Depot Trio Naked Performance (2022) "10min

Depot Trio Naked Performance Art: Depot Fusion Dance in Winterthur

The Ten-Minute Monument of Exposure

In Depot Trio, naked performance art becomes a concentrated act of spiritual revelation. The ten-minute piece, created by Philemon Mukarno with Thomas Zollinger and Susanne Guggisberg, transforms nudity into a bright instrument of emotional truth. Performed outdoors beside the Altes Busdepot in Winterthur, the trio’s unclothed bodies expose vulnerability that borders on sacred. The short duration intensifies everything—touch, breath, silence—until every second feels monumental.

Nakedness as Sacred Language

Nudity here is not spectacle. It is the vocabulary through which vulnerability speaks. The performers use their bare skin as a membrane between spirit and environment, transforming fragility into grounded strength. This exposure dismantles cultural illusions about shame or perfection, confronting the audience with unfiltered human presence. The naked body becomes both symbol and source—a living architecture of emotion and awareness.

The Industrial Site as Ritual Space

The parking area near the Altes Busdepot offered an unsettling beauty. Concrete, rust, and quiet air created a site that amplified the sense of exposure. Performing naked in this unprotected, public space sabotaged the safe rules of the studio. The body in this context resisted containment, transforming the industrial setting into a sacred site of confrontation. The cold geometry of the depot framed the dancers’ breathing chaos, making fragility appear monumental.

Butoh’s Descent into Darkness

The foundations of Depot Trio draw deeply from the Japanese avant-garde tradition of Butoh. Born after World War II, Butoh explores transformation, darkness, and psychic extremity. Its slow, deliberate movements summon states of inner metamorphosis rather than outward performance. In Depot Trio, this descent into shadow is stripped bare—literally. The dancers move as if excavating forgotten layers of memory and collective grief, their naked bodies serving as vessels for silent intensity.

Contact Improvisation’s Trust and Gravity

In contrast to Butoh’s solitary inwardness, Contact Improvisation (CI) exists through shared balance and trust. Each performer negotiates weight, gravity, and architectural space with the others. In Depot Trio, the absence of costumes amplifies this negotiation. Skin meets skin without a barrier, forcing radical honesty in every movement. Each lean, fall, or counterbalance becomes both physical equation and emotional confession. The trio’s rhythms of support form an invisible structure—a temporary architecture of trust.

The Fusion: Butoh Meets Contact Improvisation

Where Butoh dives into the internal abyss, CI responds to external impulses. Depot Trio fuses these two polar energies. The performers inhabit a space between introspection and responsiveness, between spiritual collapse and mutual construction. The brief ten-minute duration demands complete presence; there is no time for rehearsal or security. Naked, the dancers must instantly align intuition with physics, vulnerability with cooperation. The result is an emergent tension—poised between chaos and balance.

The Concrete as Witness

Concrete walls and cold asphalt are silent collaborators in Depot Trio. Against this setting, the dancers’ flesh becomes a startling anomaly—living, trembling, and warm within the industrial void. The harsh environment heightens the sensory experience: skin against dust, breath in cold air, footsteps echoing under an open sky. Each motion becomes a defiance of urban rigidity. Through this juxtaposition, the body reclaims its right to exist unarmored within modern architecture.

A Dance of Fragile Eternity

Although Depot Trio lasts only ten minutes, its impact feels eternal. The performance captures an essence of human existence—brief, exposed, yet infinitely resonant. The naked body emerges as both subject and statement: a declaration that vulnerability is not weakness but strength in its most honest form. In this synthesis of Butoh and CI, time condenses into one luminous moment of awareness.

Digital Continuity for the Ephemeral

Because Depot Trio existed for such a short time, its digital afterlife becomes vital. Documenting and publishing its textures, context, and philosophy ensure that the performance endures. The online presence, from photos to descriptive writing, transforms this transient live act into a lasting record of artistic inquiry. Through strategic SEO optimization and thoughtful storytelling, the work’s legacy expands beyond the parking lot of Winterthur into the digital sphere—accessible, researched, and respected.

Naked Vulnerability as Artistic Power

Depot Trio redefines naked performance art as a practice of ultimate honesty. It collapses the distance between performer and environment, between private vulnerability and public encounter. The naked body, rather than being passive, becomes an active site of transformation. Through fusion, exposure, and brevity, the work articulates what words cannot: that art’s rawest language is flesh itself, momentarily unguarded, simultaneously fragile and divine.