“Final Session” is a performance made for the online VR exhibition, V/Art Projects. Performed for the first time for a 360-degree camera in an empty theatre, the title refers both to the documentation of the general piece, as well as the actual performance for the camera. Because the documentation of the performance is inseparable from the performance itself, the title, “Final Session,” alludes to a body tutorial mimicking an exercise video abstracted from recently documented cases of femicide in Turkey. Viewers enter the piece with their gaze directed at me, dressed in grey on a bare proscenium stage. About every thirty seconds, a disembodied voice begins a countdown from three, initiating a sequence of gestures mimicking the act of receiving various forms of physical abuse. Upon exploring the 360-degree scene space, viewers find themselves alone with me in an empty theatre with the option of participating along with the tutorial, or acting as a silent witness.

A secondary space emerges as viewers direct their gaze elsewhere from my performance, triggering various buttons embedded in the VR device that transport them to the same empty stage and theatre. Only now, viewers find that they themselves have become the target of verbal and emotional abuse. Phrases like, “I want to meet you one last time,” “I need you to trust me,” or “are you seeing someone else?” are directed at the viewer ad nauseum. The exhibition app, V/Art Projects, features hyperlink buttons embedded around the empty theater that transport viewers between the scenes of gestured physical abuse and the scenes of emotional and verbal abuse, all performed by me. Viewers are invited to consider the consequences of my performative mimicry of expressions of pure masculine violence and technical mediation insofar as the tutorial instruction foregrounds my use of repetition of vocal and physical gestures through my direct address.

In “Final Session,” viewers occupy an ambiguous position of simultaneously being both exhibitionist and witness, passive onlooker and center of attention. Viewers enter a private, virtual rehearsal space and are positioned to choose between passivity or decision. Inaction reduces viewers to mere witnesses while investigation demands that viewers be put on display. Viewers are immobile, trapped, and nudged into a semi-disorienting state of perception suspended between the seductive capacities of immersive video and the repulsive forces of patriarchal fragility.