I can't just, or I just can't - Performance by Miriam Stoney

Church of Ignorance  Festival at 5-7 Sept 2024, DH5 Cultur Club - Ars Electronica Festival 2024

Performance, 6 September by Miriam Stoney
Moderation: Simon Nagy

I can’t just, or I just can’t (2024) forms part of a series of performative works that Miriam Stoney has developed over the past year in collaboration with the sound artist Robert Schwarz. The series deals with performative speech acts and the way rhetorical practices shape the social subject. Here, Stoney takes up statements and expressions of humility, self-deprecation and deferral to articulate a stance of conscientious dependency and unequal exchange in relation to (often unknown, unnamed or unseen) others. Combining live video with performance and recorded sound, I can’t just, or I just can’t is a stubborn rebuttal of self-help and self-care imperatives towards more uncertain, open ends. The performance is followed by a scripted workshop titled
You could just.

Using a script written by Stoney herself, participants are invited to adopt temporary roles in a discussion around the performance, before articulating themselves within these roles, the workshop and the public.

Miriam Stoney is a writer, artist and translator based in Vienna. She studied art history in Oxford and architectural history in London, GB. Her work is usually text-based, often performative and sometimes collaborative. Solo exhibitions have taken place at Brunette Coleman, London and Kunstverein Kevin Space, Vienna. Recent group exhibitions and performances include: Kunstverein in Hamburg; Austrian Cultural Forum London; Kunstverein München; Klosterruine Berlin; Belvedere 21 and mumok Vienna.

www.miriamstoney.com

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