Systems of Constraint

SomoS presents "Systems of Constraint," a collaborative installation and performance series by artists-in-residence Melia Efstratis Chendo and Jackson King. Developed during their three-month residency in Berlin, the exhibition brings together durational performance and audiovisual installation. About Systems of Constraint is an installation and performance series dwelling in the sensorial experience of bondage. Working durationally across performance, analog video synthesis, and immersive installation, the project asks what is produced when bodies are held together. Chendo and King’s collaborative performance engages with the idea that human lived experience, and any conception of a “self” it provides, is shaped in relation to an “other.” They experiment with the possibility of performing constraint by binding themselves together; what might happen when they touch this bind between self and other over and over again, and record its tension? Can moving through the world “tethered” create space for new conceptions of self that are more permeable to otherness—to being moved by the other? Chendo and King perform, with rope, a model of consent that exists outside neoliberal conceptions of the individual that knows themself entirely—that agrees to touch, to influence, and to be moved only when they’d like to. They perform a shape in flux, a mode of becoming bound. They are not self-contained entities; they find themselves tethered. At the center of the project is Tethered , a three-month series of durational walks through Berlin's post-industrial sites. Held together by a rope entwined with “bend sensors” that track tension data, Chendo and King re-envision the pull between them with every performance; every physical movement toward or away from each other produces a digital code. In the installation, custom-designed Max/MSP patches translate this tension data through audiovisual synthesis, generating a digital-sensorial map of where their bind takes them. Rather than relying on purely representational media, the installation maintains the integrity of each performance's liveness; their improvised movement produces audiovisual tension in real time. The project builds on earlier collaborations between Chendo and King, including Plastic (2024–25) and Hands on Foucault (2025–26), which explore the relationship between bodily experience, spectatorship, and technological mediation. During their residency at SomoS, the artists have developed Tethered through performances at locations including Tempelhof Airport, Viktoriapark, and the Schwerbelastungskörper. The exhibition brings this ongoing experimentation into the gallery, presenting the material and audiovisual dimensions of their shared experience. Read more Toggle Audio / Sound Performance / Live Art Installation Digital Multi-disciplinary