The Abject and the Aesthetic: Defining Dirt Performance Art

The Philosophical Weight of Soil and the Body

The performance is conceptually grounded in material theory. The title translates directly to “All aspects of Dirt”. This focus intentionally anchors the artistic exploration in tangible, physical reality.

The work immediately challenges established notions of purity and social order. Anthropologist Mary Douglas analyzed this tension thoroughly. She famously defined dirt as “matter out of place”.  

Consequently, “Dirt Performance Art” functions as a deliberate act of re-placing matter. It forces a radical confrontation with societal boundaries. The vulnerable human body is often treated as “matter out of place.”

This performance thus facilitates a profound conceptual “transvaluation” of material. The juxtaposition of the abject with expected structures is powerful. It establishes the piece as a critical challenge to cultural norms.  

The Legacy of Abjection and Reparative Care

Dirt serves as an active, expressive artistic medium in this genre. Practitioners manipulate soil using highly intimate, physical gestures. These expressive actions can include rubbing, patting, or even licking the earth.  

This practice validates the soil as a potent communicative tool. The work aligns with artists who engage the discarded and forgotten. This movement aims to take up the burden of “reparative care”.  

Furthermore, confronting the abject is positioned as a necessity for social or personal healing. This confrontation links the work to dialogues around marginalized histories. The performance is an act of prolonged reckoning.  

The performance lasts three hours on August 2, 2025. The title’s commitment to “all aspects” implies a total and comprehensive exploration. It moves far beyond superficial messiness into deep, political confrontation.

Architecture of Intimacy
Studio DB: Berlin’s Platform for Radical Engagement

The selection of Studio DB in Berlin provides essential contextual authority. The venue describes itself as a “polymorphic creative infrastructure”. It is explicitly dedicated to serving local and multidisciplinary artists.  

Moreover, Studio DB’s mission is institutionally supportive of challenging art. It strives to empower “underrepresented artists and communities”. The venue actively incites cultural and collaborative partnerships.  

This location specializes in presenting avant-garde and electro-acoustic events. The physical space thus acts as a conceptual co-performer. This choice authorizes the radical themes of the Usinger production.  

Matilde Flor Usinger’s work challenges prevailing supremacy structures directly. Studio DB provides the ideal supportive environment for this exploration. The space’s “polymorphic” nature mirrors the performance’s holistic scope.  

The Usinger Vision: Vulnerability and Intersectional Feminism

The artistic direction is shared by Ruben and Matilde Flor Usinger. Matilde Flor Usinger’s academic background informs the performance’s core. She aims to embody intersectional feminism through her practice.  

This involves integrating theoretical knowledge directly into the performing body. Her focus encompasses sexuality, gender, world order, and confronting “white body supremacy”. This theoretical grounding validates the work’s extreme corporality.  

The central goal is exploring intimacy through profound vulnerability. Usinger believes vulnerability facilitates deeper, authentic human connections. These connections must span emotional, physical, and spiritual realms.  

The public nudity in the piece, therefore, is not sensationalized. It is framed as an ethical and artistic prerequisite for authentic exposure. The exposed body acts as a political tool challenging imposed purity standards.

The Nude Canvas: Butoh and the Primal Form
Butoh’s Post-War Imperative: Decay and Revelation

The performance relies heavily on Philemon Mukarno’s naked Butoh performance. Butoh is a highly influential Japanese dance theatre tradition. It originated in 1959 following the trauma of World War.

Founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno developed the style. Butoh covers a diverse range of techniques and movement motivations. Historically, the form embraces physical extremes and full body paint.  

Significantly, Butoh has been marked by “near or complete nudity” for decades. This historical context moves the nudity beyond shock. It transforms the naked body into an expression of societal decay and trauma.  

Mukarno’s choice of naked Butoh turns the skin into a material canvas. The exposed flesh becomes a residue of collective history. This aligns precisely with Dirt Art’s concern for historical burdens.  

Philemon Mukarno: Choreography of Abjection

Philemon Mukarno is both an accomplished composer and a performance artist. His naked Butoh-Z performance is central to the work’s somatic exploration. Butoh focuses deeply on individual, primal feeling and the nervous system.  

Since Mukarno is a composer, his movement likely integrates sound and body. The exposed flesh functions as an acoustic resonator for internal sensation. This fusion deepens the sense of physically embodied knowledge.  

Matilde Usinger advocates for integrating academic knowledge directly into the body. Mukarno’s raw, physical expression achieves this objective perfectly. His vulnerability becomes the language of profound, naked truth.  

This physical honesty establishes the necessary foundation for confronting dirt and shame. The nude body becomes a tool for radical, political exposure.

The Unveiled Body in the Beauty Salon

The performance’s conceptual settings amplify the radical nature of the nudity. The performance includes a dedicated Beauty Salon space. The audience is invited to attend and interact within this specific area.

The Salon is typically a location for strict conformity and preparation. It is where physical imperfections are covered, and bodies are manicured for presentation. Its purpose is adhering to aesthetic standards.

Introducing the exposed, potentially dirt-covered Butoh dancer creates intense tension. The body, usually purified for the Salon, is presented as primal and abject. This juxtaposition forces a critical societal reconciliation.

The audience must confront the idealized body versus the actual, vulnerable body. The Butoh form, rooted in primal expression and decay, disrupts the Salon’s purity ethos.  

Experience and Encounter: The Immersive Settings

The performance’s complexity demands the engagement of a large ensemble cast. This structure supports Usinger’s commitment to collective and intersectional dialogue. Ruben and Matilde Flor Usinger direct 30 total performers.  

This collective body creates a dense, temporary, artistic ecology. Key performers include Philemon Mukarno and Matilde Flor Usinger. The ensemble features artists such as Almudena Vernhes and Pia Grizzuti.

The cast also includes Iñigo Laudio, Nellie Heindrichs, and Miro von Berlin. Further collaborators are Loren Johnson and Koset Quintana Talavera. Lucie Fröhlich, Oskar Martin, and Yumo Cheng are also crucial participants.

This extensive list of participants reinforces the substantial scope of the production

The Beauty Salon: Challenging Standards of Perfection

The Beauty Salon setting is designed for direct audience interaction. If the Salon features the nude Butoh performer, the audience experience is highly visceral. The viewer is immediately transformed into an active agent in the work.

The inclusion of dirt or abject material suggests physical audience participation. Patrons might be invited to either purify or soil the exposed performer. This potential action is fraught with conceptual meaning.

“Cleansing” the body enforces pre-existing societal norms of beauty and purity. Conversely, “soiling” the body embraces human vulnerability and imperfection. This tension places the audience within the work’s political center.

This immediate, physical engagement fulfills the work’s mandate for exploring intimacy. The audience actively determines the body’s temporary state of degradation or perceived repair.  

The Restaurant: Consumption and Conceptual Digestion

The inclusion of a Restaurant setting introduces a crucial sensory layer. The restaurant is a familiar site of social ritual and nourishment. Its presence invites the public to conceptually “digest” the challenging performance.

The audience shifts from confronting the raw, traumatic body in the Salon. They move toward metabolizing this difficult experience in the Restaurant space. This journey requires both emotional and intellectual ingestion.

It is likely that the meal, or the ritual of eating, will be conceptually challenging. The act of consumption will mirror the necessity of ingesting difficult truths. These truths relate to body shame, social dirt, and structural inequity.

This comprehensive structure ensures the artistic encounter is fully sensorial. It moves beyond purely visual spectacle. The restaurant element completes the full intellectual and physical cycle of the work.

Critical Synthesis: Dirt as a Path to Connection
Dirt and the Ethics of Exposure

The performance posits a clear ethical necessity for complete exposure. Matilde Usinger seeks authentic vulnerability and genuine human connection. The naked Butoh form provides the only possible physical language for this truth.  

The performance asserts that true connection requires confronting the unmasked self. This means accepting the raw, unrefined reality of the body. The nudity, therefore, serves a function beyond mere visual spectacle.

It operates as an ethical prerequisite for truthful, authentic exchange. This vulnerable display is a radical act of honesty within an artificial setting. The Salon setting heightens the power of this confrontation.

The deliberate use of dirt and nudity collectively challenges material purity. It insists that truth resides in the vulnerable and “out of place” material.  

The Power of the Ephemeral Encounter

The precise three-hour duration maximizes the performance’s critical impact. This time constraint creates a heightened, shared temporal pressure on the audience. The profound connections Usinger seeks must be forged urgently.  

This ephemeral nature ensures the powerful interaction is fleeting yet indelible. The raw, artistic sphere intervenes aggressively into the controlled social sphere. The limited duration makes the intervention a concentrated, impactful event.

This temporality is aligned with Studio DB’s commitment to radical avant-garde interventions. The limited time forces immediate engagement and sensory processing.  

Dirt, Repair, and the Berlin Avant-Garde

Is strategically uses the exposed, moving body as its primary material. The performance successfully transforms naked flesh into “matter out of place”. Directed by the Usingers, the work achieves complex philosophical resonance.  

Housed at the collaborative Studio DB, the piece confirms its avant-garde status. It integrates naked Butoh, tapping into a history of physical trauma and somatic decay. This historical context provides essential conceptual depth.  

The immersive Salon and Restaurant settings create a compelling experience. They challenge the audience to participate in conceptual digestion and emotional repair. This fusion of feminist theory, Dirt Art, and primal movement marks an essential moment for Berlin art.  

The meticulously established theoretical framework validates the use of public nudity.