Cally Spooner: SWEAT SHAME ETC.

Each plinth has the same approximate weight as the artist’s body and forms an organic, partially unstable and imperfect display device that is vulnerable to shrinkage, decay and age spots. Hosted on top of the plinths are a number of Spooner’s sculptures (2017–18), including offset prints, 3D prints and cast metal objects. In close proximity is a stainless-steel drinking fountain with its faucet jammed, so that it is perpetually running (Murderous Public Drinking Fountain, 2018). Disconnected from any public water source, the fountain is fed from its own supply of chlorinated water, continuously cycling a hygienic yet poisonous agent through itself.

The backdrop to this scene is a large-scale wall drawing (Self Tracking, 2018), depicting five years of extracted data. An average line is marked in a continuous streak of spray tan, staining the perimeter of SI's ground floor with a corporeal tidemark. Plotted around it are the fluctuations of the artist's thyroid TSH levels, her artfacts.net ranking, and the value of the British Pound against the Euro.

Installed at the back of the gallery is He Wins Every Time, On Time, and Under Budget (2016). In this stereo audio installation, two women deliver two performances. On the left, Ivanka Trump narrates her capacity to "architect" work, life, children and goals, while on the right, Maggie Segale, a dancer from New York City, trains for a performance whilst suffering from a head cold. Segale's sniffling and strained breathing is visceral in comparison to the smoothly managed register of Trump's voice. The title of the work is taken from a speech at a Republican rally in summer 2016, in which Ivanka Trump introduced her father to the stage.

On the second floor is a series of drawings on paper (2018), from which SWEAT SHAME ETC. takes its name. Hastily sketched figures take care of their bodies while shedding clothes, socks, limbs and torsos. Though their heads are scratched out, they remain unexpectedly unperturbed and determined.

In conjunction with SWEAT SHAME ETC., Swiss Institute has invited OFFSHORE, an itinerant performance company, laboratory and pedagogical structure initiated by Cally Spooner in 2017, to inhabit SI’s Reading Room. OFFSHORE IN NEW YORK: PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY will begin with a text and bibliography, and unfold into a three-week program at SI which asks the question: how might we tell the difference between what is alive and what is dead in the machinery that is advanced techno-capitalism and neoliberalism? Full details will be announced in January 2019.

OFFSHORE is an itinerant performance company, a laboratory and a pedagogical structure, initiated by Cally Spooner in 2017. Through workshops, rehearsals and temporary schools, OFFSHORE develops real-time exercises, drafting new vocabulary and terms for organizing, working and performing. OFFSHORE enables a number of persons, some of whom have met before, and some of whom have not met, to maintain a state of rehearsal, over a number of days, in public. OFFSHORE has gathered sporadically over the past year at: NTU CCA Singapore, Singapore; Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston in collaboration with CREMP (Centre for Research in European Modern Philosophy); Playground Festival (STUK Kunstencentrum & M-Museum, Leuven); Bilbao BAD Festival, La Fundición, Bilbao; Serpentine Gallery, London; Whitechapel Gallery, London; and Centre for National Dance, Paris. OFFSHORE has been developed and continues to be supported by a Stanley Picker Fellowship at Kingston University, UK. OFFSHORE was initiated through a commission from Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. A funded exhibition and event opportunity at REDCAT, Los Angeles first set the stage for testing ideas.

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