Residencies

• 25.03 > 29.03.2024
• 11.03 > 16.03.2024
• 19.02 > 24.02.2024
• 13.11 > 25.11.2023

Inspired by a prac­ti­ce of lace work, MadDoG is a knot whe­re dis­so­nant notions/​materials are tied together. The knot unfolds not only cho­re­o­grap­hi­cally, but also through the use of sym­bo­lic objects, spo­ken text, and music. The per­for­man­ce embo­dies the extre­me dis­pa­ri­ties of con­tem­po­ra­ry expe­rien­ce whe­re depic­ti­ons of mass mur­der fol­low job ads and pho­to­shop­ped women on yachts fol­low port­rayals of natu­ral disas­ter. This encoun­ter with tightly bound con­tra­dic­ti­ons is whe­re McGlinchey sees knot­ting as a per­ti­nent aes­the­tic sta­ke. The con­fron­ta­ti­on with con­tras­ting sen­ti­ments marks us all. The work dis­har­mo­ni­zes beau­ty with what’s grim, thus chal­len­ging the bina­ry logic of ​“Utopia” vs ​“No Future”. MadDoG takes on the figu­re of a rabid dog: a deran­ged ener­ge­tic excess.

MadDoG under­stands expres­si­on and move­ment to be inse­pa­ra­ble: the body is always ​‘char­ged’, never devoid of sen­sa­ti­on or emotion.

MadDoG takes from the gothic gen­re by under­stan­ding the human as a site of per­ver­si­on and dete­ri­o­ra­ti­on. Staging desi­re as ​‘astray­ed’, the per­for­mers seek to beco­me objects, gene­ric surfa­ces strip­ped of con­text. The gothic gen­re has always been fas­ci­na­ted with the pro­spect of under­mi­ning the ​‘true/​authentic’ self. MadDoG under­stands the alle­ged ​‘fake­ness’ of the con­tem­po­ra­ry sub­ject as a mate­ri­al rea­li­ty. The fake has real con­se­quen­ces. Influencers have influ­en­ce. MadDoG works through the Gothic by sta­ging cru­de, frag­men­ta­ry, and war­ped forms. The work see­ks to lea­ve audien­ces with what the artist calls ​‘subli­me hor­ror’, an affect root­ed in the his­to­ry of Gothicism’s disen­chant­ment of the Romantic subli­me, indu­cing both won­der and fear at the same time. 

Lace is a tech­ni­que deri­ved from ancient knot­ting/­net-making. Textile desig­ner Elena Vloeberghen and McGlinchey devel­o­ped seve­r­al lar­ge-sca­le lace works together with the Texture Museum in Kortrijk through which knot­ting is brought onto the sta­ge in an expand­ed sense.