SCRAP BODIES

– a visual meeting between art,
body and metal scrap dealing

Watch on Vimeo

Choreography / Butoh: SU-EN (SE)
Music: ”Interactive sequenced scrapyard sounds”, Lee Berwick, DIGI DUB (UK)
Space design, costume: SU-EN
Metal artwork design: Gunnar Stening (SE)
Light design: Jens Carlsson (SE)
Artistic advisor: Jette Bastian / Art Attack (DK)

Duration: 60 minutes

Concept

The naked, pure body in contrast to the landscape of the scrapyard. This landscape being the backside of the human being, the end of human, social consumption, a deserted space. Stillborn beauty will germinate out of twisted metal, mountains of unwanted car engines, barrels full of magnesium spiral off-cuts. This graveyard of matter will display a choreography of infinity. What does it mean to be a human?

Scrap Bodies came to be after a few days of being and working in the scrapyard in Uppsala. The atmosphere and the reality of everyday life and work is the foundation that is processed into art. How will the human body change in such an environment? Why is art and every day labour so separate from each other? Can art survive without the everyday reality? Does everyday reality make sense without art?

Scrap Bodies opened in Uppsala, home city of SU-EN in the actual scrapyard in April 1998. Scrap Bodies is a solo dance created and performed by SU-EN, that grew and came to shape in close contact with the composer, metal- and light designer. The collaboration with the people working at the scrapyard is also important for the creation of the piece.

The video of Scrap Bodies is recorded from the opening.

The performance has been presented in Malmö – Lund – Helsingborg – Tokyo – Seattle – San Francisco – New York – MAMU Butoh festival, Germany – Croatia and Slovenia

All music is composed out of samples taken from a scrapyard in Uppsala by Lee Berwick / Digi Dub of London. Various projects have been born of this collaboration such as nightclub happenings in Stockholm.