Performance on memory and matter.
Duration: 3 days
Synopsis:
I demolish personal memorabilia through crushing and cutting. The objects are either mine or were given to me by others.
At the end I carry the mixture of memory bits to the river and pour it in the water.
With this action I rather disintegrate than destroy memorabilia. I do not intent to eliminate memories, I attempt to detach those from matter instead. In order to let them come and go like a wind blow.
Setting:
A board with 30 different objects, each one with an accompanying note describing its story and related memories.
A table, a chair, a stool.
A mortar and a pestle, tools, a bucket.
Structure of the performance:
Part 1 - Demolishing (action | first to third day):
Grinding, crushing, pulverizing, cutting into pieces the exhibited personal memorabilia.
Part 2 - Talking (lecture performance | end of second day):
Thoughts and stories about time and its ways of flowing, about memory, remembering and forgetting, about loss and grief and about loading objects with gone experiences.
Part 3 - Releasing (action | end of third day):
Walking to the river and pouring the disintegrated memories in the water.
Note: I disposed all pollutive components in a garbage container.
Quotes from the lecture:
"Our physical body is the only part of our being that is rigidly connected to the present. Our other components like spirit, mind, emotions and so on have a rather loose connection to time. They do keep a foot in our present-time-body but the rest is floating freely in past and future. […]
Past is not really graspable. Memory holds the bonds to our past, creates time-loops and keeps past experiences alive. Memorabilia serve as an evidence of our past. […]
Remembrance-triggers open up wormholes and catapult us into our past. They can be random - like a special place, a sudden smell or an atmosphere - or on purpose, like preserved objects and documents. […]
Memorabilia of our Dead can be a desperate issue. We keep their shoes, hoping secretly that our Beloved will come back one day and put them on. We wear their clothes to fill the void. […]"
Performed in:
→ "AUS FALTEN und ÜBERBLEIBSELN" ("Folds and Remainings"), group exhibition, Frappant Galerie | Hamburg, Germany | April 2017
Photo credits: 1: Edda Fahrenhorst | 2: Sophia Röpcke | 3-4, 6-8: Cornelia Haseneier | 5: Viktoriya Levenko