EVERYTHING IS LIQUID explores positions of post-modern bodies in today’s society, which will be put in feminist, queer, transgender and intersex perspectives.

With a pluralistic mixture of artistic and academic contributions, we will examine further the notions Pedro Matias’ metaphorically addresses in his solo exhibition, such as corporatism, neo-liberal capitalism, consumerism, hetero-normativity, sexuality and the position of queer bodies.
Maria Guggenbichler presents ‘Intimacy Manifesto’: a short story about Hortense Spillers who thinks about the individual as a “formation in relation to property”. ‘Intimacy Manifesto’ whispers, murmurs and un-speaks non-sexual and queer intimacies. The text will be read by Guggenbichler and Hodan Warsame, featuring a short correspondence with Alok Vaid-Menon.
In their talk, Eliza Steinbock focus on the substance of slime as a model for thinking about subjectivity, inter-object and human relation and bodily form. Since the late 1940s, the new commodity of plastic and the quality of plasticity has been a dominant model for theorising gender, useful for feminist theories of social construction. However, it has also been used against transgender and intersex claims to gender identity that might appear at odds with their morphology or sexual characteristics. Steinbock will discuss how slime opens a critical path to conceptualising contemporary formations of gender, sexuality and the flow or stickiness of value and embodiment.
Gossip Girl Rabea Ridlhammer serves us a hot dish, ventilating gossip as the evil force of distribution of half-truths we love/hate, but also as a form of supremely camp communication. Gossip, here, will be considered as a form of art - a method as queer as its content.
Prior to the mixture of contributions we will screen Matias’ video …to my plastic brothers… (2017-2018), which laid the foundation for the EVERYTHING BUT FACIAL exhibition. In between, we will talk with Matias about his artistic research. In parallel, the performance initiated at the opening continues to evolve.

EVERYTHING IS LIQUID responds to Pedro Matias’ solo exhibition EVERYTHING BUT FACIAL at NEVERNEVERLAND. Léon Kruijswijk guest-curated the event. 

(Text by Léon Kruijswijk)