Simone Aughterlony

According to the philosopher Michel Serres, the customs and myths of hospitality and relationships with visiting strangers, create a pictorial and profound anthropology – «without theory, without heaviness, without boredom and full of intelligence». For Serres, the relations between host and guest – the self and the other – are never far from the parasitic: A cascade of appropriation and expropriation, a chain of profiteers who, in turn, are being exploited by someone else.

The Berlin- and Zurich-based Swiss artist Simone Aughterlony is interested in such systems. During a shuffle of chairs, they raise our awareness to the various representations of the «stranger». We are asked to engage repeatedly in familiar social situations. The folding chairs continuously need to be rearranged, and the question arises: who is hosting whom?

How, under such circumstances, can we regard something as our own? How can we transcend the thought that something belongs to us? In acknowledging the differences between individuals, «Remaining Strangers» illustrates how the stranger keeps showing up. Jen Rosenblit and Nic Lloyd, the duo on stage, and the musician Hahn Rowe demonstrate how anthropological questions can be experienced with folding chairs and microphones. Without theory, without heaviness, without boredom and full of intelligence. (zts)