In Nekoušu (I Don’t Bite), Alex Sihelská presents a view on the poetics/politics of identities through (self-)alienation. Tracing the xenofeminist idea to the rejection of any naturalness, she builds a hybrid character of a vampire and a cyborg in the genre of introspective vampire drama.
Inspired by expressionist films, Alex updates their aesthetic and thematic aspects. She appropriates vampire clichés and subversively uses them for her own purposes.
The imagery is fluid, the narrative jumps from classical chronology towards the past to expositions of the main character’s “live” social media entries, while the cartoon animations loosely reference Instagram filters and augmented reality. The resulting format of the video and its central narrative line reflect the ambivalence of the heroine and the volatility of the fluid world of social networks, which the heroine uses as a medium of emancipation and communication with the world. The challenges of fourth-wave feminism, shared through the interface of social media, alternate in rapid succession with the heroine’s escapes through the night city, rave parties and one-off intimate trysts.
Predatory behavior and its limits are also an important theme of the work. Especially the ones we set for ourselves. The work explores the internalization of toxic structures and (self)victimization. Through her feminist vampirism, the heroine of the film illuminates the relationship between patriarchy and its strategy of ostracizing the Other, which emancipates itself outside its structures and thus poses a danger to it. In a tik-tok contribution, she speaks in this context, for example, about the demonized Countess Bathory.
Alex constructs and, in turn, deconstructs a fluid identity that defines itself through ephemeral contributions, the power and anxiety inherent in the possibility of breaking down the boundaries between subject and object. Bold yet light-hearted, we trust the work unreservedly for its emotion and the vulnerability of the artist’s personal input.
František Fekete
The video is part of Issue 01: Poetic of Identities
