Le beau est toujours BIZARRE
June 12 – June 16, 2018
Parterre am Rhy, Unterer Rheinweg 28, 4058 Basel
An art show curated by Fabrice Noir
Free Entry
Age 18+
Daily Opening Hours: 10–02h
Bar, Restaurant and Garden
Daily Performances: 20–23h
After Show Party Friday and Saturday: 23–04h
Le beau est toujours bizarre…
"The Beautiful is always strange.” Baudelaire’s life was strange, strained, and stained by controversy, but no study of 19th century French literature would be complete without his cynical view of the world. Baudelaire had a subtle understanding of beauty, in fact the whole quote says:
« Le beau est toujours bizarre. Je ne veux pas dire qu'il soit volontairement, froidement bizarre, car dans ce cas il serait un monstre sorti des rails de la vie. Je dis qu'il contient toujours un peu de bizarrerie, de bizarrerie non voulue, inconsciente, et que c'est cette bizarrerie qui le fait être particulièrement le Beau. »
In Baudelaire’s view, beauty is always strange, because beauty inevitably contains some oddness, some involuntary and unconscious oddness and it is precisely this obscurity which makes true beauty so unique and unparalleled. We also term it "The Sublime".
Ever since we created Cabaret Bizarre 12 years ago, the grotesque and the obscure shade of beauty has accompanied us. Characterized by freedom of expression, sexuality and fantasy, Cabaret Bizarre was originally inspired by Federico Fellini and Bertolt Brecht to create settings of an old-fashioned carnival, an erotic wonderland, a dark dreamland where amazing personal adventures are made possible. Over the past 12 years, we have staged more than 50 shows in fifteen different cities around Europe. On our journey we met and meet creative, miraculous and visionary individuals - some of them are performance artists, some of them photographers, sculptors, conceptual artists and musicians, others are club kids, queer activists, revolutionaries and freaks. What they share, is a common appeal to beauty, more precisely the strangeness of beauty.
This art show is aimed at reflecting the diverse interpretation of beauty each of the exhibiting and performing artists has.
Join us on our sublime journey by immersing yourself into a synthesis of art, dance, show and music.
We invite you to come and visit our exhibition and enjoy the performances, which will take place every night from the 12th to the 16th of June 2018 at Parterre am Rhy, Unterer Rheinweg 28, in Basel.
Performing Artists:
Suka Off (Poland)
Hyenaz (US/AU)
Odm Otomo (France)
Reverso (Chile)
Mad Kate (US)
Divine Putaine (France)
Missy Macabre (UK)
Exhibiting Artists:
Inside Flesh (Poland)
Denis Popoff (Belarus)
Shaltmira (Lithuania)
Romain Tièche (Switzerland)
Missy Macabre (UK)
Schneckewurst (France)
Odm Otomo (France)
Video & Light Performance:
ArtificialOwl (Switzerland)
Performance Schedule:
Tuesday, June 12: Odm Otomo, Divine Putaine
Wednesday, June 13: Missy Macabre, Odm Otomo
Thursday, June 14: Missy Macabre, Odm Otomo
Friday, June 15: Mad Kate, Reverso, Suka Off
Saturday, June 16: Hyenaz, Reverso
BIOGRAPHIES OF THE ARTISTS
FABRICE NOIR (Switzerland)
As the mastermind of Cabaret Bizarre, FABRICE NOIR is a cultural agitator and one of the leading figures of the European underground cabaret scene. Fabrice Noir is active as director, scenographer, curator, writer and musician. Cabaret Bizarre grew out of Noir’s love for roadside attractions – odditoriums, mystery spots and the like. Beauty as the measure of all things is the decisive aim of all his work, whereby the Beautiful and the Grotesque are metaphors for both his internal struggles and the general state of mankind. With the art show "le beau est toujours bizarre" Noir as the curator of the show wants to merge the two extremes of the Beautiful and the Grotesque and present his vision of the sublime.
Artist's website:
http://www.cabaretbizarre.com
Photo by Kostas Maros
SUKA OFF / INSIDE FLESH (Poland)
SUKA OFF is a Poland-based artist collective working in performance art, visual theatre, club action, installation, photography, video and music visuals. It was founded 1995 by Piotr Wegryzynski (visual artist and performer) and Sylvia Laibjg (classical philologist and performer). A recurring theme in SUKA OFF's works is human carnality in all its biological and physiological aspects, attempting to redefine gender by blurring the individual attributes culturally arrogated to the male and female. Through synthetic fluids, sophisticated electronic devises and solid substances, they search to investigate the mechanisms of human nature, the virus of violence and fear, following a post-industrial aesthetics through the clash between human body and unnatural elements.
Because the theatre, art and even alternative club scene were putting limits to their experiments, they created their project INSIDE FLESH (IF). In 2014, IF started creating fashion movies in collaboration with various fashion designers, including Barbara Bologna, Leonard Wong, Monarc1, Majesty Black, Alice Auaa, Creepy Yeha and others. Also in 2014, Nick Knight used a selection of IF short videos for Nicola Formichetti's DIESEL fashion show in Venice. INSIDE FLESH have been working with fashion designers, musicians, performers and models in Europe, US and Asia.
Artist's website:
http://www.sukaoff.com/
HYENAZ (US/AU)
HYENAZ are a Berlin-based avant-garde electronica duo. The band consists of electronic music producers and dancers Mad Kate and XIL. They have been called a "monster performance duo" by electroclash artist Peaches (musician) and appeared in the "Best Artists List for 2013" from Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art. Their live shows have been described as a kind of physical theatre performance and the band collaborated with Korean artist Sylbee Kim at The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) in August 2014 for a performance called "Spectral Rite". Their self-titled debut album was released on February 13, 2014 via Freudian/Slit and Records Ad Nauseam.
Artist's website:
MAD KATE (US)
MAD KATE is a performance artist, musician, writer and sex worker based in Berlin. Her explorations of borders between bodies and performance as practice of radical imaginings have brought her to theatres, communes, techno mansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world. She has pioneered a style that is outspokenly feminist, genderqueer and honest.
Mad Kate’s performance work has been featured in many documentaries and films, including ARTE TRACKS, Marit Östberg’s When We Are Together We Can Be Everywhere. When she’s not onstage, Mad Kate can often be found inside the caverns of Carni Closet, located in the back of the Berlin boutique, EXIT.
Mad Kate holds an MFA in Writing and Consciousness from the New College of California and a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies with an emphasis on Gender and Sustainable Development from the University of California, Berkeley. Her writing has appeared inBend Over Magazine, Z Magazine, Bitch, Other, Off Our Backs, ExBerliner, and the online exhibit, Imagining Ourselves: A Global Generation of Women, a project by the International Museum of Women, amongst others.
Artist's website:
http://alfabus.us/
PATRICK LOREA (France)
PATRICK LOREA was born in Belgium in 1971. He lives and works in Strasbourg, France. Formerly trained as a plastic Surgeon in Brussels he studies the 21th century in his studio.
Frustrated at day while working with patient’s bones, fat and skin, his creativity found some more freedom at night in his studio while performing surgery on clay, resins, wood, cast and steel.
Since 2009, his work has been shown in personal and collective exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, Strasbourg, Zurich, Lille, Metz, Poznan and numerous art fairs.
DIVINE PUTAINE (France)
DIVINE PUTAINE started performing with Shibari Circus in 2011. Shibari Circus was a company showcasing acts mixing bondage and theatre with a very unique grotesque and bizarre atmosphere. Shibari Circus soiled the main European stages, such as BoundUK, Saint Petersbourg, Moscou, Geneve, Cabaret Rouge Nancy, Cabaret Bizarre Munich, Zurich and Basel.
Divine Putain is now pursuing his solo exploration of the so-called queer lifestyle. On stage, he changes identities, gender-bending from male to succubus, and from tranvestite to animal, to display the various dimensions of edgy sexualities with humour and a certain strangeness. At times, Divine Putain invites his audience to glimpse into the quirky peepshows he gives with his lover June Fontaine where they exhibit their genuine bond in front of the voyeurs. Throughout all of his shows, he always aims to achieve something more than just a shocking and gratuitous performance, and instead questions and disrupts his audience views on self-expression, gender, pain and good taste.
In the past two years, Divine Putain, often along with June Fontaine, has bewitched and bemused the audiences of major stages as well as darker alternative venues andeven art galleries in France and other parts of Europe such as Wasteland Amsterdam, Cabaret Bizarre Lausanne, Luxuria Party Budapest, Sneaky Sneaky Paris, Chateau Perché Festival and many more. Divine Putain also works as a director and illustrator for SCHNECKEWURST, a collective of art-anarchists displaying a baroque, twisted and wicked vision of sensuality.
Artist's website:
MISSY MACABRE (UK)
Performing internationally since 2006, MISSY MACABRE works with traditional fairground/fakir circus acts using broken glass, fire and beds of nails, and is one of the most prolific show women of her generation.
Playing with female identity through pain, performance and costume, Rebecca subverts the traditional roles of the ‘showgirl’, whilst simultaneously exploring her heritage of British travelling fairgrounds, showmen and women.
Using performance and photography collaborations, Rebecca explores the semiotics of dress, power of personal adornment and the construction of identity as an empowering performance ritual. Rebecca has been featured in international press (The Guardian, El Mundo, Helsingin Sanomat), numerous books (Burlesque Italia, The Night Flowers, The Dark Carnival), research papers, music videos, and television programmes.
Artist's website:
ODM OTOMO (France)
OTOMO ODM is a performer, actor, director, writer and musician. In 1992, he created Materia Prima art factory, that he has now lead for over 23 years. He directed a multitude of shows, actions, performances and happenings in many countries and at international festivals. Besides his art work, he created different kind of events connected with avant-garde and sub cultures. He is the creator of the Festival SOUTERRAIN Body/Limits which took place in 2001, a body-art festival questioning the representations of the body in contemporary imagination. The festival has been run as a biennale from 2001 to 2013.
Besides his personal work, Otomo collaborates with other artists on different projects as an actor, performer, director or musician. Otomo is a founding member of the ABODE OF CHAOS, along with LUKAS ZPIRA of the CHARNEL MOVEMENT. Otomo is considered one of the leading characters of the French avant-garde and underground scene.
SHALTMIRA (Lithuania)
SHALTMIRA was born in Šakiai, Lithuania and attended Vilnius Academy of Arts, receiving a B.A. in graphics, with specialization in illustration in 2012 and currently is a M.A. student. Her body of work ranges from individual illustrations to performances and group projects. She first entered the international stage with her performance in Plein Theatre in Amsterdam in 2012, with the project 'From Xenophobia to Amazement', and later that year did live Body Art performance during The Drop Dead Festival in Berlin, the largest DIY festival for "art-damaged" music. Since 2016, she had been closely collaborating with Vector Gallery in New York and did numerous performances with the ‘Vectorians’ movement, of which she is known as the Minister of Chaos. There are several documentaries where Shaltmira is sharing insights into her work, one of them is ‘The Beautification of Suffering’, produced by Dark Arts, directed by Alix Hex, which in 2016 won the Golden Award at NYC Indie Film Awards. Shaltmira stretches her work from paper to murals, from music industry to VR. Since 2016 to date, Shaltmira is working and recording with legendary musician Michael Cashmore, and contributed her created images for his last record to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the founding of Trisol Music Group GmbH by Alex Storm.
ROMAIN TIECHE (Switzerland)
Romain Tièche works within a symbolic framework mixing body, space and material around which he deploys a system of creation playing on the axes of subject, forms and aura. His conceptual and minimalist work is meant to be strange up to vehement. He develops a multidisciplinary artistic approach by mixing video, material, installation, painting and performances that he has presented for several years across Switzerland, France and Germany. He is a founding member of the experimentation group about underground electronic music "Create" which was founded in 2016 and the curator of the experimental events of the same name.
DENIS POPOFF (Belarus)
DENIS POPOFF was born in Belarus in 1980. Due to homophobic policies in the country he moved to Brussels. He studied photography at the College of Advertising and Design in Brussels, and this determined his future. Each frame is a frozen moment, passed through his feelings, his perception of the world, filled with both the Beautiful and the Grotesque. He is inspired by art, people and their torment, his dreams, doubts, and of course literature. Denis has accompagned Cabaret Bizarr in the last five years and has documented our passion, beauty and grotesque, through his own lenses.
http://denispopoff.ch
REVERSO (Chile)
Out of the darkness emerged ReveRso. The creation myth of a megalomaniac marred on its own venom: a fetishist cannibal-of-self bound in love, loss, seduction, salvation, madness, prophecy and pain. Currently based in Berlin, ReveRso has massacred crowds on stages (and in alleyways) from Europe to America, and back again. ReveRso's tour de force of delirium sites: Berlin, Amsterdam, Moscow, Istanbul, Antwerp, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Copenhagen, Warsaw, Frankfurt, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Cologne, London, Basel - as some of his Holy grounds. ReveRso also serves as the High Priest of the legendary SupperClub as a long-term Resident Performer, desecrating its white walls with his carnal pleasures. Live like a suicide, ReveRso is the teenage queer strangled by the Mad Hatter, lips suckled in blood, a ghostly white palour. A junkie, he must devour the public to feel the light, his rite of purification through the shadows. To Repent to the name of no other but He ☦ ReveRso.
ARTIFICIALOWL (Switzerland)
ARTIFICIALOWL is a collective of artists working on projections and scenographies for exhibitions, concerts, festivals, clubs, fashion shows as well as corporate and private events. Unconventionally, their audience is integrated as projection surface. Through the dynamic movement they function as an interactive center and artistic part of ArtificialOwl's work. The combination of fog and projections intermediates dynamic movement of light sculptures in the air.
The walk-in holographic sculptures create a virtual dream world of projections, fog, water and further special FX. Wind, as an uncontrollable force of nature is an essential part of this work. Standing in the center of an installation, the viewer is wrapped in diffuse clouds that are the screen for the hypnotic, disembodied light sculptures.
Artist's website:
https://artificialowl.ch/