Scanticlad presents The Pain and Strife of the Bourgeois Life.

 

Inspired by Luis Bunuel’s satirical, surrealist depiction of Italian society in his 1972 film ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’, and the confessional art of sculptor Louise Bourgeois, Scanticlad is an undresser.

In a story that begins with expulsion from the Garden of Eden, ’The Pain & Strife of the Bourgeois Life’ probes at archaic, though persistently hypnotic, narratives of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and the intoxicating megalomania of Western society. Convinced by the aspiration of the millennial you-can-do-anything-if-you-try rhetoric, and carrying the shame of The Fall, she sets out to save the world. And discovers a world of papists and puppets, conquerors and abandoned souls.

 

‘Our tolerance is part of what makes Britain Britain. So conform to it, or don’t come here’ Tony Blair famously said. Scanticlad has a few questions about this…

 

Through multiple characters and quick changes… she answers none of them. But inhabits a world of hypocrisy, fear mongering, disembodiment, cruelty, divisiveness and power play in an effort to understand.

 

What if, after all, we are simply what we've seen?

 

A thoroughly idiotic examination of war, imperialism, colonialism, empire, xenophobia, national pride, corruption, climate change, sex change, small change, homelessness, and the female body.