RED – Manual for a withdrawing body

RED – Manual for a Withdrawing Body is a performance and installation drawing on the
visual language of Italian thriller cinema ‘Giallo’ of the 1960s and 1970s.
Trench coats, gloved hands, and unstable points of view are emblematic within the genre’s
eroticised imagery of femicide. Working with and against these historically violent
narratives, artists Kitty Maria and Elise Ehry place their own bodies at the centre of the
mise-en-scène. Presented in the storefront window of Swimming Pool Gallery in Berlin, the
performance takes place inside the gallery while the audience watches from the street.
The window functions as barrier and cinematic screen, placing viewers in a voyeuristic
position, unable to intervene.
Co-produced by the Amsterdam-based performance art manifestation Trespassing, RED
– continues a collaboration that began with BLU – The Storm Behind the Window,
presented in Amsterdam in 2025 as part of Trespassing's Living Room Series.
While the first chapter focused on the spectacle of violence central to Giallo cinema, RED
turns its attention to what remains after the violent act. Moving away from the crime scene,
the work focuses on the inner world of the victim and the lasting psychological and
physical impact of violence.
Rooted in the artists' experiences of femininity, RED uses the heightened horror and
tension of Giallo as a lens through which to explore how traumas shaped by sexism
continue to inhabit the body and its memories.
Through text, movement, and scenography, RED attempts to propose a counter-cinema:
new scenarios that refuse the female body as object of dread and desire, and insist
instead on her interiority — her withdrawal, her neurosis, her survival — as the only
narrative worth investigating.
Throughout the festival, the scenographic installation will be on view at Swimming Pool
Gallery.

The installation will be activated through two live performances 3 and 4 July from
23:00 - 23:30 , after the streets of Berlin have turned dark.