Playground

Contagious! deals with the scene of the ‘café concerts’ in Paris at the end of the 19th century. The shows celebrated the new ‘epileptic dance’. The dances have been described as ‘presentations of strangeness’ and embodied the idea of ‘loss of control’. The film stages reenactments of dances in the context of a contemporary club. The title plays with the idea that one could be infected through the imitation of motions and gestures. The photographs that are part of the installation show psychiatric patients, juxtaposed with illustrations from the time of the gestures of the ‘the epileptic dance’.

with the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetica