σειρά (seirá: rope, cord) and εἴρω (eírō: to tie, join, fasten), resulting in the meaning of the one who binds or entangles. Therefore, the siren will knot deceptive nets of blood-red ropes on the Mediterranean seashore, ultimately leaving them behind. Whether they stay there to protect or imprison, for salvation or damnation remains unclear. Vittorio Venturoli writes this performative piece brings one to reflect on the dual relationship of migrants with the Mediterranean. Vehicle of migrations, the sea is numb and neutral in its endless role of levelling, smoothening edges, softening, tie after tie, even the sharpest will. Even the loudest storms are muted with time into a still, quiet fairness. It never alters the motion of its impartial ruling. And so, as guardians, instruments of its blind justice, the sirens weave the net of its will, enveloping wanderers, conquerors and fugitives. The performer embodies the siren—the tool of its choice, the voice of the waves, an ambiguous