10/24/16 - The sylphs are  spirits, objects of our imagination, which mediate between the living and the dead, the possible and the impossible. "Sylphs" is also the name that Cecilia Bengolea and Francois Chaignaud gave to their performance at Carlos Mota's exhibition Requiem, during the second meeting of La Internacional Cuir. The artists, with another performer, presented themselves on the ground floor of the MALBA last Friday, with a special device that would allow them to control their breathing while suspending all other vital functions to a minimum. The aim was to achieve a new understanding of the human body, of its life and death.

With all the "performance mood" we are having these days in Buenos Aires, because of the Biennial, and continuing with our posts about the frontiers and limits between the arts, today we present this work by Michel (Switzerland, 1969) and André Décosterd (Switzerland, 1967). It's known as Pendulum Choir: a 9-voices choir and 18 hydraulic cylinders, in perfect synchronisation. Each singer stands on an individual platform which moves in relation to the music, in this case, latin verses by Virgil, Horace and Ovid. With movements defying gravity, the performers bend and fold in a rather obsessive and obscure ritual. All in all, it looks as a complex musical instrument, alive yet robotic. 

Pendulum Choir, by Michel y André Décosterd

"Semiotics of the Kitchen", by Martha Rosler (1975)