Tyra Wigg
1989*, Basel, Switzerland
My practice centres the desires and problems of the human body in relation to its cultural, political, and material surroundings. Strongly informed by my background as a contemporary dancer, I work with choreographic scores that move the body as it feels, or as it wants to feel – often in conflict with neoliberal ideas of beauty and productivity. I enjoy sampling and remixing movements, aesthetics, ideas, and methods from disciplines outside the contemporary arts field, for example gestures and relations from massage therapy, or emblematic dance moves, sounds, and outfits from the 1980s.
Through a playful de- and reconstruction of familiar elements, I propose that we can train our perception to loosen from judgement and allow for more surprise. Whether in black boxes, art spaces, off-spaces, or over the phone line, I make performances with a desire to perforate the isolation that late capitalism imposes on individuals and between groups. Without downplaying stark differences in objective and subjective life situations, I am especially interested in highlighting phenomena that most people share.
Until now, this has channelled through working with the need for interpersonal touch, culturally inflicted attention disorder, and fear of the future. Now I spend a lot of time with the realms of (sleep) dreams. As allegedly everyone dreams, I claim that we are all artists, and that a collective identification as sensible, creative beings – artists – can emerge from making dream life more present in waking consciousness. Dreams are more, or other, than metaphors for waking life; they are evidence of an inherent ungovernability and creative force in all of us. I am therefore invested in developing fun, deep, confusing, and connecting formats to share dreams with each other, and to perform my dreams for audiences.