PAN-DOOR-AAAAH

// 2018

Neon-sound-installation

Various different dimensions

 

//Comissioned by

TAXISPALAIS

Kunsthalle Tirol for SEX

Courtesy Sarah Decristoforo

 

// Photos: Thomas Scheid

In Sarah Decristoforo’s work, three influential male concepts of threatening female sexuality merge into a figuration of ambivalent desire that glows in high-voltage lettering: PAN-DOOR-AAAAH. Pandora (from Greek mythology: the first woman and the bearer of all fatherly evil), Sigmund Freud’s „Dora“ (the notion of hysteria as an outgrowth of perverse female inclinations) and Vladimir Nabokov’s „Lolita“ (the child-woman who inevitably provokes male drives) merge in a text spoken by a female voice with a breathy, erotic timbre. The loudspeaker cabins opposite the glowing red neon letters of PAN-DOOR-AAAAH force the heads of visitors into this narrow grid of traditional ideas and their bodies against steep peaks. The three female figures exhibit numerous cross-connections, which are also described in the annotated text in the accompanying guide. Do the overlapping citations in words, high-voltage letters and sounds that lead ad absurdum allow us to strip these discriminating inscriptions from our sexualised bodies, or at least to tattoo them a bit differently?

// Text: Nina Tabassomi (Director & Curator TAXISPALAIS Kunsthalle Tyrol / Innsbruck, Austria)