dead relic
Bio-Feedback Performance / Salvagepunk Installation
The premise
We all anchor meaning in different material worlds, yet every system carries its own distinct weight. Dead Relic is a live performance intervention that bridges the gap between high-society craftsmanship and the raw reality of industrial labor. By forcing a high-fashion aesthetic into the mud of a heavy-vehicle environment, the work explores how we manifest value - and how our bodies, when tethered to technology, inevitably disrupt the systems designed to contain them.
The mechanism
The performance centers on an autonomous video-slicing rig housed within a luxury black leather clutch. The interior is a zinc-plated graveyard of salvaged industrial switches, wired to a custom-coded system that processes video in real-time. The performer, dressed in high fashion, anchors the system via a silver pendant that broadcasts their live heartbeat and ambient environmental audio to the rig via Bluetooth. These biometric variables modulate the software, forcing the machine to execute randomised, aggressive digital cuts and glitches triggered directly by the performer’s physical stress.
the output
A raw, visceral collision of biology and code. The resulting monochrome video stream is a direct transcription of the performer’s internal state - a glitch-heavy, distressed archive that visualises the friction between human vulnerability and mechanical rigidity. The work does not just document a space; it reconfigures it through the performer's pulse.