Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė’s multidisciplinary work includes live performances, immersive installations, sculptures, fragrances, and interventions in social media, all of which are rooted in feminist theory and fiction. In the second part of FILMS BY at JSC Düsseldorf, the new video work MOUTHLESS (2020) is presented together with the existing work YGRG14X: READING WITH A SINGLE HAND (2018), both related to the ongoing performance project YOUNG GIRL READING GROUP (YGRG). Through YGRG, Gawęda and Kulbokaitė depict, examine, and contextualize the reading body, exploring the connections between text, the body, the environment, and technology. Through YGRG, Gawęda and Kulbokaitė aim to create a new sensibility toward reading as a form of embodied language and collective practice.

MOUTHLESS (2020) presents a fragmented folk horror narrative that explores history, ritual, myth, and the relationship between humans and nature, using witchcraft as a transhistorical and transcultural signifier. Based on historical events and mythic tales, the duo intertwine references of witch trials in and around the Fribourg area, Eastern European folklore, magical rites, and contemporary healing practices. In MOUTHLESS, the artists’ combine footage of performers collectively reading texts with animations of morphing organic shapes and landscapes, and scenes shot in the forest. The video can be considered a ritualistic chant or call to communicate with the deceased and the harmed whether they are human, animal, or tree. The video is accompanied by an olfactory installation that simulates the smell of wet soil, triggering a partly unconscious, visceral experience in the body.

FILMS BY DOROTA GAWĘDA & EGLĖ KULBOKAITĖ is part of HORIZONTAL VERTIGO, a polyvocal program at the JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION in Düsseldorf and Berlin, curated by Lisa Long.