Material Ways, 2022
Still by Dasniya Sommer
a durational performance by liz rosenfeld and dasniya sommer
In their durational performance Material Ways, Liz Rosenfeld and Dasniya Sommer deepen their established relationship with the practice of bondage, raising questions relating to physical burnout and the expulsion of energy. The performance connects the slowness of Shibari practice with the conversion and decomposition of material containing hydrocarbons, including dead plants. Shibari, a Japanese bondage technique, traditionally calls for larger bodies: the interaction between fleshiness and plant-based jute ropes is considered to produce valuable images. Rosenfeld and Sommer merge their creative strategies regarding the abundance of flesh (Rosenfeld) and the material relationship between ropes and bodies (Sommer), pushing the energetic sustainability of one another's boundaries and exploring the puissance of the fleshy body. In acknowledgement of the many capitalist realities in which materials and bodies are constantly pushed beyond exhaustion, Sommer carefully works towards sculpting Rosenfeld’s body into full Shibari suspension, evoking the delicate precarity of human and more-than-human existence.
