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Performance by Sunny Pfalzer

Location: U-Bhf Strausberger Platz 

The performance Scores for Fake Authenticity consists of moment scores to be “played” by three performers in public at Strausberger Platz. Enacting movements and gestures that appear authentic or unconscious, Ronald Berger, Kévin Bonono and Sunny Pfalzer will move from the underground entrance along the square, sometimes as a group, sometimes alone. The performers’ costumes identify them as a group, while as individuals they seem removed from everyday life, perhaps strange or slightly absurd. 

The scores are inspired by gestures previously observed by Sunny Pfalzer in urban space. Although the actions appear intimate, they are constructed choreographically and aesthetically for the performance. The scores are “Recipes of Being”.

The performance places two states of being portrayed between collective and individual behaviour in a tense opposition to one another. “Turning inwards”, as Sunny Pfalzer calls it, an apparently authentic, unconscious act, versus “wanting to show”, which addresses the audience and the environment in an attentive state. Made public in a performative format, these states are placed in relation to gender identity. Identifying as genderfluid, the performers take up gazes that stem from the difference between normative societal models and identities that diverge from them. During the performance, the bodies move back and forth between different states of consciousness. The performers draw from methods of feminist and activist collectives as a self-empowering strategy (according to the motto “own your obstacles”). 

Three posters on the tunnel walls in the underground station will depict the performers posing as pop stars, in formations resembling boy and girl bands from the 1990s and early 2000s. These posters will also function as announcements for the performances and transform the performers’ ordinary movements into a show. The posters point to the performativity of the everyday and thereby to the inherent performativity of gender. 

Sunny Pfalzer regularly addresses activist spaces as well as their contextual representation and implementation. The resulting images and actions are often influenced by pop cultural references. Pfalzer draws from visual research as well as own experiences. Their work is often oriented around lived forms of protest and resistance movements. They focus on the aesthetic and theoretical examinations of “togetherness” as a means of self-empowerment and a gesture of collective empowerment.