Seeing Pink Narcissus

Inga Gerner Nielsen and Rasmus Knutzen Nielsen

21-29 November 2014

Seeing Pink Narcissus is an installation with a durational one-to–one performance hosted by 68 Square Metres.

You are encouraged to come and help maintain the life and beauty of the boy Pink Narcissus. His destiny lies in the power of your gaze – will he be able to excel and unfold himself in the reflection of your eyes? Or will he wither away and disappear before you…

Seeing Pink Narcissus is a performance developed by Inga Gerner Nielsen in collaboration with the performer Rasmus Knutzen Nielsen. The piece explores how intensive gazing can enable sensuous changes, both in the person who casts the glance and in the receiver of it. Through different instructional tools and performative processes, the piece examines what it means to interact with a work of art and devote oneself to it – or to another person’s fantasy.

The performance borrows a fictional figure from the homoerotic film Pink Narcissus (1971) by James Bidgood. The suggested situation embodies a fictional universe, which is dependent on the sensual engagement of both viewer and performer. This approach is specific to Gerner Nielsen’s productions and methods, which aim to stimulate and activate our sensory apparatus and imagination. Through a reduced and simplified situation i.e. the gallery context, the performance highlights the intensified relation between the viewer and object. Seeing Pink Narcissus thereby investigates how invisible projections and small, subtle influences may alter the perception of gender in interaction. What sexualities are possible could depend on how we let our lovers see themselves through us.

The project is assisted by visual artist Julie Sonja Nordahl and curated by Iben Bach Elmstrøm.