Let's Get Bruised

The premiere of this piece was given at the Gare du Nord in Basel, Switzerland on March 24th, 2026. The following article includes quotations and references from an interview with the artist a few days after the performance.

You enter a dark room. As you move closer inside, deep bass sounds pulsate inside you. You’re now entering a chamber. Floating panels of mock skin flutter from the ceiling. A giant woven wormlike intestine (or parasite) envelops the surrounding installation. You take a seat on the floor. Fog is rising from beneath you- it has that distinct smell. Projections glisten off your face which morphs into a canvas. A creature crawls on the ground and rubs their skin aggressively in a metal washbasin, then applies mud to their face. They come closer to you…

For those unfamiliar to Bognár’s artistic credo, Tuesday night’s scenery may have come as a surprise, especially with a physical flute visibly absent from the premises. But this is no ordinary concert, nor are most of the veteran performers’. It’s an event—yes, a hyperreal multi-dimensional experience that’s unfolding in front of your very eyes.  It’s Christian Bale in American Psycho meets Lady Macbeth in the final act of the Scottish Play. 

But whether you’ve experienced them in exciting chamber projects like the iipm project or touring with established groups such as Ensemble Aventure or Ensemble Modern—you’re almost guaranteed anything but a conventional concert experience. And for those who are luckily initiated, you might have felt like you’re noticing a pattern.

In their most recent collaboration with composer Anna Sowa, Rebirth I (2025), Bognár opts for an alternate approach to flute playing- they’re certainly using it, only it’s a bit more à la Marie Antoinette. At one point, an alto headjoint is flung into the air, and the decapitated body of the flute transcends itself into a multipurpose breathing-apparatus and walking stick. It’s the kind of art that might not be optimal for your morning cup of tea, which is exactly the point. It’s a full-on, immersive performance, meant to be uncomfortable and uneasy to swallow. 

Phoebe, an Australian-born artist now based in Basel, is one of the current Sonic Boom artist residents at the Gare du Nord Space- a venue so peculiarly situated, you might miss it as you’re boarding the train to Berlin (as I’ve embarrassingly done too many times to count). Located inside the Badischer Bahnhof on the borderof Germany and Switzerland, it also happens to be nexus of Basel’s alternative contemporary music and social scene; often presenting a myriad of experimental acts, installations, electronic music, and education programs. And in their debut, Bognar opts to share the stage alongside some of their close and equally formidable collaborators: Sasha Katsalap (composer), Katherine Newton (multimedia artist), BiLLiE AnGEL BLinG (costume designer), and Noémie Prod’hom (make-up artist).

«skin» expounds on the material in Rebirth I with a more nuanced and deliberate exploration into a quasi-psychoanalytical study of body identity. Is our skin truly ours? What is our relationship with it? And what role do supposed signifiers such as “ugliness” or “beauty” play in our reclamation of autonomy? And why do we, as a society, care so much about the concept of purity?  

Modern society has unsurprisingly embraced and been quick to capitalize on the growing obsession with grooming and self-care. For decades, South Korea has been highly influential with regards to their skincare regimen, boasting glowing skin, doubled eyelids, and minor bone reshaping. Online followers may have caught on to a growing trend called looksmaxxing, associated most recently with influencer Braden Peters, aka “Clavicular”. This controversial beauty practice (popular among right-wing youth) serves as a lifestyle brand that fetishizes a neo-male aesthetic of chiseled jaws and Greek body proportions to compensate for their fractured egos. 

While TikTok may not have served as a direct inspiration for «skin», its topical relevance does lend itself coincidentally as perfect stepping-stone material to work with. Historically, metaphorical questions about identity proved obstacles for Bognár: “I really thought about the skin…like is it really ours at all? Are we autonomous owners of our skin? Or is our skin almost like a phone case, or like an avatar skin?” For them, none of these answers are black and white. If anything, the true reality may always be ambiguous, or at least worth exploring with regards to sexual identity, gender norms, or even the daily mental struggle of “what clothes will I wear today?”

“In my first entry I collected three specimens; one on my leg, one on my hip, one on my thigh. I think I was clumsy with my bike. My friend sent me a picture of their[s] and told me they fell of[f] their skateboard. It was so colourful, but yeah it must have been painful. It's strange how something that is painful can be so beautiful.”

                         -Excerpt from Bruise Diary

The piece is broken down into 3 large sections: IMPACT, BRUISE, and BURN. The first part is largely characterized by multisensory stimuli comprised of loud sounds and disorienting visual projections. This is the bruise happening in real-time—it’s painful, terrifying, and messy. Bognár crawls on the ground amongst the seated audience in a flurried frenzy. Wild elements of flute improvisation can be heard in the soundsystem flooding the small theater, ranging from bits of Katsalap’s compositions, spoken text, live microphone feedback, and of course, Britney Spears’s “Lucky”.

The second part is in many ways the crux of the piece. A somber and more introspective movement, BURN realizes a libretto/diary (heard spoken through the voices of Bognár, Katsalap, and Newton) that reveals intimate thoughts that each of the artists associate with skin. Different identifications were in fact a crucial part of workshopping, Bognár reveals: “I put on the table some pieces of paper and I wrote the word skin on it. And without telling them anything about what I thought, I wanted to hear what they thought about this one word. And we came up with very different things.”

In the final movement, BRUISE gives the audience a chance to quietly reflect on their own skin. Newton proceeds around the crowd to hand out physical stickers shaped like bruises, then finally returns to her station to project live-project visuals of her own skin and tattoos. At the very end, sitting attendees are invited to hold up fragments of long canvas over the main video projection, in a symbolic ritual signifying the multi-layered dimensions of skin. Everyone has been bruised now, but you’re left with more questions than answers.

Bognár’s fascination with corporal identity has led them to also discover the quiet, complicated beauty and transience of their own skin: “I find myself making quite simplistic revelations sometimes. Like, oh, like that thing is so damaging, but it's really cute or this bruise is an actual trauma, but it's so beautiful.” For the artist, this cognitive dissonance sparked inspiration for them to keep a diary of these gruesomely pretty revelations, which ultimately generated the source material of the piece.

Memory also plays a huge role in the sonic environment of «skin». Katsalap craftfully conveys this “scarring” via her use of spectral hold, a VST plugin that allows the producer to isolate certain partials in their respective harmonic series. Though almost imperceptible to the audience, this process slightly distorts the identity of the original sample, metaphorically bruising it. This cognitive association beckons back to IMPACT--how memory is temporarily engraved on skin, often prompting the question of how it came to be in the first place. Other more intense memories serve as traumatic reminders of the damage left on our skin, such as the sensation of pain or excitement that once existed.

On the other hand, skin is equally analyzed quite scientifically- looked at under a microscope (which actually happens in the third movement) as different layers of the epidermis, vascular  and nervous system, and skeleton. At one point, we’re shown the insides of Bognár’s mouth, saliva and all. It’s a stark reminder that it’s not just a metaphorical or emotional experience we’re all witnessing, but an actual visceral one too. 

Water noticeably plays a huge part of the production, from the sounds of splashing water in the metal basins, or the samples coming in the pre-recorded audio mix. On a surface-level, we get it-- Cleansing is tedious, it’s a ritual that we all have to partake in to some degree. You go for a swim in the sea (excuse me, the Rhine!) and you immediately think of the clean shower you’ll take to further cleanse yourself of the folly. However, there’s another deeper layer that they want to show you, one that’s closely linked to female identity.. and another with strong religious undercurrents. 

Bognár cites their formative time in attending an all-girls Catholic school in Australia as having a significant influence on their identity-crisis. “It was such a weird, curated experience” she recounts to me. “My mum’s reasoning was like, so I wouldn’t get distracted by boys. The truth is that most people in my school ended up super queer. Great, isn’t it? You sort of start questioning, who am I?”  Furthermore, feminine identity and water have always gone hand-in hand in the bible: the sinful woman washing Jesus’ feet, the woman and the well, or the Pharoah’s daughter drawing Moses out from the Nile. Baptism itself is the product of women giving birth. 

Bognár associates the genre of their show as an open work—which interestingly allows the artists the creative freedom to not try and replicate the performance, while also letting the audience into a deeply personal world full of open-ended interpretations. It’s a formidable concept to grasp, especially for the young 28-year-old superstar. While the narrative structure may feel a tad loose at times, «skin» is a production that never sits idle. It’s a performance that doesn’t lend to easy listening and forces the audience to reckon with their own discomfort—and they’re right on the money.