CASSILS Incontrovertible Being

Cassils is one of the internationally influential positions between performance and visual art. Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art, among others, Cassils' works have been shown worldwide. In 2023, Cassils was part of Marina Abramović's curated takeover of Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre London.

Last year, Cassils electrified the Kampnagel audience with BECOMING AN IMAGE: in complete darkness, Cassils attacked a two-ton block of clay with her naked body - visible only in the bright flash of a camera, which burned itself onto the retina of the audience as an afterimage. The work created a stirring image of the violence against the queer community, which is often not documented - and at the same time created a bond of solidarity between the viewers.

Now Cassils returns with INCONTROVERTIBLE BEING, a work in progress that is being shown in this form for the first time.

As a performer*, visual artist* and queer* activist*, Cassils is known for making his own body the raw material of his own works. In INCONTROVERTIBLE BEING, this body once again becomes the setting: in the pitch dark, a drone-controlled light tracker burns itself onto a heavy pane of glass that rests on the naked performer's* body. Struggling with the weight of the pane of glass, Cassils tries to deflect the light away from himself - always at risk of the glass breaking on his body.

The audience witnesses the struggle from the darkness and thus becomes part of an arrangement that examines the violence of the gaze. INCONTROVERTIBLE BEING questions the necessity - and at the same time the violence - of visibility: Who is exposed and endangered in times of increasing persecution and discrimination? And what does it mean to be a witness in this context?