The Flying Dutchman is an LGBTQ friendly pub in Camberwell with the aim to promote difference, diversity and the arts. They have developed a gallery-performance-dungeon space on the basement, which stands as Mori and Stein gallery, but also hosts all sorts of fascinating events, like a German Fetish Film Festival, impact play workshops or local community initiatives.
It's also the place to go and see contemporary bodyart, with
Discharge a bi-monthly performance event curated by Martin O'Brien and
Untouchable an open-submission platform for art and performance curated by Franko B.
On 18th January 2014, I attended the inaugural
No Pain: No Gain, the first Discharge event, where I first encountered the work of Diana Pornoterrorista, a Spanish bodyartist whom also performed at the
private view of the group
exhibition Salon Hysterique I participate in, and which is still on until the 19th April. Here are some pictures of that night and the following event on Sunday 26th to mark Franko B's birthday:
No Pain: No Gain explored the intersections and histories of masochism and performance, and the politics of pain in performance. The first two images are from Diana's performance, which had some similarities with the performance she did in
Salon Hysterique, and which I discuss in this
post. It consisted of a ritual of transgressing borders and vengeance where Diana invited the public to write down on pieces of paper words which they (we) had been experienced as bullying at some point in our lives, and stuck with us. She took this wounds-as-words and stapled them to her body, also using her vagina and anus to engulf them, for potent metaphorical and political effect.
She would state the necessary ingredients for this particular exorcising-vengeful ritual, including 'liquids' for which she leaked her body from tears, vaginal ejaculation, blood and menstrual blood.
The last ingredient of the ritual was vibration, for which she asked an audience member to practice percussion on "a skin drum with a hole": herself. The drumming on her belly and buttocks amplified by the condom-covered microphone she had inserted in her vagina.
This ritualistic actions where also contextualized through a reading of a heavily autobiographical text by an audience member.
