Inspired by Larisa Faber’s own experiences, stark bollock naked takes a frank but funny look at abortion and the pressure of the biological clock. The international hit about women’s reproductive shelf life is live-scored using gynaecological instruments.
stark bollock naked is a two-hander with one naked performer, whose body is used as a projection space for video mapping. Our bodies are used as projection spaces by advertising, education, society, social media every day. Those constant projections influence how we shape our identities and how we feel about our bodies.
Then again, where does personal choice end and biological programming begin? How much of the mind do we govern and how much is really for us to decide? In a society where so much currency is given to the brain and to rationality, so little of that is truly within our control.
Larisa Faber comments, If images of sanitised births and sacralised motherhoods hadn’t been all around us – would I still have felt the pressure of the biological clock? Or is that pressure innate, biological? In a world that prizes individualism, where does free will end and biology begin? I believe that these issues are central to the Millennial Generation – a generation that is now coming into their 30s and 40s in an unstable world, where the cornerstones of previous generations – a family, a stable job, an affordable home – belong to a mythical past.
Nominated for the Artist Choice Award at VAULT Festival, stark bollock naked is Faber’s reclamation of her body and her experiences from the strictures that society imposes. Abortion is a topic which has been relegated to the dramatic genre. This solemn and severe genre often frames the experience in a way to shame and guilt people. She reclaims her personal experiences of mental health, suicide, abortion and makes them silly. When laughing at certain topics is considered indecent, making them funny is an act of defiance. Faber demands to be able to laugh at our own lived experiences; the silly is political.
