Diane Mahín presents GRUNT (Performance)
She/her
Sun June 1 | de Brakke Grond
How to relate to a human being who can only interact via an apparently wild and primal sound? In GRUNT, the audience meets a woman who communicates solely through growling. The growler navigates various moods, portraying what seems to be an urgent story to be told or an intimate conversation to be held. While she attempts to tell a joke, the audience is met with dark, trauma-laden growls, turning humor into a shadowy reflection. When she reaches out tenderly, all she can express is violence.
What begins as an awkward encounter full of innocent misunderstandings gradually escalates into a desperate need for connection. The vocalizations transform from deliberate attempts to communicate into involuntary, visceral outbursts, culminating in a violent expulsion of sound.
About the artist
Diane Mahín is a Dutch-Iranian performance maker and sociologist. She makes performative worlds in which image and sound are the driving forces. Working with sound reflects her desire to be faced with highly subjective, confrontational and immersive forms of reality. Inspired by the distorted vocals of Death Metal, Diane began growling a year ago, studying under professional Metal singers. She scrutinizes the human body as a material object in order to dissect social constructions, as she wishes to grasp their absurdity and humor. Death and nothingness form the underlying motives of her work.
