Kitty Maria and Elise Ehry are unemployed air hostesses, wearing their self-made uniforms while being permanently off-duty.
In this performance based project they unfold the figure of the flight attendant and the ways in which they can retire from duty. This withdrawal from duty signifies a broader resistance towards the historical interweaving of gender and labor, and specifically the mystification of the female gender for commercial purposes.
As such, they have reconfigured the figure of the air hostess into a concept for Hosting Air – Hosting clear skies and empty spaces –
To consolidate our withdrawal from the labor market, they speculate on the concept of hosting through performances. And since the absence of duties has rendered them useless, they find themselves wondering: what does it mean to perform? How can we perform without providing a service? Their answer is to provide critical non-services ; volunteering as fountains for large corporate buildings, wandering the lobby, practicing tango, playing silent instrument and parading the service worker body.
After having produced many mute performances, they are entering a new period where sound and voice have become our medium of emancipation. Air tonalities, the project they currently are developing, is a performance dealing with notions of invisible labor, care and entreprecariat* subjects they have been investigating since the beginning of our collaboration.
Elise Ehry lives in Paris and works between Asnières-sur-Seine (FR) and Amsterdam, as a costume designer and performer.
Kitty Maria lives in Amsterdam and works between Amsterdam and Paris as a performer, videographer and sculptor.
They often work on large-scale projects in Elise’s studio in Munchhouse in Alsace (FR), where they produce ceramics and large scale sculptures.
They have been working together since their studies at the Dirty Art Department of the Sandberg Institute in 2014.
*entreprecariat a term invented by Silvio Lorusso.
The entreprecariat (entrepreneurialism + precariat) refers to the reciprocal influence of an entrepreneurialist regime and pervasive precarity.
