Sööt/Zeyringer – Angry Hour
Dear round IKEA stool,
I already recognized you in the announcement pictures for Sööt/Zeyringers performance. You are made from simple plywood, round seating with bent legs. You are the very cheap replica of this Danish design classic. You are one of these popular IKEA products almost everybody owns. I even have three of you. In my home, you are used as a side table, as a storage place and as an actual stool. Apparently, Tiina Sööt and Dorothea Zeyringer possess you too. As their performance Angry Hour unfolds, you fulfill many different roles.
You are used as a barrier to stand on, as an acoustic tool, as seating, you symbolize an upraised fist or Holofernes’ cut-off head, your legs function as guns or become unsteady when one performer is unfastening your screws. Your legs might even be a phallus or, put together with your round seating, form an exclamation mark. You accompany every single scene of Angry Hour, when Sööt and Zeyringer explore female anger in short re-enactments. You help to express Sigi Maurers anger as well as Rosa Parks’, you utilize Valerie Solanas resistance as well as Serena Williams’ or the Suffragettes. You become an artistic tool and in your manifold use, you symbolize the different forms this anger can take. When one performer holds you up in the air like a raised fist and holds that position, her arm and body begin to shake under your weight. In this scene, you illustrate the pain it demands to take a fighting stance.
But there are always two of you. You work together, sometimes you act simultaneously, sometimes opposed to each other. But in the end, you are two of a kind. You are the same and you belong together. Two stools. Two performers. Women. You show me how many forms female anger can take and that it is so much more than this ugly, upsetting emotion I try to avoid most of the times. Female anger sets free an enormous amount of power. It holds the possibility of connecting people who share the same feelings and can lead to concrete political actions. In fury lies force.
Thank you for forcefully holding my body,
Wera
Wera Hippesroither: PhD student at University of Vienna and journalist (www.pw-magazine.com). Currently exploring the relationship between mobility and performativity in my thesis.
Events
Sööt/Zeyringer
Angry Hour
Sööt/Zeyringer
Temporary collections
brut all over Vienna
brut nordwest
accessible
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
Subway: U1, U2 (Praterstern), U4 (Friedensbrücke), U6 (Dresdnerstraße) Tram: 5 (Nordwestbahnstraße) Bus: 5A (Wasnergasse)
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studio brut
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Zieglergasse 25, 1070 Wien
Subway: U3 (Zieglergasse), Tram: 49 (Westbahnstraße / Zieglergasse)
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Gropius Bau Berlin
Niederkirchnerstraße 7, 10963 Berlin