“no-one fcks with u in a battle jacket”
This work was a residency between performer Jess Puttmer and artist Anika Gardner at KUBA residency at Klein Warnow (outside of Berlin) in Germany.
The work was initially conceived as an electronically augmented skin (e-skin) for an urban environment, with the aim to augment the sensitivities of structures, its own changing form. A post-human architecture. The membrane got pierced with studs, laced in tilt balls, wires and collected trash. It became a battle jacket (aggression, vulnerability, strength); a protective exoskeleton.
Different sensors, sounds, and code structures were explored using lilypad arduinos variating the input/output relations possible. Accelerometers and tilt ball sensors were linked to buzzers to create contours of sound through the objects distortions, echoing the changing wavelengths of light thrown in distorted reflection.
“its never gonna be enough”
performance by Jess
An attic in an abandoned building paint peeling hooks nails rusted, protruding past utility. A developer’s demolition. A squatter’s mansion.
Translucent red changing forms. A person, Jess, installing the object (it falls) installing the object (it falls) installing the object (shoe laces, rusted hooks and wire fragments) hanging it on the surfaces of the cobwebbed poky attic nook.
People watching offered d-hooks, carabiners, ratchet straps. All rejected; the struggle persisted.
The object lurches itself on the ceiling and people are encouraged to go in – do they assist? Do they cause the object to fall?
This performance was an exercise in adaptability, anxiety, and struggle. Cyclical thought and fabrication patterns challenged through frustration as the object struggles to find its form amongst the iterative possibilities.
Photo and film credit Marina Kotlyar