A being in its seemingly natural habitat embarks on an existential metamorphosis. Disoriented and disassembled, it finds itself falling, sensing, mimicking the movements of plants, machines or insects; a post- or trans-human organism trying to piece together its existence in an ambiguous body.
ontogenesis dreams: a sideways stretching of the sensory limbs is a collaborative hybrid of performance and installative environment choreographed and performed by Astrid Tetsche Sweeney with sculpture & scenography by Weixin Quek Chong.
Inspired by the molting processes of insects, queer ecologies and the radical vision of post-apocalyptic adaptation in Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy, they explore the body’s impermanence through its relationship with an ambiguous organic material.
Astrid Tetsche Sweeney (she/her, b. 1994) is a Danish/Irish performer and choreographer interested in interrogating movement through stasis, stimulus, and isolation of individual body parts. Her recent work questions and distorts the perspective we have on the femme body through investigating forms of motion that could be considered otherly or uncanny. Her sources of inspiration include the adaptive resilience and diversity of nature, queer ecology, science fiction, Feldenkrais-inspired somatic movement techniques as well as the diverse range of dance styles she’s been exposed to throughout the course of her dance career.
In 2020, she collaborated with mixed media artist Zara Joan Miller on Soft Rio, a short film featured at festivals like MUFF, LUFF, and Ann Arbor. The following year, she created Weven, a site-specific performance for Fête Permanente in Paris with Jonas Vandekerckhove. Since 2022, she has been developing ontogenesis dreams with visual artist Weixin Quek Chong, showcasing work in Singapore, Norway, Belgium, and Denmark.
Born in Copenhagen, Astrid began as a traditional Irish dancer and in 2011 was accepted at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance in London. She went on to perform with Scottish Dance Theatre where she was part of creations by choreographers; Sharon Eyal, Fleur Darkin, Botis Seva and Colette Sadler amongst others. Now based in Brussels, she freelances as a performer, outside eye, and choreographer, having collaborated with artists like Iván Pérez, Tamsyn Russell, Luke Murphy, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and Damien Jalet.
Weixin Quek Chong (she/they b. 1988) is an artist whose work is inspired by hybridity, metamorphosis and sensorial languages. Their recent projects contemplate processes of transformation, construction and adaptation in the biodiverse world and human society. They draw from communal behaviours, aesthetic and subcultural trends and movements as a way of peeling back layers of societal constructs and finding interconnections between beings, objects, histories, and worlds.
They have presented work in Singapore, Madrid, London, Seoul, Santiago, Yogyakarta, Taipei and Brussels among other cities and are an alumni of artist residencies in the NTU-Centre for Contemporary Art (Singapore), Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art (Korea), and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo – Molten Capital Foundation (Santiago, Chile) among others.
Recipient of the 2018 President’s Young Talents Grand Prize from the Singapore Art Museum, the 2019 Young Artist Award from the National Art Council of Singapore, the XXXI Circuitos de las Artes Plásticas award from the Comunidad de Madrid and La Casa Encendida’s Generación 2024 commission award from the Montemadrid Foundation, Weixin lives and works in Madrid.
