Book series HEATHERS‘ CUT CUT #1-3 as impulse 2020, just before the first Lockdown, HEATHERS did a photo shoot at Hermannbad. Published under the title HEATHERS‘ CUT CUT #1: The Ultimate Driller Killer Thriller as the first part of an open artist book series, book#1 provided the impetus for two performances with book launch on site. Also freshly published in September 2022, books #2 and #3 – Heathers‘ CUT CUT – The Killer Is Always The Question(naire) and its Austrian Edition formed the basis for the performance script followed by the live performance. The publication series aims to expose the anti-feminist structures of horror films and to open up a view for something new. Supporting actresses are given a platform where they are celebrated as leading actresses*. The script of the book and live performance acts with the three Heathers in the lead role. The setting is one of the few surviving Viennese Tröpferlbäder. Here, previous research on European and US-American horror film is humorously transferred to the Viennese milieu and taken ad absurdum:

Performances and readings at Hermannbad

(24.09./01.10.2022)

Taking into account the everyday experiences and working conditions of the employees, the performance intervened in existing social rituals of the workers‘ bath and exposed its horror potential. The three books were presented to the public for the first time in this context. By means of a performative-installative intervention in the entire bath, HEATHERS created a static ghost train situation. The visitors received the Hermannbad publication instead of an entrance ticket. In the foyer they could listen to a sound installation and watch a HEATHERS video. At the threshold to the sauna anteroom, sauna employees awaited them with visiting rules and shoe covers. The guests were able to explore the anteroom and the subsequent relaxation room at their own pace and with their own focus. They encountered sound installations, objects and performative actions such as a casting-like waiting and rehearsal situation, the heart-shaped licking through a paper door or the song THREE LITTLE HEATHERS sung live by all three HEATHERS.

Afterwards, the visitors were led into the initially darkened dressing room, where they experienced a concentrated performance sequence of the three HEATHERS lasting about 20 minutes. Featuring humorous insights into and findings from the research process for feminist analysis of horror films by female directors, a tribute to horror film icon Sissy Spacek based on her IMDb biography, thematization of the Bechdel-Wallace and Race-Bechdel- Wallace test, stunts, a popcorn distribution event, an invocation of feminist intersectional goddesses*, and a brain that ended up eating the three white HEATHERS to make room for POC protagonists* in an intersectional sense.