Shadow Text
by Chloe Chignell and Amina Szecsödy
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Shadow Text (2024) Chloe Chignell and Amina Szecsödy. Photo by Rudy Carlier.
— They say that bodies are made up of language.
They say that bodies are historical artefacts. They say that bodies are collective inventions.
Shadow Text is a choreographic translation of Monique Wittig’s Les Guérillères (1971), a lesbian-feminist epic. Circular in form, the novel enacts a violent and erotic transition out of heteropatriarchal culture and into a new semiotic order of lesbian relationality.
Through sound, text, and movement, Shadow Text explodes the novel, creating an immersive performance where bodily grammar cracks open the text, allowing words to act within and upon the audience’s bodies. No longer is it possible to find any neat distinction between body and word. No longer can we start by saying ‘I’. No longer can we say that everything inside of us is ours. Shadow Text exists within the fissure, under the sign of the O, alongside feminist mythologies, lesbian erotics, materialist poetics, and reparative destruction.
Shadow Text takes on Wittig’s aesthetic-political project, which can be characterised through three beliefs—First, that all political revolution must start with language; Second, that poetics are the location where change can manifest itself on and between our bodies; And third, that language is the means of political resistance and creativity that we all have access to.
Presented at KAAP as part of Bits of Dance (Bruges), Beursschouwburg (Brussels), Perdu (Amsterdam), Kunstencentrum BUDA as part of Almost Summer Festival (Kortrijk), Argos Centre for Audio-Visual Art (Brussels). Dancehouse presents the Australian debut performance of the work.
Concept, performance, choreography: Chloe Chignell and Amina Szecsödy
Sound: Amina Szecsödy
Text: Chloe Chignell
Light design: Leticia Skrycky
Conversation: Simon Asencio
Supported by the Robert Salzer Foundation, the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, The Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie, Flanders State of The Art Kunstendecreet, WorkspaceBrussels, Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Kunstencentrum BUDA Kortrijk, KAAP Bruges, Perdu Amsterdam and rile* books Brussels.
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Chloe Chignell is an artist working across text, choreography and publishing. Her work focuses on language within a choreographic frame; she invests in writing as a body building practice, examining the ways in which language makes us up. Chloe graduated from a.pass (BE, 2020) and from the research cycle at P.A.R.T.S (BE, 2018). Since 2019 Chloe co-runs rile* a bookshop and project space for publication and performance with Sven Dehens. Her work has been presented across Europe and Australia including: NEXT Festival (2024), Pavillon ADC (2024), Batard Festival (BE, 2019) Saal Biennale (ES 2021), Moving Words Festival (NO 2021), QL2 (AU 2022), KAAP (BE 2022), Littérature etc. (FR 2022), Dancehouse (AU 2016-8), The Kier Choreographic Award (AU 2018) Kottinspektionen (SE 2019) and Venice Biennale of Dance (IT 2017) among others. As a dancer she has worked with choreographers across Europe including: James Bachelor, Angela Goh, Bryana Fritz, Ingrid Berger Myhre, Adriano Wilfert Jensen, Phoebe Berglund, Anna Gaiotti, Clara Amaral and Gry Tingskog. In 2020 She published her first book The Complete Text Would Be Insufferable with uhbooks edited by Will Holder. Her writing has been published in: misted.cc an online temporary reading space (NL), Choreography Journal (NO), Le Chauffage (BE), RealTime (AU), This Container Magazine (SE/BE), …and then the doors open again (BE/NL) and Engagement Arts Zine (BE). She also teaches choreographic and writing workshops at P.A.R.T.S. (BE), HZT (DE), ISAAC (BE) and the VCA (AUS).
Amina Szecsödy (b. 1995, SE) is an artist working across theatre, choreography, and visual arts. Her practice investigates the interplay of text, sound, and the body, weaving together elements of pop culture, cinema, and mythmaking. Through a process she describes as “siphoning off,” she edits, layers, and recombines dissonant voices and phenomena to create works that inhabit charged spaces, both physical and symbolic. Amina graduated with a BA in Performing Arts from Malmö Theatre Academy and an MA in Choreography and Performance from Giessen University. Her works have been presented internationally including: KW institute for contemporary art (DE 2024), KAAP & Kunstencentrum BUDA (BE 2024), Temple Bar Gallery (IRE 2024), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm & Thalia Theater (2023,2021), Frankfurter Kunstverein (DE 2022) Køs (DK 2021) WELD (SE 2020), Inkonst (SE 2018) among others. As a performer she has worked with artists across the world, such as Myriam Lefkowitz, Nikima Jagudajev, Asad Raza, Luis Garay, Gry Tingskog and Eoghan Ryan.
