Perftoran

Petr Davydtchenko, previously removed himself from capitalist culture by living exclusively on roadkill for three years, caring for, cooking and eating only what he discovered on the roadsides of France. Now he presents Perftoran, a performance series based on the idea that bats can cure COVID-19, starting through the explicit act of eating a live bat. Over the last months, Davydtchenko and his team have been researching possible natural COVID-19 cures in Palazzo Luzzarini of Trevi, a small mediaeval Italian town close to Assisi. The exhibition that began as a presentation of the bat-eating performance and research into Big Pharma quickly became a space of knowledge exchange and intense experimentation. Deciding to live in the exhibition for its entirety, the artist was soon joined by fellow analysts and Perftoran became an ongoing collective scientific research project that overflowed the walls of science, using the freedom of the arts to explore new, groundbreaking territory.

Fotopub Project Space, a brutalist ex gas station turned contemporary art centre hosted Perftoran’s second iteration - the production phase, where the evolving collective produced a limited edition of COVID-19 bat-based vaccines. Rematerialising the spontaneous act of living in the gallery space, Fotopub Project Space became a scientific research facility but also a sanctuary, a living space for the artist and his team as well as many invited or uninvited guests. In the time when Berghain becomes an exhibition space, our exhibition space is becoming an active living space, giving up the overly priced square metre to people who are pushing the boundaries of culture to find a radical solution to the global pandemic.