Stoffwechsel

In 2020, ANTI Festival invited deufert&plischke to Kuopio to collaborate with researchers, designers, and dancers from Savonia University. They transformed an empty space in a shopping center into the creative hub for the new project,«A Worn World”, which has since evolved through Los Angeles, Montreal, Kuopio, and most recently Riyadh.

At the start, Johanna Tuukkanen, then artistic director of ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival, introduced deufert&plischke to «Acts of Clothing», the iconic performance by Marcia Farquhar, which Johanna herself had inherited. In this powerful piece, a woman walks alone on a catwalk, accompanied by the wardrobe of her life— garments that tell stories of resistance, grief, defiance, anger, and longing, all while challenging societal power and institutions.

Inspired by this, deufert&plischke together with Johanna quickly envisioned creating a film from Acts of Clothing for Johannas 50th birthday: 50 Acts of Clothing. In 2023, they shot in Oravikoski and Hailuoto, and as the project developed, decided to expand it into an immersive exhibition. New texts were written, and the then 10-year-old son of deufert&plischke composed the film’s music on the electric guitar. In December 2023, the resulting performance was renamed «Stoffwechsel»—German for metabolism or literally translated: the change of fabrics— and presented at spinnereischwelm with two multimedia performances that explored the transformation of life and clothing.

Johanna Tuukkanen had also performed «Acts of Clothing» in 2009 and 2010 at the Itä-Suomen tanssin aluekeskus in Kuopio. Now, 15 years later, there is a completely new version, a mixed-media and participatory performance developed for the theater space, marking the 25th anniversary of the original «Acts of Clothing». This also marks deufert&plischke’s first black box production in five years!