Nikita Doehring - SoSe 2025
ME AND MY CAT (machine)
ME AND MY CAT (machine) is an assemblage about bodies and machines in patriarchy. The artistic research explores in a reflexive manner theoretical and artistical concepts and perceptions of bodies and/as machines. Meanwhile the mainly poststructuralist and queerfeminist considered theory is dealed with rhizomatically; artistically the project approaches bodies and machines with an autoethnographic method, consisting out of the following approaches: [1] autoethnographic textproduction, [2] visual and material research, [3] designing (for) the body; fashion design, [4] sculpting, [5] group performance, dance and body work, [6] video production, [7] live performance at the UdK Rundgang 25. Visual-aesthetically, the project is inspired by Caterpillar (CAT) — the masculine-coded, dark yellow machines that build and deconstruct urban capitalist life. Shiny, glossy dark-yellow surfaces of latex are contrasted with screen-printed, transparent, delicate mesh, allowing the bodies to flicker between fragility and strength, between being subject and object. Through AI integration and explicit depictions of sexuality the project discusses power structures of the gaze in patriarchy. The project raises questions such as: Who owns my body; what is my body; how does my body functions in society? The project strives for epistemic experience and trans* visibility and discusses perception, embodiment, agency, sexualization, objectification, and commodification of bodies.