Presented as part of 48 Stunden Neukölln at Swimming Pool Gallery, Berlin, RED – Manual for a Withdrawing Body marks the second chapter in an ongoing collaboration between artist-duo Kitty Maria, Elise Ehry and Trespassing.
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, artist-duo 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 here functions simultaneously as a barrier and a cinematic screen, placing viewers in a voyeuristic position, unable to intervene.
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 itself. 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.
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 on the evenings of 3 and 4 July, after the streets of Berlin have turned dark.
Performance times:
3.07.26 — 23:00 - 23:30
4.07.26 — 23:00 - 23:30
Exhibition opening times:
15:00 - 23:30 (3th and 4th of July)
13:00 - 19:00 (5th and 6th of July)
Location:
Lenaustraße 6, Berlin
Credits:
Performance & Installation: Kitty Maria & Elise Éhry
Soundtrack: Leandro Barzabal
Curator: Puck Isabel van der Werf
Production: Trespassing (AMSTERDAM) & Swimming Pool Gallery (BERLIN)
Performers
Kitty Maria & Élise Ehry
Since 2014, Élise Ehry (1991, FR) and Kitty Maria (1991, NL) have worked as unemployed air hostesses, wearing self-made uniforms while remaining permanently off-duty.
Their performances dismantle the figure of the hostess, questioning invisible labor, entreprecariat, and the use of femininity in service work. Their practice combines costume-making, woodworking, and DIY sound devices, they create minimal, non-performative gestures: acts of subtle disobedience and withdrawal from the world of labor. They have presented their work at Palais de Tokyo, Polana Institute, Museum van Bommel van Dam, puntWG, Ornamenta, and the Polder Triennale.
Elise E. lives in Paris and Kitty M. lives in Amsterdam, they work in between these cities.