2nd Houston International Performance Art Biennale, Houston, USA, 2014

Black Box II


In our daily life we often face moments of transitions and transience like losing a friend, leaving home, the first job, the first step in a new and unknown country. All these impacts follow us our entire life as a special notion of knowledge, as an imprint, probably like data in a flight recorder. In special cases of emergency, these boxes get suddenly open. And in some of these cases we can even speak about a still stand or interruption of time, and we are part of a moment which shows the past and the future in the same image. What remains is a memory of presence, a memory which leaves a touchable mark in our body and mind, something what also identifies our self. Following this idea, we are able to recall and exchange collective and individual stories with our bodies and minds.

‘Black Box’ is a new performance series following the attempt to work with the idea of a not to deceive memory. A Black Box or also know as a flight data recorder, is an electronic device used to record critical flight data, and is also able to withstand a crash. In this way, memory is strongly connected to a case of emergency and filled with exclusively ‘real’ data. Time and experiences have no influence on these protected facts, and to remember like a Black Box, means to live in a world filled up with all our secrets, sins and not to forgettable impacts on life.

 

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photos: Jet Liam