cRIP lab no.1: Σίσυφος – SISYPHUS

Trainingslager Köln, Cologne
documentation: Matthias Drobeck

According to Marx, free sensuous activity is what makes us human. The process in which we find ourselves in dialogue with nature leads us to produce our own physical existence as well as our objective world. Alienation from our product and from ourselves through abstract wage labour results in the loss of connection to society.
But what happens as the producer and the means of production merge, as machines themselves define actions; as artificial intelligence and binary algorithms determine the pace of development and progressively become removed from primordial human thought and action?

To what extent does this define the regulation of the human body by social norms and values, and how does this influence the pursuit of individual and social control of the body?
Are non-normative bodies excluded from free sensuous activity if they do not conform to the postulated norm because of their bodily peculiarities, or if they are supposedly denied sensuous activity because of this?

John Herman explores these and other questions in his performance SISYPHUS — explicitly examining his own supposed ‚disability‘ through a performative lens. SISYPHUS is the first in a series of performances under the label ‚cRIP lab‘ that explore the variety of physical abilities as an allegory of social diversity.
‚cRIP lab‘: A performance project about body and mental diversity, body transitions and future mixed-abled communities.