sungazing (رضایت)

The duo LABOUR traces connections between ritual and the political dimensions of club culture in an immersive sound experience. The work is inspired by the obscure practice of gazing at the sun and melds together sound synthesis, percussion, video, and dance.

For the Berlin duo LABOUR, the obscure eponymous practice of sungazing holds the tension between disquieting temptations and the possibility of attaining knowledge. It is in this ambivalent space that the quest for self-realization often takes place. In their research, the two artists explore the various facets of this phenomenon through a series of references ranging from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Greek mythology, rituals of the millennia-old Iranian Zoroastrian religion, to alternative medicine. Looking into the sun thus becomes the starting point for their multidisciplinary performance project, which examines club culture’s hedonism for its potential for political action and civil disobedience. Between ritual and immersive listening experience, sungazing unfolds spatial sound dramaturgies and stages electronics and live percussion in dialogue with the dancers Johnny McMillan, Vivian Assal Koohnavard, Samuel Pereira, and video works by Enes Güç, Evelyn Benčičová, and Zeynep Schilling, lights by Claes Schwennen and costumes by Marcelo Alcaide.