OXYMORON (Live Performance, Short film and Photographic installation)
Definition oxymoron: ox·y·mo·ron
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that juxtaposes elements that appear to be contradictory. Oxymorons appear in a variety of contexts, including inadvertent errors and literary oxymorons crafted to reveal a paradox.
When they asked me to act naturally during rehearsals, I thought I must be clearly confused…
It was only later, whilst waiting in the line to enter my favourite bar, that I realised that what I actually needed was to go out for dinner. Someone told me: “Hey! No one goes to that restaurant anymore – it’s always too crowded”
In that exact moment I understood: modern dance has become old fashioned! I know it can sound pretty cruel to say ,but if feels just like trying to be an original copy of an amazing awful humanbeing.
I was sitting alone, together with my friend. It is an open secret that she is naturally strange with a weirdly normal face.
I had to make a random food order but the only choice was ordering some jumbo shrimps that were awfully delicious.
At that point I asked her questions that I had already been pondering: “Did you ever feel like a tiny elephant on a heavy diet? Did you ever move beautifully through pain for the sake of art? Just by repeating yourself in a random order, were you ever happily sad in a dark, light room? Did you and your great depression turn you into a passive aggressive person towards the one who was asking you to run slowly or to appear invisible on stage?
It was only later, when I woke up dead, that I had the power to tell myself:
“Hey big baby, never let anyone ever make you grow smaller!”
As with many other literary and rhetorical devices, oxymorons are used for a variety of purposes. Sometimes they are used to create drama for the reader or listener and sometimes they are intended to make the audience stop and think whether to laugh or to ponder.
Describing a scene as “painfully beautiful” calls attention to the speaker and the object of inquiry. Such a phrase shows that an object can have two different qualities at once, making it a subject for study and analysis.
Why use phrases that do not make any logical sense?
OXYMORON_ensemble
Concept, choreography and performance: PINION & CROWN ensemble
Dancers: Sara Marin & Griet Vanden Houden
Filming and editing: Arne von Nostitz-Rieneck
Photography: Christa Gaigg
Composition, synthesizer: Lukas Rabe
Composition, vocals: Elsa Grégoire
Curator: Jessica White
Text revision: Hannah Timbrell
Graphic design: Authentic.co.at