Studio for Propositional Cinema: & faintly heard (as it sinks, slowly): with The Tenderness of Maggots | Blouin ArtInfo

Swiss Institute is temporarily presenting programming under the name ‘Swiss In situ’ a 5,000 sq ft project space in the Tribeca neighbourhood in New York. The exhibition ‘& faintly heard (as it sinks, slowly): with The Tenderness of Maggots’ is structured as two overlapping addressing the intrinsic brutality of the political, societal and physical institutions humans have made for themselves, while suggesting moments of hope in their cracks. The first play, ‘& faintly heard (as it sinks, slowly)’, is installed in the exhibition space as a wall text, printed documents, and scenographic elements, and enacted by the spectator as they read and traverse the space; it contains four monologues by the play’s central characters. These monologues are printed in the style of the US Immigration Customs Declaration form, a legal document that must be filled in by all persons entering the country. The installation concludes with ‘The Tenderness of Maggots’, a theatrical adaptation of ‘Comte de Lautréamont’s’ (1846-1870) brutal, proto-Surrealist novel ‘Les Chants de Maldoror’, re-edited and re-configured for the stage by Studio for Propositional Cinema, where the narrator performs a short speech gleefully confessing his gruesome and evil acts on a glass stage.