A CHILD HAS BEEN BEATEN is part of Kemppainen & Mühles broader
research Visions of Masochism which takes space for the phenomena of masochism as a subversive force for action. The title of the piece references Siegmund Freud’s essay A Child is Being Beaten (1919) that is historically placed as a contribution to the study of the origin of sexual perversions. Through appropriating Freud’s writing the artists reclaim dominant male supremacy notions of masochism in approaching them beyond the binary of submission and dominance. They offer movements of desire by poking the heteronormative contract and finding a molecular level of sensitivities that could exist.

In the evening length piece two bodies accompany each other on an insistent and monstrous path in a shared space of becoming a body that has lost it´s function. A CHILD HAS BEEN BEATEN  identifies masochism as an autonomous phenomena and empowering agency. Based on their individual and shared desires, Kemppainen and Mühle zoom into the impact of normative structures in their personal histories offering a poesis of solitude and companionship. The viewers are invited to work with their responsibility as spectators, with matters of intimacy and dark joyous satisfactions.


︎VIDEO 








CONCEPT, CHOREOGRAPHY, PERFORMANCE: Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle
GUEST PERFORMANCE: Camille Käse
LIGHT, VIDEO, STAGE: Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle, David Eckelmann
SOUND: Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle, Fjóla Gautadóttir
DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT: Isabel Gatzke
THANK YOU: William Wheeler, Sandra Umathum, Sandra Blatterer, Meimei

pictured performers: Suvi Kemppainen, Josefine Mühle
photos: Gerhard F. Ludwig

A production by Suvi Kemppainen + Josefine Mühle in co-production with SOPHIENSÆLE.

TANZTAGE BERLIN 2020