1.618
20. February 2026 / Schinkel PavillionThis performance and video work expands on the classical principle of the golden ratio as both structure and ideology. It considers the placement of the figure historically, presently, and in relation to itself while tracing how proportion organizes perception across audience, architecture, and surrounding space.
The video fragments a singular figure and a singular idea through shifts in formation, framing, and scale. As the lens pulls outward, the work examines how an aesthetic principle becomes a mechanism of power: how an “ideal” body is composed, repeated, and mobilized until it is absorbed into mass thinking, and mass movement.
Across performance and video, the work moves between embodiment and abstraction, between the intimacy of a single body and the collective force of many bodies arranged into il/legible systems.
What begins as a study of proportion becomes a study of control: how alignment, symmetry, and “correct” placement shape not only how a figure is seen, but how it is expected to behave. In this way, the golden ratio is treated less as a neutral aesthetic tool and more as a choreographic instruction, an invisible architecture that produces order, repetition, and consent.
This movement between video and performance is framed through Cerberus, the three-headed guardian of the underworld. The video becomes a kind of “space below,” where the figure multiplies, fragments, and gathers into mass formations. Above, the singular live body remains exposed measured against proportion, architecture, and gaze. Cerberus marks the threshold between these two realms, protecting the passage between one and many, and revealing how power is produced through repetition, control, and access.
Artwork: Josh Johnson, Thilo Garus, Enes Güç,
Live-Set: Tapiwa Svosve and Precious Renée Tucker
Performance: Josh Johnson
1.618 Video: Josh Johnson,Thilo Garus, Shayne Oliver Group, Enes Güç
Commissioned by Trauma as part of the SOG residency, 2025
Produced by Devin Pope
Fullmoon (Motion Graphics Remix) by Ryuichi Sakamoto
Curated by: Dr. Luisa Seipp
Produced by: Nina Reese
Production Assistant: Norman Feinberg
