Gogo @lgo Ego

in ‘Drifting Waters’ curated by Arthur Cordier
at Cas-Co during Fringe Festival, Leuven
pictures courtesy Jente Waerzeggers & Cas-Co
Music: Roger3000
Technical advice and traduction correction: Erik Heestermans

In her installation Gogo Algo Ego (2025), Carole Louis explores algorithmic dating apps and Al-driven systems as opaque marketplaces of emotion and gamification. Her practice is marked by a bittersweet sense of play, dissecting the tragicomic contradictions that shape our (online) presence in society. Humour, glossy-coloured objects and playfulness, in fact, reveal a much deeper and sharper understanding of socio-economical dynamics.

In her latest performance, developed specifically for FRINGE, Carole Louis looks at how dating apps are made not to help us meet new people, but rather to keep us online, hooked, in order to extract our data. Dating apps offer seductive and addictive gamification strategies in order to lure us to repeatedly use the applications. In Gogo Algo Ego, the artist installed a system of sewage pipes and colorful sea buoys, over a checkered vinyl floor, with voices emerging from rubbish bins. The soundtrack includes familiar sounds such as notifications, foghorns and shrill sonar, which the artist designed in collaboration with Roger3000.

Performance score

Stay hidden inside a column of buoys for at least one hour,
spy from inside and
when soundtrack is playing, start to move,
dance with turning buoys,
bumping in walls,
your feet in a ring,
loose one by one, turning on yourself,
third one is your skirt,
last one is your hat,
just before the chorus,
reach the black and white sneakers,
sing, place your white foot on black squares, your black one on white ones
0, 1, base 2, binary, yin yang corks on top of tubes,
walk until the ladder of plungers,
sing, about to suck the stick,
the longer one in between your legs for a second, climb the ladder of dicks,
get high,
on top of the wall, the view is darker,
you’re scared,
sit, grab your fishing rod,
the long tube in between your legs,
slide it to the right position,
pull dow the chain inside, with the magnet at the end, catch the right cork,
under it, a smiley is smiling,
drag the tube in between your legs to get the cork and take it,
pass the tube and a leg over the wall,
slide the tube until it is behind you,
stand up and sing,
reach the trash bins,
turn and make them fly,
like on a catwalk,
and sing,
throw the cork in the bucket below –
act synchronized with the word Clit,
sing and go down by the grey dicks,
remove all the yin yang plugs,
each time, it is a forbidden sign,
no way entry, blocked conversation,
you get angry and sing,
install the trash bins on the highest tubes,
install all the buoys on the other threesome tubes,
closed circuit,
go to the phone
turn up the volume, you hear it from the trash bins now,
take your hat buoy and leave.