“Trieb” is a performance and a research situation which explores metaphoric expressions through movement, language and image. Translated form German, “Trieb” stands for impulsion, drive, instinct- qualities of life located on the opposite end of the Western conception of human being. To raise above “trieb” implies becoming a reasonable being, an Anthropos, ascending beyond that which he himself produced as marginal.

The work deals with the potent space where unreasonable is dissociated from the reasonable. I question what overlapping relations and new expressions are possible on a poetic/ linguistic level in order to tackle the violent effect of logos. The fantasy unfolds from the simile ‘eyes like knives’ and reaches to the territories which open up from it.

Sharp and cold edges of the knife shape the imaginable, the desirable and the acceptable. Eyes are tools of cognition, but also of differentiation and judgement. The conceptual links between seeing and knowing/ knowing and uncovering/ cutting and deconstructing are dealt with through various mediums- spoken word, image and something like a DIY animation.

In “Trieb”, Liza treats body as an object of sight and sight as an object of reason. The work flirts with shapes and qualities that intend to destabilize the vision as a tool of direct classification. Taking inspiration from the grotesque iconography, Liza uses an invented logic of movement which allows for new articulations and relations to be explored, in turn producing awkward, yet precise imagery which falls under the category of ‘other’.

Liza Baliasnaja works with dance, studies philosophy in Brussels and works with artists such as Eszter Salamon, Ula Sickle, Eglė Budvitytė, Mårten Spångberg and DD Dorvillier. Liza makes work both in collaborative context and on her own. She is currently working on a solo called “Trieb”.