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Pressing Times II

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„Die Opposition in Venezuela will die Proteste gegen Präsident Nicolás Maduro verschärfen. Eine Koalition aus rund 20 Oppositionsparteien startete eine Kampagne mit dem Titel „Stunde Null“, die sich gegen die geplante Wahl einer verfassungsgebenden Versammlung am 30. Juli richtet. Für Donnerstag rief die Oppositionsspitze zum landesweiten Streik auf.

Zuvor hatten in einer symbolischen Volksabstimmung mehr als sieben Millionen Menschen eine geplante Verfassungsänderung abgelehnt. Die Opposition kündigte außerdem an, dass die von ihr dominierte Nationalversammlung neue Mitglieder für das Oberste Gericht des Landes ernennen werde. Maduro, dessen Partei bis auf wenige Ausnahmen alle staatlichen Institutionen und auch den Gerichtshof kontrolliert, dürfte diesen Zug aller Voraussicht nach blockieren.“(http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/venezuela-435.html)

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photos: Roland Frick

Conception, Chile, 2014

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Anti-Autobiographical II is the second performance from the „Anti-Autobiographical“ series and a visual response to a strong exposed position in a shopping mall, in between other shopping windows, customized minds and expectations. It follows the question of per-constructed conventions and conditions we take for granted; like rituals, collective memories or social obligations (like Christmas for example).

Course: I enter the space and sit down on a plinth. After few moments I start to touch my pillow-head and cut two lines at the position where my eyes would be. I reach in the cuts and take out  feathers, constantly. Thereby my hands widen the cuts and go slowly deeper and deeper into the inside of the pillow. Here I find parts of a Maria, Jesus and a donkey figure. I take them slowly out and replace my body by them on the plinth. I walk at the other end of the shopping window, sit down and open the pillow with a scalpel ones more. Finally I fill the pillow with a black VHS tape which rolls down from my hand.

Fotos Cabezotas De Remate Dice

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Choose your scars

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with guest performer Anna Rosa Rodriguez [ven]

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The performance „Choose your scars“ is a direct response to the situation I experienced in Venecuela at this time. On one hand, there are so many basic needs missing on a daily life base, such as security in the streets, certain food or a regular water supply. This atmosphere is often described as an unstable, chaotic situation in which steps are uncertain, consequences unpredictable. On the other hand, there are solidarity and a special spirit, a poetical, a strong and truculent, even lightful connection between bodies that are all navigating together.

„Choose your scars“ is also a dance in which you probably can’t really choose the next direction or intensity, but you decide to stay in motion and if it takes scars to keep on moving forwards, you choose them to incorporate them in all the emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions. It’s all impermanent, it’s all arising and passing away.

Venecuela is a country in a radical change and therefore I was also seeking for an optimistic and positive view, for something light and even playful, like a vibrating, warm voice of the vocal artist Anna Rosa Rodriguez, who beautifuly shared the lightness and strenght of an unconditional free voice.

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photos: Nel acosta bravo

 

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Untitled

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orenda (iroquoian)(n.) a mystical force present in all people that empowers them to affect the world or to effect change in their own lives

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photos: Lorenza cini

 

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Our hunted house

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a collaboration with sound artist Anna Rosa Rodriguez [ven]

[grey_box] „I don’t forget those days that coming out of the job I had to run between people who are desperate and sounds that I couldn’t tell, they were a shotgun? Bullets? I was just listening: Withdrawal!!! And I saw smoke and many green uniforms get close. My sister and I with my niece baby girl inside of a room, covering the cracks to protect her from the tear gas. More than once I stayed in the house of friends because the road to mine was blocked. In those days, many young people never returned to their own.

Today I had a splendid day at school, of those in which one feels that the work is of love. At the same time I remember that it is 12th of February…

A girl told me this morning:

Teacher, which is the heart of the music?-

– hmm let’s see, what do you think?-

– Ahhhhh! The Pulse, the pulse!-

Then he pulls out a stone of his pocket saying:

– look what I found in my journey, a meteor! This also has music, right?-

The wonder and the horror intersect.

Today I wish… That the stones that they find the children and young people in their way are all music.“ (Anna Rosa Rodriguez)[/grey_box]

photos: Stu Allsopp

 

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Kamcel – perform the other

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a collaboration with Kamil Guenatri

[grey_box] Kamil: ” It’s about a certain man that haunts my mind. An athletic man with symmetrical proportions, that sometimes comes in my dreams, sometimes when all fall to pieces to let swift images show through. This man is really strange because he comes each time with improbable objects and uses those to create splendid situations. Like the wizard of Oz, a poet or a performer lost in the flow of symbols he conveys. I don’t know if this man tries to pass on to me elements of his own existence or from the mine, but it’s certain that he tells me a kind of story! We discover each other a little bit more every time, with all this years of mixing with. I write on my rough books all what he does in order to never forget from his appearances. Up to now, this man was anonymous for me but recently I have told this anecdote to a friend and we decided to name him ‘Kamcel’… “

The ‘Kamcel’ project born in 2014 from the meeting of two performance artists, with obviously different bodies, one disabled and the second fit. Using this physical gap in performance situations, the two men try to wonder about limit notions and communication between the bodies: How starting from objects or actions the other can appropriate? What is created between? The first idea of the project is to create a performance dialogue between Kamil Guenatri’s imaginary and embodypossibilities of Marcel Sparmann. Situations come mostly from the indicated rough books before.These being vast and varied, performances would be realized in different contexts: public/private, inside/outside, in turn/together… etc. From each situation will be produced a photo performance and the collection would form a visual book, final outcome of the project. This book will also include project questioning with a special page layout that will show the back and forth between both bodies.[/grey_box]

photos: lola bernadi

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Speechless

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[grey_box] „Ein Fremder hat immer seine Heimat im Arm, wie eine Waise, für die er vielleicht nichts als ein Grab sucht.“ (Nelly Sachs)[/grey_box]

photos: matthias pick

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Pressing Times

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[grey_box] For me, the state of diffusion with it’s consequence of pressure and counter pressure, is one of the most natural phenomena, but also a strong indicator of our actuality. We are constantly surrounded and overwhelmed by the simultaneity of incidents on a bigger (social) or smaller (private) scale. And the moment an „other“ reality breaks in, the moment the balance between the forces is questioned, we find ourself in the unknown and our carefully crafted environment is in danger to collapse.

So it feels unavoidable that my next performances are attemps to find new performative strategies to response to these overwhelming situations that broke in: the most recent and dramatic situation of refugees in Europe and Germany, the US shootings, the unbearable situtation in Venezuela at the moment and my position as a witness.

How does it feel to live in a hunted house, to exist in an environment which hunts you, which transforms your open door to a security gate? How can we communicate this thin border? Herefore I believe utterance is participation and if words are failing, the body becomes text, and objects, places, and even the audience will be compact in intense situations which is hopefully more participative as just the fact of observing what’s going on. [/grey_box]

photos: yulia krivich

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From the unspoken between feet and head – in conversation with the medium

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From the unspoken between feet and head – in conversation with the medium’ is a first of all a performance which deals with the notion of signs, codes and origin of their disappearance. Based on statements with a certain poetry and philosophical dead-ends, ‘From the unspoken between feet and head – in conversation with’ attempts to drive the thin border between an outspoken fact, it’s visual appearance and disintegrating in the unconscious. It seeks to mark a starting point in a lately and an ongoing conversation between the corners of performance art and psychoanalytic, both with their hands in the unknown and their search for a risky expression of the inexpressible.

But ‘From the unspoken between feet and head – in conversation with the medium’ is also a reflection on performance art from the vantage point of the present. This young art form is already overfloated with cliches and standards, with „must have’s“ and „must seen’s“, often with the longing for the big show. Therefore I created a course which leads to a certain point and leave than the decision about the ending of the performance to the audience. Here I suggest three alternative finals from which they can choose. The first is announced as „political, but unnecessary oversexed“, the second as „autobiographical, but unnecessary suffering“ and the third as „reflection on performance art itself, but unnecessary overcritical“. By majority voting the end is decided (here it was „political, but unnecessary oversexed“) and the performance follows this path to finish.

Another idea behind this way of creating a „three alternative course performance“ is also my believe, that every issue and subject can be represented by the same material, even the same actions, which are carefuly composed and placed in something like a „universal template“. If this framework is well done, it starts to flicker and adjust according to the content automaticaly and by nature. Saying if the vehicle is stable and flexible, simple and complex, poetic and straight; it can take any passenger, any content.[/grey_box]

photos: tongyo zhao

Museo de la Memoria, Chile 2014

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Before flying to Chile I came across the sentence: „Trataron de enterrarmos, pero no sabian que eramos semillas.“ – „They tried to burry us, they didn’t know we were seeds.“ which I took as a starting and reference point for this performance. For me it shows perfectly the will, but also the poetic quality of force to fight and free human values. In Mexico this sentence is directly connected to the students who recently disappeared, highly actual and also clearly connected to the extremely violent policy during the dictatorhshp in Chile.

But still nowadays, children and adults disappear without any sign, any trace. In the museo de la memoria and surrounded by these strong and heavy weight of temporary history, I was seeking for an optimistic and positive view, for something light and even playfull. I’m still impressed by Chilean poetry, the warm and passionate will to live and die. This is what I took from the sentence „They tried to burry us, they didn’t know we were seeds.“ I tried to translate it in a visual and atmospheric response which starts from heaviness, but turns into something light and playfull, in something which probably gives hope and braveness to go on. So, here I also feel the perfect response to Alfredo Jaars installation „La Geometría de la Conciencia“, universal human experiences of disapearance, appearance, light and darkness.

Fotos Dominique Weinstein