My beautiful warriors and radical lovers, please forgive if words are failing me, this me, which is a structure in transformation, still and strongly placed in a pure physical universe.
The texts I’m reading are fired by nerve cells and flesh and muscles. The poems I’m touched by are composed by a wider range of pain from clear and bright to sonorous and dark. And again and again, accompanied by farewell gestures for the lovely deer, that found his precious nest under my rips.
But I want to try anyway, because this letter is again a love letter to all of you. To all of you, who safe my live in a literal and poetic sense. That’s what I believe. I heard about the burning candles and I saw all the incredible altars and gifts you left for me. And I know, that during my operation I passed the border of impermanence for at least two times. You held me and you held us and it has been the most powerful experience in my life. My healing and reflection process continues and I see little improvements here and there. I have less trouble sleeping, found nice positions to relax my back and ass (yeahh, I discovered the floor again) and will come back to a regular shower protocol in few days. I’m extremely lucky to be home again since a couple of days and I enjoy every second. I feel appreciated, loved and at the exact right place at the right time. I feel, you all shaped and created, you all filled that space and still, you are doing it.
[grey_box] „Einen Räumungsbescheid einleiten. Egal wie gut du bei der Wahl deines Mieters auch aufpasst, am Ende kann er dir keine andere Möglichkeit mehr offen lassen, als dass du ihm einen Räumungsbescheid ausstellst. Wenn du dem Mieter Zeit gibst, den Schaden zu beheben bzw. die Miete zu bezahlen, hast aber schon die Hoffnung verloren, dass du dein Geld nicht wiedersiehst, ist es an der Zeit, Schritte einzuleiten, damit der Mieter die Wohnung bzw. das Anwesen verlassen muss. Mache dich deshalb mit den Vorschriften bzw. Gesetzen vertraut, damit du auch am Ende das Ergebnis erzielst, welches zu deinen Gunsten ausfällt. Lies weiter, um herauszufinden, ob es notwendig ist, einen Räumungsbescheid in die Wege zu leiten bzw. vor Gericht zu ziehen, um die Mietzahlungen einzuklagen, auf die du schon so lange wartest.“ (wiki How)
[grey_box] The legendary performance troupe La Pocha Nostra (US/Mexico) and artist duo VestAndPage (Germany/Italy) have chosen to merge their unique pedagogical practices and announce a joint immersive performance class as part of the ART WEEK | Workshop Series. With this project, they will inaugurate a brand-new pedagogical campus at C32performingartsworkspace in Venice, Italy, situated in the heart of Parco del Contemporaneo at Forte Marghera, a historical park facing the western bank of the Venice lagoon.
„On our world’s stage, where economic and social systems move deeply into relations of the capital, La Pocha Nostra’s and VestAndPage’s generous theory and practice stress the complexity of being human – the pleasures and the pains. Before knowing you I was wondering what motivates artists to give, to share initiatory processes.To me, you have been the experience that embodies what art can do: assigning sacred tasks to the human imaginary, you showed me that I might be able to live my life as a work of art. I understand that efforts are required, as well as sacrifice – but everybody has his part on the stage.“ Francesca Carol Rolla (Coordinator of the ART WEEK | WORKSHOP SERIES) on her motivations to organise.[/grey_box]
Marcel begins his performance by stating that he is a guest in our home, not a performer. The space of the gallery is converted into a domestic interior. A wooden table is laid out with plates, bread, chocolate, wine glass and so on. Marcel then shifts to host later as he offers us chocolate and, initiates a conversation. After his offering, he contemplates the relations between the English words house and hunt, also utilizing the equivalent and more effective Turkish pair of av and ev (house and hunt respectively). Besides offering chocolates and engaging in conversation with the audience he also reveals past photographic family moments. In certain instances a domestic object, the bread knife, is suddenly turned into a threatening object as Marcel balances it on his forehead. Taking his clothes off, and wearing only underwear and military boots he scrapes a pile of paper with his feet. In another scene, the bread –suddenly appears to be hollowed out and full of candles- is lit on fire while Marcel ominously puts a fist in his mouth.
As he radically veers between being both hospitable and threatening, perhaps it is another pair of terms, from Marcel’s mother German tongue that is more fitting for this event. Heimlich – homely, canny and unheimlich – uncanny might provide another prompt by which to consider the performance. In Sigmund Freud’s paper ‘The Uncanny’ the relation between the canny and uncanny hinges on the home. What Marcel creates with his performance is an exploration of this moment of the house/ hunt that moves beyond any language, as ‘we ourselves speak a foreign language’. Thus the moments that seem strangely unsettling occur because of Marcel’s alternating between poles, he is both inviting and discomforting. There is never a moment of ease only an allusion of an intimate setting. As the enunciated words and the verbal intonations become odd or strangely ominous, these are usually followed by a surprisingly threatening action that will give way to a more inviting tone. The space between a settling and an unsettling feeling produce a paradoxical image, a rupture in the perception of the self, a suffusion of the self by an other.
Marcel’s double act, centred on the notion of a homely inside that is invaded by an-other presence, induces a strange slippage between a conscious and unconscious self; a doubling. Anthony Vidler in his essay ‘Unhomely Homes’ writes ‘hence the sinister relation between the double, which is both mask and presentation, and the evil, voracious eye, which demands to be deceived by itself’. As Marcel points towards the host/ guest in a hostile manner, the psychic space of the viewer is affected. Inducing a shock. The strangely unfamiliar disturbs my space… space becomes ambiguous. The sense of my self is no longer here, it lies on the other side of my body. ‘I know where I am, but I do not feel as though I’m at the spot where I find myself’.
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, translated by David McLintock (London: Penguin Classics, 2003 [1919]). Anthony Vidler, ‘Unhomely Homes’ in The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). 35. Roger Caillois, ‘Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia.’ October no31,1984 [1935]. 30.
