Christoph Zellweger

Domesticated

2016-2017

Output: Exhibition

Domesticated is an enquiry into the omnipresent social engagement in bodily practices of self-improvement, since training facilities for all ages have become familiar sites in peoples’ homes, as well as in contemporary urban public spaces.

Domesticated - the exhibition - examines everyday experiences that individuals perform in order to deal with bodily deficits and aesthetic desires through a series of furniture-scale objects and interactive devices. These exhibited artefacts can be tested and played with and nurture an underlying critical debate on the collective aspiration for self-domestication.

The process of making the artefacts includes the appropriation of technical skills from plastic surgery, upholstery and cabinet-making. Planning the display installation in order to foster interactions involved building a scaled 1:20 model of the exhibition space and testing 1:1 prototypes with volunteers. Sighting specialised literature and triggering conversations with heterodox groups took place to better understand the popularity of such phenomena. For the Cabinet piece a collaboration with the artist Lilian Mattuschka was established in order to avoid a purely male perspective on a gendered design issue and co-design the shapes for the Labia works.

Domesticated opened at Gallery Marsden Woo, where the public interacted with the works and was confronted to the factual, fictional and ethical dimensions of the subject. The exhibition provided further insights out of conversations and user experiences that took place on site. An exhibition review was published by contemporary art magazine 'this is tomorrow'.

Several artefacts from Domesticated became part the group exhibition 'Together' at the Art Pavillon Munich, 08-12 March 2017. On display was 'Workout IV' (chair) and seven Labia plates from the Cabinet of Norms & Choices.