Brechje Krah
Internship: Dayna Casey
brechjekrah@gmail.com, instagram.com/brechjekrah
Things and what we make of them (Brechje Krah, NL, 1993) is a performance film that functions as a metaphorical anthology for the topic of queerness – it portrayed as a liquid matter, defined by movement.
Things asks implicitly, through visuals, and explicitly, through spoken word, what remains of fluidity when we attempt to acknowledge it. Does defining a liquid matter cause it to solidify? Does the ‘in between’ need borders for it to exist as such, like water needs a carrier to hold shape? As placeholders for fluidity within sexualities and genders, the work references varying matters such as semiotics and alchemy symbols, as well as the lived, physical experience. In showing a constant flux of material and movement, the project becomes queer itself; it is defined and redefined as it flows.
THESIS
Disconnection and Ephemerality
Around me, I have started to perceive and co-experience a kind of uprooting. A growing niche of people in Western society seems to get disconnected and detached from fixed values in life. Stable, life long relationships, jobs and residencies are swapped for temporary ones. The speed with which we make connections and break them just as easily signifes this era. Philosopher and sociologist Zygmunt Bauman refers to it as Liquid Modernity, as its inhabitants are ‘light and liquid’. This thesis discusses the root of this shift (meritocratic thinking and neoliberalism) and some of the ways of being that it affects (domestic tendencies, sense of identity and sexual orientation). Through desk research and a visit into the life of someone embodying the symptoms of Liquid Modernity, I am hoping to find out if we really are light and liquid and if so, what are the mental and material repercussions of living life in such a manner?