PRESS
LaPresse, Karine Buchard, Biennale de Québec Faire de l’hiver du grand art, 05.03.2026,
https://www.lapresse.ca/arts/arts-visuels/2026-03-05/biennale-de-quebec/faire-de-l-hiver-du-grand-art.php
Weststern, Julia Reich, Orte in Räume verwandeln. Kunstvereine als mobile Akteure der Stadt, 2026, https://www.weststern.org/orte-in-raeume-verwandeln-kunstvereine-als-mobile-akteure-in-der-stadt/
gallerytalk.net, Carolin Kralapp, Kuscheln? Ja, bitte! “I know what to do” von Sunny Pfalzer bei Neun Kelche, 10. August 2023, https://www.gallerytalk.net/sunny-pfalzer-neun-kelche/
PW-Magazine, Joshua Lee McKain, Sunny Pfalzer: I Know What To Do, November 20, 2022, https://archive.pw-magazine.com/2022/sunny-pfalzer-i-know-what-to-do
PASSE-AVANT, Theresa Roessler, What if we queer trust?, 28.10.2022, https://passe-avant.net/reviews/what-if-we-queer-trust-shedhalle-zurich-theresa-roessler-protozone-8-queer-trust
kubaparis, Philipp Bergmann & Thea Reifler, Queer Trust, 2022, https://kubaparis.com/submission/246749
YACI, Janine Muckermann, Rethinking time and shared spaces through performative practices, 16. September 2021, https://yaci-international.com/rethinking-time-and-shared-spaces-through-performative-practices/
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
Pfalzer, Sunny; Ehrenstein, Anna, with Josh Davila, Alexa Evangelista & Lucy Tomasino: Cripto Sirenas. With a text by Felix Ansmann and an interview with Josh Davila. 2025. ISBN 978-3-945950-34-0.
Pfalzer, Sunny (contribution in): Pool Reader 6. Berlin: Broken Dimanche Press, 2022. ISBN 978-3-943196-83-2.
Pfalzer, Sunny (contribution in): nGbK (ed.): New Urban Publics – Art in Underground 2022/2023. Berlin, 2024. ISBN 978-3-938515-99-0.
Pfalzer, Sunny (contribution in): Fort Biennale 01: In the Body of Language / Im Körper der Sprache / Nel corpo del linguaggio. 2024. ISBN 8899058776.
Pfalzer, Sunny (contribution in): Yıldız, Misal Adnan (ed.): unbecomings. 2025. ISBN 978-3-9827399-1-5
WRITING
If I disappear, I am with them
Hidden matters reveal themselves
Let’s spam the grey areas between the local
And the global with translation errors.
- Excerpt from Las Trenzas, 2017-2018
Between two bodies lies a boundary, an interface. Here we find the surface onto which Sunny Pfalzer projects poetry, performance and occasionally (finger) porn. Unfurling from the skein of lived experience, they create braids across her activist background, artistic research into history and politics, as well as popular visual culture. In her work borders don’t stagnate, they wobble and shift, revealing that the binary registers of author vs. reader, performer vs. audience, the private vs. the public have always been unstable. We can rewind this thread from her contribution in Soft Politics (Project Space Festival Berlin, 2019) to their graduation piece Wir befinden uns nicht - Can a text be a performance? (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, 2016) all the way back to one of her early works No Cover / No Cubrir (collaboration with Sergio Valenzuela, 2014). By sliding between the macroscale of architecture and the nanoscale of bodily gesture, Sunny repositions the body in its environment, immediate and unabridged.
As a member of the Viennese anti-fascist feminist group “Burschenschaft Hysteria” they learned to prod, provoke and puncture the infectious ulcers of the far right. By releasing the social body in pain from steeping pools of phlegm and bile, they developed activist tools as integral part to her artistic practice. For them, activism does not stand in contradistinction to art, or art to activism. They are one bicephalous creature, fierce and cute at once. In Mexico City they used these tools to initiate the group Las Trenzas (trans. “The Braids”), a gang of hooligan-cheerleader hybrids, revived superheroes arriving from the dark depths of outer space to crash your subway commute. Occupying the public transportation system of Mexico for five hours, these sci-fi heroes were encountered chanting a feminist manifesto. Extending poetic vibrations across underground non-places, rerouting them around scurrying bodies, the performance rehearsed incantations to move differently through public space. What happens when eyes lock for more than just a second? Or feet move sideways, skirting the usual pathways across the platform? What if we moved by the ruse of our hips rather than our heavy head, and if our forearms touched the ground just as often as the soles of our feet?
The virtual xeno-gang is a queer attack on reality, when reality is declined in the singular. It is a crucible, an alchemic contraption to concoct the inscription of virtual realities. Rather than a fixed format, it materialises by appropriation: The workshop-intervention Gangs of performative Activism (2019-ongoing) harnesses the research into performative strategies of activist groups to incubate new prototypes of cheerligans and hooleaders. As irritants reddening and tearing up the eyes of social convention, they form collective identities, communal bodies, just as strong as they are fragile.
When Sunny performs in their Moderation / Interventions, they show that fragility is not necessarily undesirable. Instead, precariousness is the result of mutual dependency. It’s where you and I abut, where we form lumpy knots and torsioned springs; where we’re coiled up in our shared conditions and collective struggles. Weaving together the historical sediments of the specific site in which Sunny performs, they recall communal and personal histories, fictional or real, traumatic or healing. One can think of memories as containers of energy and information, released at times to speculate on other forms of politics. These may be whimsical as they may be sober, flirtatious, hopelessly romantic, naively idealistic, tender and grieving. It is here, where Sunny’s practice is a most lucid paean to feminist politics, in that they lays bare how the personal has always been political.
I KNOW WHAT TO DO.
on the occasion of the Video Art at Midnight Edition Release September 2025
by Misal Adnan Yıldız
Sharing is caring, they say. Do they really mean it? When it comes to the economics of desire, comfort zone, well-being, and mindfulness, how can we extend the limits of ourselves, ego-centric thinking, and self-centered perspectives?
Sunny Pfalzer’s video piece I know what to do, based on collaborative performative work with Lau Lukkarila and Slim Soledad, with music by Marshall Vincent, could be our conversation piece. Quoting a key sentence from their statement, it's clear these artists know what they're doing and are truly interested in contributing to people's lives with goodwill: "Vibing is a structural matter, and repetition can be brutal."
As soft sculptures and spatial installation, including a few other referential elements, Sunny Pfalzer's stretch sculptures ground their guests, visitors, and audiences with a modest, generous, and consistent approach to open space, inviting discussion about our connections, collective well-being, and the greater good. Different exhibition settings feature variations of this body of work including the video work as the central piece.
Sunny Pfalzer investigates collective forms of performative research, performance, and ways to apply their nuances, forms, and methods to our lives. Their practice, rooted in bodily expression, collaboration, and protest methodologies, inspires colleagues, friends, and people from other disciplines to understand gatherings, collectivity, and solidarity as forms of resistance and standing together. The video work creates an intimate mental space with a voiceover inviting us to exercise how we can do it better and together. A Plattenbau in the background, a plaid shirt deformed through feminist gestures and mimicry, and the soundtrack designed for the piece are all part of a non-binary, queer and feminist public intervention.
Most of us might think this sort of sincerity doesn't exist since Queen's MTV hit "I Want to Break Free" with the late Freddie Mercury's drag appearance or, much later, Spice Girls' "Wannabe," materializing the importance of syncing before the internet took all our attention span and cognitive energy. In Sunny Pfalzer's world, viewers are invited to engage physically with the sculptures, transforming the installation into a space of rest, play, and connection. At the heart of Pfalzer's practice are friendship and ethical collaboration, making the installation a lived, shared experience.
Like Sunny's other works, this video within a specific installation offers a unique perspective on conviviality and collectivity, weaving together a net of glocal beats. Sunny Pfalzer's work not only challenges traditional notions of power but also extends the visibility of queer gestures, by creating spaces for flamboyant mimics and smart flirting gestures. Through stretching our bodies together, and taking care of each other, Sunny Pfalzer successfully proves that soft power is the real power.