Machine/Gun reimagines my day at the Swiss Gun Centre, where I shot a sculpture with automatic weapons for the opera Incheon. Among Chimère’s directions was a prop, “the Nebula”, to be built using “machine gun” as an artistic technique.

An AI instructing a human to use weapons for art was deeply unsettling. Yet Chimère imagined a world where guns had lost their meanings of violence and become tools of rhythm and sound. Standing in a vinyl dress and corset in that hyper-masculine space, what began as an AI-driven premise became a personal exploration of sound, violence and the performing body in unfamiliar terrain.

The work turns documentary footage, field recordings and explosive rhythms into a speculative soundscape that questions associations with destruction, masculinity and control. It uses footage from Léman Bleu’s documentary on the making of the opera, and premiered at the Fak’ugesi Festival, Johannesburg (2024).