S.W.E.A.T. features conversations about performance and performativity of the sexual/ized body at work—work as labour of survival and labour of a/Art with host Mad Kate. This conversation features artist Montserrat Gardó Castillo and is led by Mad Kate and Adrienne Teicher in the context of their work on cultures of extraction. They talk about collaboration, the naked body, and rules of engagement.

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Montserrat Gardó Castillo is a performance artist. She studied dance at the Institut del Teatre/Barcelona and at the Folkwang UdK/Essen as well as journalism at the URL/Barcelona. She is currently studying for a Master’s degree in Humanities and Contemporary Art at the UOC/Barcelona. After working with VA Wölfl/NEUER TANZ (2009 to 2017), she started creating her own work together with Petr Hastik and supported by FFT Düsseldorf and Urbane Künste Ruhr, amongst others. Besides, she collaborates with artists such as Gintersdorfer/Klaßen, Heiner Goebbels, Alexander Giesche, Tino Sehgal, Alexandra Pirici, La Fleur, SEE! and Costa Compagnie. She was nominated twice for the Förderpreis für Darstellende Kunst in Düsseldorf and received the Ground Support Prize of the NRW Kultursekretariat. In the 2021-22 season she has been curating the series: “Politics of Invitation” at FFT Düsseldorf together with Monika Gintersdorfer and Annick Choco; and for the last two years she has been working on the topic of brutalism, with works online and two site-specific performances in NRW.

More about Montse: https://montseandpetr.com/

https://www.fft-duesseldorf.de/komplizinnen/montserrat-gardo-castillo

Politics of Invitation: https://www.fft-duesseldorf.de/reihen-festivals/politics-of-invitation

we mentioned: The Celestial Wheel, a book by Ursula K. Le Guin Europa, a film by Lars von Trier

we played: Mad Kate – My Fear of Pretending (featuring Lori Baldwin) Patti Smith - Horses Lance Amrstrong – Parquesvr Wire – Ex Lion Tamer Black Sabbath - Fairies Wear Boots

We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/

Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.