Sticky Rituals
Vandana
2013
Performance Video
5 Minutes
©Vandana The Artist
Courtesy Vandana The Artist
DESCRIPTION
Part of the rituals of self series, Sticky Rituals examines the domestic routine as unconscious ritual — the cycle of waking, descending, making coffee, reading, returning — performed so automatically that it functions as a programmed loop. The brown packing tape, wrapped with its sticky side out, literalises the adhesive quality of habit: every surface, every object, every gesture sticks. The body moves through its daily program like a machine executing instructions, and the work asks whether the human performing these acts is distinguishable from the machine that makes the coffee.
I appear coming down from the staircase, wrapped in brown tape with its sticky side out top to toe. I turn the lights on, make coffee in the kitchen with the coffee machine, pretend to read newspaper in the office area. I go back to the kitchen to put the coffee cup in the dishwasher machine. I turn the lights off & go back upstairs.
The material logic of this work — brown packing tape with its sticky side out — was extended into live social encounter in the performance Nice To Meet You
Vandana 