‘Aeroponic’ – root systems nourished by air – Acts is the name given to the nomadic Dutch Art Institute’s final Kitchen presentations. Each participant addresses one question, as a practice of engagement.

Here you will find the documentation of Maxima Smith's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Giulia Crispiani and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.

It’ll all end in Tears

Maxima Smith's question: Can performative emotion be harnessed to process somatically and achieve some form of catharsis?

Maxima's introduction: There are many types of tears: the basal tear, the reflex tear, the CGI tear and the (proxy) emotional tear. Within this video installation all of these tears, which oscillate between performative and “true”, are present. Each is (re-)performed by Maxima Smith as a way of questioning the (in)authenticity of “the money shot”, and how a hyper awareness of the camera affects the subject.

The repetitive tracing of Kim Kardashian, Ann Buchanan and Margot Robbie’s emotional gestures by Smith, who sits camouflaged within the image, emphasises the performativity of emotion. The 4th video in which the graduating DAI year cuts onions and cry’s together, functions as a collective non-verbal act of saying goodbye.

“It’ll all end in Tears” asks us to think about tears beyond being “real” or “fake”, but instead as an abject fluid which breaches the boundary of the skin, allowing us to process somatically." 

Giulia's report: A three-channel video installation with some juxtaposed faces of female figures crying—Kardashian, Meghan Markle, and another I didn’t recognize overlapped to the author’s face weeping, smiling, shaking her head, putting make up on, tearing down. The audience can walk in and browse, then take their sit. There are two performers on the side of the stage, who then walk to the center hold their phone up and then down. The lights go off. Someone off stage shouts—lights and camera and action. A video goes on with a long table in a v shape with people preparing food, nineteen people, with pans and knives cutting onions on cutting boards, and pouring them into bigger pans. The noise behind the screen make us think that the action is happening behind the stage. So it is and we’re invited to walk through the black backdrop. The audience slowly enters the image and sits in front of the table. The two performers are indicating the way. On the other side the smell of onion is overwhelming. The audience stands in front creating a mid circle vs the mid square, watching this tableau vivant. The smell of onions makes the cutters tear down. A mic is amplifying the cutting noise. They all peeling, slicing and cutting and pouring on pans. One can chose what sense to use to engage. Now there’s a certain rhythm to the composition of the image, each two people have a bowl and a pan, a cutting board and a knife each, we watch them wiping their eyes and keep cutting, some whisper to each other. Maxima stand up and leave and thanks the audience. Is everyone crying?

Phanuel Antwi I have a bit of an issue, since we’re not given don’t have much of a background. I happened to see your piece last year and that was about your family, and now this is your family as well. Graduating students all sitting there crying, and it makes me cry too. Can performative emotions be harnessed—there was harmony across the ground, the harmony preceded that—how can harmony induce tear? How a dynamic of emotions—I think of a power dynamic—the onion becomes more than the onion, the food of the nurturing, stands in as preparation that goes into the dinner. Emotions as categories of perception. I am actually quite moved, I am invested in a way that surprises me. I have to think about the language of the social experiment, and the biological stimulus of emotion—what forces inside and outside interact with each other, the debate between biological and social turn of emotions. 

Ayesha Hameed There’s a lot of patience to this piece, how do we know we need to sit down? There’s something happening on the other side, circus and circus, peeling and unpeeling. Slippage routine of emotions, alchemical reaction, at a level of form this is really beautiful, when we think of catharsis and emotions. The auto-portrait aspect this work—the filming way is really violent, in the scalar relationship with the room and it’s full of affect. 

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi I think of the metagram, you worked on the representation, the mise en scene of the tear. There is this relation between the body and the tear as some sort of dramatic filter. We’re more and more used to the aesthetics of the filter. It follows up on the representation of depression and romanticism, I think of artists such as  Bas Jan Ader and David Horvitz.

There’s the scientific experiment, a protocol of disturbance, disturbed in what would be a usual event. It’s really like science, the work is about the philosophy of emotions—how do we understand emotions that are not ours? How do we understand each other? According to radical externalism, we don’t need to refer to something inside of us, everything is outside. While if we follow an internalistic position, emotions are located somewhere in the brain, we need to locate a mental event. A social question comes up: what do we care about the Kardashian and the royal family? Princess Diana created this trend, and it’s an issue of power. 

About: Maxima Smith

Maxi Smith's " It’ll all end in Tears" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on July 28th.

Find the overview of all nineteen AEROPONIC ACTS 2023 here: WHERE THE MOON IS UP

In italiano: 

TITOLO: Tutto finirà in lacrime     

DOMANDA: L'emozione performativa può essere sfruttata per un'elaborazione somatica e per il raggiungimento di una qualche forma di catarsi?

Esistono molti tipi di lacrime: la lacrima basale, la lacrima riflessa, la lacrima CGI e la lacrima (proxy) emozionale. In questa installazione video tutte queste lacrime sono presenti e oscillano tra il performativo e il "vero". Ognuna di esse viene (ri)eseguita da Maxima Smith per mettere in discussione l'inautenticità del "money shot" e il modo in cui l'iperconsapevolezza della telecamera influisce sul soggetto.

La ripetizione dei gesti emotivi di Kim Kardashian, Ann Buchanan e Margot Robbie effettuata da Smith, che si mimetizza nell’immagine, sottolinea la performatività dell'emozione. Il quarto video, in cui i laureandi del DAI tagliano le cipolle e piangono insieme, funziona come un atto collettivo e non verbale di addio.

"It'll all end in Tears" ci chiede di pensare alle lacrime al di là del loro essere "vere" o "finte", e di percepirle come a un fluido anomalo che viola il confine della pelle, permettendoci di elaborarle somaticamente.