Selin Davasse

Steirischer Herbst | Graz, Austria

Curated by Ekaterina Degot, Humans and Demons, the 56th edition of Steirischer Herbst Festival, turns to character-based storytelling to show how people deal with the demons surrounding them, held 21 September – 15 October 2023. Neither heroes nor villains, its protagonists resemble the charismatic rogues of the picaresque novel—an early modern form that fits a city flaunting a premodern topography. Selin Davasse’s new performance At Your Service is a commissioned cabaret show about art world ethics as a part of the new Herbst Cabaret series. The artist adopts the role of a diseuse—a professional reciter, usually accompanied by music—and raises her glass to the biennial, the second home for the art world and a workplace for artists. The performance questions institutional structures and criticizes their role, just like cabaret did throughout the 20th century.

Selin Davasse's (1992) performative practice translates research across various disciplines to textual, visual and sonic textures. Interweaving theory, history and fiction into feminine voices, her work engages with ethical/political impasses and takes shape as multilayered lecture-performances with site-specific installations.

Her performances have been presented at Next Waves Theater at Volksbühne, Berlin (2020), Slavs and Tatars' Pickle Bar at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2020) and Queer Art, Culture and Politics from Turkey and its Diaspora Symposium at Goldsmiths College, London (2020). She has presented Hydro-Salon for Embodied Aqueousness parallel to the 16th Istanbul Biennial (2019) and participated in The Society for Matriarchal World Domination whose collective works are in the collection of the Kunstbibliothek der Staatlichen Museen von Berlin (2019).

About Steirischer Herbst

Steirischer herbst is one of Europe’s oldest interdisciplinary festivals for contemporary art, taking place in Graz and Styria, Austria, annually in the autumn since 1968. Every year, artists, collectives, and researchers are invited to contribute, reflecting on relevant issues of the past, present, and future. With its distinct programming—most of the works are site-specific commissions—it has become an annual staple of the European cultural calendar.