Chara Kotsali: crash test dummies

In the course of this choreographic research, Ι wish to work on my new project titled “crash test dummies.”

Following “borborygmi,” a work that focused on the notion of noise, my research expands on the politics of sound through an augmented choreographic approach, writing practices, and archive digging, inspired by methodologies of anthropology, documentary, fictocriticism, gonzo journalism, and other out-of-time and out-of-place references.

For this new work, I invite stunt performance, crash test dummies, and the genre of stand-up comedy into a mismatched conversation, attempting to create a work about the absence of stable ground and horizon, about a perpetual rehearsal of crashing that cannot be fulfilled, about bodies smashed by the supersonic speed of a culture running downhill.

Crash test dummies are set at breakneck speed and crash into the wall, stuntmen self-combust to make fictions as convincing as possible while – in the free-fall feeds on our screens, in our endless doom scrolling – bodies crash under train and car metal, bodies set themselves on fire, painfully eradicating themselves in order to be heard.

Spectacle as the most durable fetish.

Technologies of crashing in a groundless and horizonless reality.

At the same time, the possibility of liberating our societies from the need to land on hopeless grounds.

Αnd the redemptive embrace with vertigo.

Chara Kotsali is an Onassis AiR Fellow for 2023-24 in the framework of Grand Luxe Network.

Onassis Stegi’s participation in the network is developed as part of its Outward Turn Program initiatives.