‘Head to Head – Pushing Territories’ performance by Zierle & Carter for Priority Route – 2014 CIPAF Cyprus International Performance Art Festival, organised and curated by Christina Georgiou and her team. Filmed by Anna Papachristodoulou and edited by Christina Georgiou.
About ‘Head to Head – Pushing Territories’:
Zierle & Carter’s site specific durational performance ‘Head to Head – Pushing Territories’ is a sightless exploration of unknown spaces and encounters. The artists’ heads are covered with a surreal contraption that keeps both heads at one fixed distance and position to each other, constantly facing each other without being able to see or get any closer or apart from each other. This sets the framework for a territorial game where the rules get constantly broken and reinvented. Emotions push to the foreground, mental states are expressed, at times gentle and sensitive, at others raw and uncompromised, the pushing and pulling creates an absurd dance between two opposing forces that echo some of the not so distant history of the site, as well as embodying the universal nature of relationship dynamics. Trying to find a resolution seems to be futile and yet the performance is carried by the intent to embody harmony through conflict.
About the authors:
Interdisciplinary, multi-sensory and often site and context responsive, Alexandra Zierle (DE) & Paul Carter’s (UK) practice spans performance and live art, socially engaged practice, video, sound, installation, and photography, with a strong emphasis on exploring intuition, presence and the ‘fabric of now’, material and process-led approaches, and anchoring iconic and memorable ‘live images’.
Through their collaborative practice, Zierle & Carter critically examine different modes of communication and what it means to be human, addressing notions of belonging, dynamics within relationships, and the transformation of limitations. Their work sites an embodied investigation into human interactions and encounters, acting as an invitation to venture into the spaces in-between the external and internal, permanent and transient, spoken and unheard. The work fundamentally explores society’s conventions, traditions, and rituals, often flipping them on their head, reversing orders, and disrupting the norm.
