Denise Blickhan works as a multimedia performance artist on the performance cycle “MEDUSA”. Thematically, she works on diverse historical and contemporary images of women and merges them with social media face filters. The experimental excessively gender-stereotypical performance on her voice is combined with the perseverance of emotional polarity which evoke a numinous and comfortably-uncomfortable feeling.
Denise Blickhan studied Philosophy in Jena and currently studies fine arts.
MEDUSA 8.1 (or sleeping in procrustes bed)
The mythological figure of Medusa unifies diverging characteristics: the beauty and the monster, victim and perpetrator. Different versions of this myth claim parallel validity. Denise Blickhan takes the Medusa thematic into the present time. She combines archetypical imagery with modern social media practices in the depiction of the female. The main thematic of the voluntary submission is enriched with phenomena of polarity like victim-perpetrator connection, structures of power and powerlessness and the piercing presence of todays mantra to optimize your body and mind by all means.
The "MEDUSA" performance cycle is an iridescent musical show, where contrarian emotions are legitimately evoked. Centrally, Denise Blickhan works in her shows with her voice, sound technology, smartphone technology, video projections, singing, music and body. She presents her text with hypergenderstereotyped voice effects. "MEDUSA 8.1 (or sleeping in procrustes bed)" is the first technoperformance of the "MEDUSA" performance cycle.