Aerowaves 2015 – Alexander Deutinger & Alexander Gottfarb: Chivalry is Dead

Our knights in shining armour: a bit Monty Python, a bit Rocky, a bit…


Have you ever seen knights in full helmet, chain mail and body armour do aerobics? The idea is absurd. But that’s what Alexander Deutinger and Alexander Gottfarb do in Chivalry is Dead: knee-ups and squat thrusts and yoga balances that make their armour plates clank and rattle loudly. It’s laughable and ridiculous – a bit Monty Python and the Holy Grail. A concerted burst of power-training, meanwhile, feels like a kind of medieval Rocky. It’s bludgeoning stuff, but subtler layers begin to emerge. Tentative touching suggests the human presence hidden beneath all that metal. Knights falling over in aerobics class looks like slapstick; but when they stay fallen, it begins to invoke death. Themes of mortality and brutality grow stronger: the men exit upstage, trailing discarded arm-pieces, gloves, visors, until we’re left to contemplate the metallic debris strewing the stage like the aftermath of battle.