Daria Iuriichuk: The pleasures that keep you alive: Thoughts on the performance of Uses of the Erotic by Daria Iuriichuk.

Naked legs, a short black skirt, a plain white long-sleeve shirt with zip-up collar, pulled up ankle
socks and flat shiney leather shoes. Chin-length chestnut hair tied to a bun, horn-rimmed glasses.
The performer appears to be the archetype of a 1940s librarian, who somehow forgot her
stockings at home.
 
She quickly sweeps the stage with a mop, which the audience had to partially walk over to gain
their seats. The space is tiny. The stage: a sprung wooden floor covered with black PVC often
found in dance studios. The seating: two rows of foldable plastic chairs. The stage booth: a
technician squeezed behind an IKEA coffee table with his sound desk and some controllers wired
up to a laptop.
 
Calves touch, perfumes wander, very quickly the patrons turn into a pack of intimately engaged
witnesses. The air is thick.

Images flicker through my head while watching the showing of “Uses of the Erotic”, the piece’s
working title: photographies by Eric Kroll, drawings from Bizarre magazine, Steven Shainberg’s
2002 comedy “Secretary”, Betty Boop’s big eyes and garter, the flirt scenes in Tom and Jerry
cartoons.
 
I am starting to wonder. What is this thing that is erotic and how useful is it, after all? Is it a mind set, a behaviour that provokes an atmosphere, a capacity to turn any situation into preliminaries?
It seems to be all of it and yet, it’s not sexual per se. It’s the tease, the allusion, the innuendo. And the one who initiates the teasing is the one in charge, usually.
 
Halfway through the showing, I seem to have come to a conclusion: The erotic is in all of us, and anyone, absolutely anyone can develop erotic powers. That, I find, is a very useful piece of
information.
While watching the performer walk in circles, moving from one erotic impersonation to the next, this particular, universal aspect of the erotic makes itself palpable.
We see “witch riding the broom”, the short skirt daringly pushed up, the broom stick close to her genitalia, a position hinting at intercourse. Then comes the image of the “studious student” stern looking, followed by “lusty girl”, chest heaving, knees slightly apart, head sunk away between shoulders, a breathless voice first roaring, later singing “Oops!… I Did It Again” by US-American pop star Britney Spears.
At the tail end: “brooding boy”, one foot leaning against the wall, gazing through a curtain of hair, a lurking animal ready to jump on its prey.
 
The erotic is this constant alluding towards a sexual act without ever mentioning the sexual act
itself. It’s the decorum, the song-and-dance, the game of arousal. The power over someone’s
libido. Playing another person’s desire like an instrument.
 
After all, isn’t being in charge of someone else’s horniness an expression of potency par
excellence? Every lap dancer has a word or two to say about this matter.
 
The piece moves on.
White knickers, pubic hair peeking out left and right. Strong thighs, boyish features, motionless
face. A raised fist, an open, intimidating gaze into the audience. The performer changes gear, for the erotic is not always “to please”, but also “to take” in order to satisfy one’s desire, to rapture. The soundscape veers towards the eerie. We are reaching the peak of this display of sensual power relationships, when the performer calls for a member of the audience to play the “German immigration officer”. No-one raises their hand.
I volunteer. A microphone is handed over to me. I ask: “So what exactly makes you a worthy
member of German society?”
 
The answer will be given promptly:
Iuriichuk, in a state of undress spare a pair of white cotton knickers, takes a red rose from the
technician’s desk, and squeezes it between her buttocks. She turns away from the audience to
put her behind on display, looking slightly over her shoulder.
She then wiggles her hips, the rose loses its grip and falls down.
She picks up the flower and squeezes its stem between her butt cheeks again.
Wiggles her hips.
The flower lands on the floor.
She picks it up again and hands it over to me.
 
The German immigration officer has been charmed.
Or: The German immigration officer had to be sexually aroused in order to opt in favour of the
immigrant.
Or: The powerful has to be made momentarily powerless, for the powerless to feel momentarily
powerful.
Or: The powerful has to be made momentarily powerless, for the powerless to reach a goal which
would be out of reach if the “erotic” hadn’t been deployed to its full use.
The German language offers a colloquial expression for this tactic: “die Charmeoffensive”, the
“charm offensive”.

The performer handles the images of the erotic like shirts in a clothing shop. She steps into the
changing room, puts it on, then gets out again for her friend – or, in this case, the audience – to
take a look. There is no awkward exposure here, no space for shame possible.
The simplicity of the stage set-up tells it all: for the erotic to work, you do not need much: a body, an onlooker and an ever-so-subtle gesture. You do not even need to be a naturally born
performer. The erotic is a shirt that fits everyone. A sprinkle of self-awareness and confidence will suffice.
 
The programme note which the audience received as printed copies prior to the showing ends
with: “What pleasures keep you alive?”
In a city such as Berlin, filled to the brim with disillusioned left-wing dwellers from across the
globe who left their countries because of dictatorship or other forms of repression, this is a very potent question.
When having been subject to a controlling state’s coerciveness over many years, possibly
practising an all-around alertness, self-containment and self-censorship down to the way how one dresses and moves in public space, it only seems most natural to seek modes of
“decompression” once a safe space and opportunity present themselves.
 
I observed this particular behaviour in some of my own friends and recognised it in the personal stories that had been shared with me: the Yemeni gay refugee getting his hands on as many cocks as possible at the Laboratory night club, or the Israeli who is just fed up with their government and fucks the pain away at KitKat. Or the Syrian IT specialist clocking in the lovers to feel a modicum of joy, or, in this instance, the Russian artist who refuses to lie down and give herself to depression, but decides to do one good thing for herself per day, instead. Dating – as Iuriichuk later mentions in the post-show artist talk.
 
It amounts to more than mere escapism, which – admittedly – is always lurking behind the corner in a metropolitan city of the Global North such as Berlin, to be asking the question of erotic’s usefulness. Rather, it is the desire to discover one’s own agency on a very simple level. “I feel aroused, so I am.” “I arouse someone, so I have a word to say in this life.” “I feel joy, I share the joy with others, and I am feeling good in myself.” The erotic is very useful for that. It is an accessible, inclusive technique that we often seem to apply as a form of social gel, all across the ages, all across cultures.
 
Yet, to go one step further: the erotic appears to be incredibly useful for developing a particular kind of self-love. As a compound of sexual desire, charm and self-confidence, the erotic quickens the senses and provides reality with a pleasant sheen, the technicolour tint on one’s glasses.
 
One very important aspect of the erotic, the spice atop the spice if you will, was being fully played out towards the end of Iuriichuk’s showing:
 
Still scantily clad and standing in a wide stride, Iuriichuk sinks into her knees like a Sumo ringer.
She then bends her torso forward which makes her look like a human crab. To the music of Tony Holiday’s “Tanze Samba mit mir” (Engl. Dance Samba with me), a German Schlager hit from 1978, she starts hopping sideways, along the back wall of the stage.
The lyrics are packed with eroticism (“…du bist so heiß wie ein Vulkan, und heut’ verbrenn ich
mich daran” – Engl. You are as hot as a volcano, and today, I will burn myself on it), but carry the naive lightness and matter-of-factly imagery of a Schlager song, sung at a time when German society was still coming to terms with sexual liberation and conservatism.
 
Seeing the nearly-naked performer exhausting herself while pretending to be a grasshopper with an obsession for ping-pong movement had me in stitches. The scene reminded me of humour’s agency, being able to corrupt and dismantle any expression of power in no time at all.
By simply giving her body a crustacean shape, effectively moving it away from the display of
sexualised body curves, Iuriichuk drives the atmosphere away from the seriously sensual towards light-hearted play.
This seemingly anachronistic turn of events is exactly what makes the “erotic” so powerful: it
hovers above the flesh-and-bone reality of the sexual act and has a laugh. It doesn’t take itself
seriously. It doesn’t have to commit to the sexual act. It can just flirt with it, hint at it. The erotic
can destroy its iconic, self-conscious, serious self-adoration within a split second. It plays with the possible misunderstanding, the tease and leaves all doors open for the development of a
situation. No-one is harmed, yet everyone has a good time.
In “Uses of the Erotic”, taking the audience as her sparring partner, Iuriichuk tries out all these
different “formulas of the erotic” in order to activate its universal potency within herself.
 
The idea of activation leads me to the concluding thought:
A non-negligible part of Berlin’s performing art scene’s aesthetics draws its inspiration from the capital’s reputation as a locus of sexual liberty, empowerment and experimentation: long finger nails suggestively sunk into clay, lusty stares and half-open mouths, stretched necks with popping Adam’s apples, jocks and nipple piercings with chains, buttocks rubbing against poles, gender-defying costume designs, to mention just a few.
Combined with an influx of artists whose countries of origin gradually restrict and repress exactly that: the sexual self – and by extension: a pluralist society, those stage aesthetics develop an urgent political drive, as they activate within the performers and their audiences their own unique strength and “raison d’être”: as individuals, citizens, as political beings, as members of groups.