MONTH OF PERFORMANCE ART–BERLIN | THE BLOG

Welcome to the official blog of the Month of Performance Art-Berlin: a place for reflections, connections, informations and explorations of the MPA-B world. Our 5th and final edition, the MPA–B ANTHOLOGY, runs from May 1-31, 2015 MORE INFO AT: www.mpa-b.org

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REPERTORY? REPETITION? RELOADED?

(photo: Aleks Slota)

Johanna Gilje interview with philip kevin brehse on his performance “Ode toGerman Romanticism . . . & . . .The Poet’s Investigation of the Flesh” organized by Open Space Performunion and performed at SomaGallery as part of Month of the Performance Art Anthology 2015, as well as his involvement with Open Space Performunion

Johanna: I am curious about the connection between repertoire and context that is discussed in the framing text. The text states that, “Often inherent in the tendencies of contemporary performance art is a strong emphasis on the risk of going into unknown territories and the trying of the untried.” This is contrasted to more “traditional” art forms such as theater. One point in this argument is that theater is made for a stage where as contemporary forms such as performance art are site-specific, shifting in relation to each new context. In light of this idea I wondered if you would be willing to talk a little bit about your experience performing at the May 1st event verses performing at the Soma Gallery the next day. How did you feel that the audience received the work from one context to the other?

Philip: We have a lot of experience with Mai Fest, the 1.May celebration at Görlitzer Park. This year we shared the park with a mixture of bands, djs and performance artists...there were even very quiet solos in the midst of this massive energy. Open Space Performunion is ten years old and we have also been participating in Mai Fest for ten years, since its beginning. So we have a great deal of experience with this context. The question is how to appear in the context of a party which is also a demonstration? This event happens on Labor Day and is associated with many political protests. Every year it seems that this demonstration day could turn into a riot. It is an event with massive security. So I find it very necessary for us to address as artists...what do we have to say? As a collective we use our art to try to induce change. The recent death of Judith Malina kind of gave us a kick in the ass to see what we could use out of our materials, our repertoire, for this year's Month of Performance Art Anthology.

J: Did that theme of repertory come up in relationship to the protests?

P: In years passed we have organized several rather large festivals that happened inside of the context of the Month of Performance Art (MPA) as well as this first of May event which is really so much work. Its a location where you have nothing. You have to bring electricity, to bring a stage, technicians, bring food and drink... We decided as this is the last year of MPA, to take a break from all of the organization and focus on how we have developed over the years as a performance collective. We wanted to think about what we have done in that past and to look over our individual and collective repertoire. We were looking for pieces that seemed interesting and necessary for us to do again. So that's how we got the idea.

J: There have been a couple of times that I have heard you mention a stigma around repertoire in Performance Art in contrast to the theater world where it is often expected that you would have a repertoire of previously rehearsed works.

P: I must say that in our group I am the only one who really comes from a background of theater. This is what really excites us in the exchange between artists who are coming from different disciplines. We are constantly refreshing our roots and refreshing our impulses as we teach each other. In terms of me and the theater, I have played in repertoire theater quite a lot actually. It is a myth that a theater piece stays exactly the same throughout the run of the show. I've been in pieces that I've had to perform over 300 times, and the piece does evolve and change as actors come and go. Performance art its very different because you have things that come to you over the course of your life that you suddenly want to repeat later. But maybe this time it is not in a gallery, maybe its in a public square or some other open space. This site-specific aspects challenges you to re-invent the piece as you re-use the original idea. I've talked with some performance artists about this recently. Some people I have talked to will not set their piece until they get to the actual location and get a feel of it. Others have a very strict sense of what they want to do before. Everyone works really differently.

J: The writing on the press release described the repertoire pieces that each performer was about to show along with some thoughts about why it was important for them to be performing this work again. One artist said that it was because they felt their topic was still relevant to current conditions, another that there were still unanswered questions in the work. Another artist explained that they had a completely different experience of the piece every time that it was performed. Why did you think your piece, “ “Ode to German Romanticism . . . & . . . The Poet’s Investigation of the Flesh” was important to perform again?

P: Because I am much older now. When I started this piece I was in top condition and it was more of a dance piece. I wanted to cut that back. There was always something missing at the end, and Michael Steger suggested I combine it with the second title, an idea I had never had before.

J: The text states, “Often inherent in the tendencies of contemporary performance art is a strong emphasis on the risk of going into unknown territories and the trying of the untried.” This became an interesting point in the discussion which continued to hit back on notions of recurrence and repetition. The question was posed, “Is there any performance that is not repertory?” Even when the desire of the artist is to do something completely “new” there are always elements that repeat themselves. Sometimes the most precise execution of a repeated action can bring new discoveries. Do you find repetition to be a helpful tool within your work?

P: Yes you learn, I find that work ripens with each repetition.

J: When I watch a performer's body I have the feeling that I am receiving something of their history, just by seeing the desires, abilities, hesitations and tendencies in front of an audience. Some of what I see is personality, some is training. You're piece gave me a feeling of nostalgia as well as a feeling of self reflection as you poked and prodded the skin of your chest, arms and stomach. Is there anything that you could you say you “discovered” or learned through the repetition of this performance?

P: I learned to avoid going so much in the direction of melancholy. I want to cover the very different aspects in the music and to focus much more on going toward the light which is also present.

J: Thank you Philip.

P: Thank you.

About REPERTORY? REPETITION? RELOADED?:

“Members of the Open Space Performunion; Tizo All, Philip Kevin Brehse, Amy J. Klement, Emily Kuhnke, Michael Steger and Nabi Nara are re-examining our individual and collective repertoire in an evening of Performaturgy, searching for that which feels necessary to repeat. The evening closes with a critical discourse about the theme of “Repertory” with the public and with visiting international performance artists of the MPA-B 2015 edition moderated by Jörn J. Burmester, performance artist and curator, about the origins of these works and their variations and developments over time, the influence of having performed them internationally and at various sites; street intersection, gallery, park, subway, church.... and asking why does it seem urgent to repeat them in a new context?

Often inherent in the tendencies of contemporary performance art is a strong emphasis on the risk of going into unknown territories and the trying of the untried. Many performances aim at being done one time only and are constructed solely for a specific and temporary location. The issue of repetition seems to be shunned as it is reminiscent of the practice of theatre, dance and music, which most of us specifically avoid. In the praxis of performance, however, and in the lifetime of artists who have been committed to performance for a longer time one arrives at a particular body of work, at images or techniques that re-occur and become an artist’s signature. One inevitably develops a performance repertory.

The upcoming “Anthology Edition” has inspired us to reflect on our own artistic development over the course of the previous years of affiliation with the MPA-B. We wish to pause from our organizational contributions to the past editions including the “World Stage Bullenwinkel” at MYFEST, which served as the opening performance and party event of the MPA in 2013 and 2014 as well as our festivals HUNGER, ESCAPE and CUT, and focus more intensely on our own condition as performance artists and as a performance group.”

-from MPA Programme.

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NETTING THE WORK: Deptocratic Identities, Performative Networkings

(Photo: Alexandros Kaklamanos)

Interview by Johanna Gilje with curators Eva Giannakopoulou and Rilène Markopoulou

NETTING THE WORK, an idea initiated and curated by Eva Giannakopoulou and Rilène Markopoulou, is a project that merges performative interventions, political insecurities, psychological frameworks and a process-oriented timeline. It is an experimental journey, a constitutive organism made of gestures related to locational, national and international artistic identities through the prism of illusions, disillusions and a priori convictions or uncertainties. An embedded experience based on the examination of notions such as “Networking” in the context of political, financial and industrial practices, whilst examining the Artistic Identity as a cipher for the evolution of one’s “Self” connected to a globalised nowhere. During the project artists from the North and South of Deptocratic Europe perform, attempting to relate their physical displacement, the subjective view of specific surroundings and their impact. The variation in artistic expression induced by changing spaces and travelling using performative modes that allow them to attempt a translation and transformation of the complex reality of multiculturalism through Displacement and Networking.

On May 6th I made my way along unfamiliar U-Bahn routes to a place called Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik for an exhibition about networks. Or at least that was the lens that I was looking through after pursuing the online content and time spent scanning through the list of 25 contributing artists. The evening was dense and multifaceted, with durational performances overlapping in the main space and small islands of activity emerging throughout the evening. After the show I asked the curators some questions by email about the show.

Johanna: I was curious about the way that the title was used to frame the many works within the exhibition and was struck by the very different ways that the artists related to this idea. Could you tell me where the concept of the evening came from? How did you go about finding artists to relate to this idea?

Riléne and Eva: There were different sub-concepts framing the broader idea of “networking” in the art-world and of how an artist is interconnected nowadays with different spaces, cultures, other artists and ideas. We started with the idea of how an artist and their work might change as an entity (especially in performance art) when they travel and show their work in completely different places particularly how this affects themselves and their art piece. This was of course also actively influenced by a specific choice of artists that either came from countries that are struggling under the financial crisis these last years (we called them the “deptocratic countries”), or that are working on political subjects. The psychological frame of living under these circumstances and producing art - especially performance art - as the possible influence of a political impact on this kind of work, interested us. 

We attempted to examine the notion of nomadism as an experimental way of both producing performance art and elaborate alternative statements concerning the financial crisis. We tried to create a common space of thoughts and comments bringing together performance and finances, nomadism and curating. And here comes the other connotation of the project, which actually reflects our position as artists and curators: Being ambivalent towards the term and practice of "curating". We attempted an ironic and humorous approach of subjects like networking, breaking it up into “netting" and "working", in the context of curatorial organisation. This was the starting point of how we decided to work on the concept of "Netting the Work" and to move around, exploring personal and financial conflictive spaces, while expanding by travelling, as long as the “thread" would last. 

This event shown at ZK/U during the Month of Performance Art Berlin, was the second part of the Netting the Work project. The first part was shown a month before in Besançon, France during the Excentricités Performance Festival with six artists that were also involved in the Berlin project. Finally a new selection of performers that performed in both places will travel next month to Athens for the third instalment of Netting the Work. So the idea of nomadism in Art is hopefully going to be directly visible and felt by the artists themselves, at the end of this three-fold presentation. The project might continue a similar route next year, involving other spaces to explore.

J: What are some of the interpretations of "network" that came from the artist's work? Did these interpretations inspire interesting discussions?

R & E: The interesting thing in these kind of group actions is that each of the 25 performances engaged on the subject from a different point of view and related to it in multiple ways: Many artists commented directly on the political situation of today by working with immediate references to monetary symbols or political figures or speech, like Samuel Kawakita with “Cash Taste”, Yolanda Benalba with "Ways of not burning a Spanish flag", Julien Cadoret with “To vote: kiss me or hit me” or Persefoni Myrtsou with “Politically Correct”.

Others related to the title in a more personal way and inner expression by using their own artistic language in their piece, like for example Steinnun’s performance called “I/Æ” that played on a combination of English and Icelandic expressions in relation to her own experiences. Then there were literal translations of the network per se in Dísa Björnsdóttir’s work titled "Fisherman’s Widow". Panos Sklaveniti’s performance that is an ongoing research on the Greek situation of today and its perception inside and outside of the country, did end with an active discussion on contemporary Greek/German stereotypes the same evening. We still are talking about many of the performances of that night. It is kind of difficult to re-articulate performance art, to take a distance and then conclude making any definite epilogue out of it. The way the whole project is moving forward and the form it takes eventually is an ongoing and almost organic process that somehow discovers itself, the involved artists and us as curators during its travels.

J: For me the performance that you did together where you roasted a lamb and shared it with the audience helped to cultivate a sense of community, or at least a sense of communion with the audience. Could you speak a bit to the intention behind this action? Would you say that this action was related to your role as curators?

R & E: The act was based on an old Greek tradition where a whole lamb is roasted on Easter Sunday, but also at weddings and other big events. This performance was the second part of a trilogy that started during the first “Netting the Work” in Besançon, where we shared wine and a wedding cake with the audience. Whilst the first part was called “Fiançailles” (engagement) this one was called “Hochzeit” (marriage) and it was thought as an aristophanian reference to the numismatic anxiety of contemporary Greece. The unseen couple are the old greek currency Drachma and the Euro - and they will make their last appearance together in the third part of this performative story next month in Athens, developing an unexpected “ornithological" aspect of their tumultuous yet passionate coexistence.

But in reference to our performance you saw at ZK/U, you are right of course that we also wanted to add a curatorial reference to our work and the idea of sharing food has had this aspect in mind, too - together with symbolisms of generosity and togetherness, which connects many of the general ideas of our project into one gesture. However, our performance did not end when we stopped offering meat to spectators. The lamb was abandoned on the table and left there to being devoured by the bystanders, in an attempt to create a paradox condition of community, that existed during and after our performance and curatorial practice. We actually used this procedure of devouring, perceived in the context of a ceremony that progressively involves all kinds of spectators and participant artists around a table, to draw a connection to similar processes which are very much common in “devouring” politics as well.

J: Thank you so much!

R & E: Thank you.

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SHIFTS - INVESTIGATING SCORES IN PERFORMANCE ART Interview #6 by Johanna Gilje: Leena Kela

Leena Kela is a performance artist whose work often evolves from observing the everyday life and phenomena. She has presented over 100 performances in a number of contexts in Finland and internationally in performance art festivals across Europe as well as in Northern America, Southern America and Russia. She has MA in Performance Art and Theory (Theatre Academy, Helsinki 2010) and BA in Performance Art (Turku Arts Academy, Turku 2003). Currently she works as an Artistic Director of annual New Performance Turku Festival for Performance and Live Art and in the executive board at the Mad House production house for performance in Helsinki. She is starting her practice based PhD studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki researching the language of performance art.

I had the enormous pleasure of seeing Leena's work performed at Projektraum Meinblau as part of the exhibition Shifts/Investigating Scores in Performance Art. I was fascinated by the multi-layered approach taken to developing a score: starting with a small exhibition of objects attached to written actions displayed on a table and then continuing with a performance of those actions, executed with precision, sincerity, and humor. I have been speaking with the different artists in this show about their various approaches to this investigation of scores. Below is a conversation that I had with Leena.

Johanna: Could you tell me a bit about how you came to use the alphabet as a way to structure your performance?

Leena: When I was invited to take part in this program I was already working with this piece, “The Alphabet of Performance Art”. So in this case I already had the structure of the performance. I was writing scores on the basis of that. As you mentioned there was a little exhibition in the space in which each of the objects had scores written on them. So the scores partly came as a documentation for the already designed performance. In the past when I have worked with scores they have been the trigger for the action but in this case I found an action first and then started to write scores for the action afterwards. This opened up the action for other possibilities of interpretation. By presenting the scores and the materials on the table before the performance I created a kind of “tool-kit”. Anyone could pick up a material with the written score and do something with it in the context of this alphabet. Originally the idea for this particular performance came from an interest in researching the language of performance art. So that is kind of my wider question. This work is a part of this performance. I am starting my Phd studies and this is a part of my topic. I am asking: What is the language of performance art and how can it be described?

J: How did you decide on the actions that you used in the performance? Were they actions that you have done before?

L: I started to work with this by listing different materials and objects for each of the letters. A year ago I started to work with this on and off, mainly unconsciously, by looking at performances and thinking about what kind of materials seem to appear again and again and again. I've been working with performance art for 15 years so I have a sense that certain things are quite crucial to the language of performance art. For example, the materials of apple and egg reappear. Why do artists come back to these materials again and again? Is it the materiality of the objects or maybe some metaphorical aspect? This is a performance that can always change according also to the feedback given by colleagues. Maybe they say that there are not so many newspapers but maybe there are other things for the letter “n”. I am also interested in what happens in dialogue with the audience. So it also develops as a kind of research. Then came the actions where I am adapting the material to my way of doing things, sort of how I work. What is my language in performance art? Like I said, I have been working with scores quite a lot in the past and I am still working with them. I am a big fan of Fluxus. I've also been teaching it quite a bit. I do often script write my performances, but for this performance the action came before the written score.

J: I found it really interesting that, if we had the chance to see the exhibition before the performance, we would have already developed an expectation for what you were about to do because each object was displayed with a written action.

L: Not all of the scores were straight instructions of what to do. Some of them were a bit more open-ended than the others. Some are very precise actions, like do this with that, and some are a bit more open like the apple that said, big bang make a start. So you can imagine what you would do with it, but then comes my interpretation as the author of the work. I interpret my scores again by making them actions. So there was already a performance and the score was its documentation, but then the documentation of that score also became the trigger for the new action. So it goes back and forth from documentation to action. I thought during the day that it would be interesting if I didn't do my own performance but rather let the audience do it one by one. What would come up from that?

J: Were you hoping that the audience would come up and do that during the day? Did you see anyone do that?

L: I was wishing that no one would because I had to save the materials for my performance but I realized that it could have been a good way to complete the score. I would say, ok, this table is an open source...please come and perform. But the score is kind of like an endless possibility. I was using the idea of the score in a quite classical way in comparison to the whole event. In Camilla's, for example, the score was more about the story. For me the score worked more on the basis of instructions.

J: It's very exciting to me that you are researching what you call the “language of performance art”. It is intriguing what that could mean. What do you think body practices have to offer that written language can't?

L: For me, what I am currently thinking, is that maybe the language of performance art is somehow created out of bodily metaphors or action-based metaphors. Not metaphors in the way that this apple is a metaphor for sin...not like that...but more like how we perceive abstract concepts like time and things that cannot be perceived through language. The metaphors are based on the body's experience and the materiality of the object. A classic example would be how we talk about time: time is money, we consume time...it is something concrete even though it is something that we can't really perceive. I am thinking that maybe in performance art the language is not like a classical metaphor but rather something that exists in time and space. It's about gaps. In performance art the story is not complete. The dramaturgy consists of gaps that the artist leaves there for the audience to interpret. It can be read in many different ways. Also the Fluxus scores of course used gaps. There are instructions, but it is not completely acted. How do you interpret a score that is red, yellow, blue?

J: Could you tell me a bit about how you continue to work with these concepts?

L: I am going to continue to work with this concept of the language of performance art but I will be working on collaborations with artists and people from different disciplines such as researchers and experts from different fields. I am thinking about how to perceive my own language in performance art. It can happen within the collaboration process where you negotiate constantly. Often the work process is quite based on intuition. You make decisions that you can't necessarily verbalize. There are a lot of references to performance art history in this piece but there are also decisions that I can't clearly describe. I don't know why I decided to do it in that way but for me it somehow fits. That shows how my language is constantly constructed. By collaborating with different people I can maybe perceive a bit more about it. But one important aspect of this performance is that they are very conscious references to historical performance art pieces. With the rope, for example I was thinking about Linda Montano and Tehching Hsiesh's work, “Rope Piece” in which the two performers were tied to each other with 1 meter of rope for the duration of one year. So different things open up to different people differently depending on how much the audience knows about performance. I performed this piece before in my home town in Turku. There were many people who were not so familiar with performance art but they came to say to me that they had had a feeling they had seen something like it before. So I am interested in why these different things appear.

J: Thank you so much Leena.

L: Thank you.

About SHIFTS - INVESTIGATING SCORE IN PERFORMANCE ART curated by Anaïs Héraud and Katie Lee Dunbar on 19. May in Meinblau::

“Some scores* might be the core of the performance, others are the remaining traces. Sometimes they are material for improvisation. Scores can remain private and help to reach a certain state for the live act, others might be artwork in them-selves. Where does script end and the artwork begin? What is the shift from concept to performance? We invite performance artists: Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, John Court, Katie Lee Dunbar, Camilla Graff Junior, Leena Kela, Anaïs Héraud & Till Baumann; all of whom have developed a practice of score writing. Throughout the 19th of May the seven artists will share their methods and enter a dialog; showing visual, textual and audio scores as well as the relevant performances. *Event scores - instructions for a performance. Widely known as a result of the Fluxus movement.”

-from the curators

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SHIFTS - INVESTIGATING SCORES IN PERFORMANCE ART Interview #5 by Johanna Gilje: Till Baumann and Anaïs Héraud

Till Baumann and Anaïs Héraud have developed numerous projects together which investigate sonic images and the relation between experimental sounds and live action. Their collaborative work was shown last year at MPA-B for the event «Surveillance and Visibility» curated by Emmanuelle Nedelcu and Lady Gaby.

Anaïs Héraud is a performer and visual artist based in Berlin developing her practice around Europe. She initiated the Berlin female performer collective “Dealing with Normative Gaze in Performance Art” and is one of the curators of the Month of Performance Art-Berlin as well as co-founder of the Berlin trimestrial event Reflektor. She is also an active member of APAB (Association for Performance Art-Berlin).

Till Baumann is a musician, sound artist and theatre director based in Berlin, working mainly in Europe and Latin America. The aesthetic theory and practice of the Brazilian Augusto Boal plays an important role in his work on sound, individually and in workshop formats with groups. Experimentation with the sound of everyday objects as well as with sounds produced by images and actions are the focus of his performance work.

Till and Anaïs presented their work at Shifts/Investigating Scores in Performance Art at Meinblau Projektraum for Month of Performance Art 2015. Their piece used multiple simultaneous structures, building systems of relation between objects, words and the sounds. Visual rhythms were established in the space that were also physical structures (pieces of chalk and wood) that related to sonic layers produced by looped recordings of actions. The use of language seemed to frame the actions as words were written repeatedly throughout the space.

Johanna: I've had the opportunity to speak with several of the other artists in the event, Everyone seemed to have a different take on what they were considering to be scores and how they were using them. I was wondering if you would be willing to speak about the way that these structures (or scores) were developed and how they affect each other within the piece.

Anaïs: We developed this work during a residency in Saari/Finland earlier this year. We had one weeks time and we wanted the process of the whole week of creation to be visible in the performance. During this residency, I have been working on the concept of Ritournelle. I don't know how to translate it in English but it's something like Refrain, even though that word doesn't fully define what it means. It's a kind of song that kids sing and that turns over itself...the first word becomes the last word and the last word becomes the first word. It is a musical concept and a theoretical concept, - Deleuze and Guattari talk about it in 1000 Plateaux – which is also a performative concept. It's not about creating a story where you go from the beginning to the end. It's more circular which means that as a singer you are activating the situation. This concept interests us a lot. We wanted to use this to think about how to write a score for a performance. We didn't want to write it from the beginning to the end because part of what interests us in performance is that you just let the situation happen. We wanted to write a score for a performance that has a circular and repetitive nature so that it is more close to the reality of the action.

Till: Because the Ritournelle is often connecting repetitive texts with melodies and rhythm I was curious to investigate the way that the concept has a sonic equivalent in loops, which are of course circular as well. They have something Ritournelle-like about them. This is the investigation process that we are in: how to apply the concept of Ritournelle to image but also to sound. Working with loops allows us to continue with sounds that come up from movements, from actions and from images.

A: So to answer your question, we didn't develop the two separately. Everything was responding to each other...like, oh, this action makes this sound; how can we answer to it? And the words appeared as a common starting point. The whole process was then like a ping pong game.

T: This work is based on a collaboration that we started about two years ago. We used different elements: movement, text, image, sound etc., but I think using the Ritournelle has allowed the most contact or interaction between the different elements.

A: The concept of Ritournelle made it fluent. It brought it together because it wasn't two different things anymore. Image and sound were all together. We found a good conceptual platform to develop this throughout the process.

J: So this idea of cycling...it seems like it might be difficult to find a natural ending point. Was that true?

A: This could be true if a Ritournelle was only circular, but the idea is that it is also a progressive space. The words Panic, Twisting and Growing, Rain and Deny, all with their own rhythms and characteristics, helped us to create clear steps for the performance.

T: In the beginning of the process we had a lot of words. Then we reduced and focused more and more and in the end we had these words. Every word was a starting point for some kind of image and sound action.

J: So the words were a starting point then...the other things came from the words?

A: Yes.

J: I felt compelled to use the word Structure rather than Score when describing your performance. Would you say that's an appropriate word to use? To you is the word structure interchangeable with the word score?

A: What I like about the word score is that you can use it also with music. It is not the word script or instruction. Score for me is more open to imagination. Because in the idea of score you already have the idea of interpretation. At least in music. You interpret the notes. Ok, so you know about time, you know about melody...but then the way you will put your own presence and your own perception into it is open. This is often how people are touched by the interpretation of a musician for example: because you perceive something of her/him at this specific moment and you follow her/him in his doing. This is important for us, and structure seems more of a closed space.

J: My last question is about your collaboration. Because your performance reflects your process so much I was wondering about the ways that you make decisions together within the work. Have you developed a system for a collaborative decision-making process or has this process become totally intuitive?

T: Maybe just to frame it a bit more I should say that the collaboration is not the only work that we do. It is an important part of our work but we also do solo work and also collaborate with other artists. I myself collaborate with other artists in theatre work. But this collaboration that we have developed in the last two years is really special because we do what we described before: we investigate the connection between sound, image and word. We come from, maybe I should say different directions artistically, so the collaboration is always some sort of complimentary interaction. It is very dialogical, I would say. In the process of investigating the performance there is always some kind of dialogue between the way that Anaïs works and the way that I work. From this dialogue we are developing a new way of working. So to get back to your question, I think that the process itself is quite intuitive. We try out a lot of different things and then we reflect on them. We think about what we did like and what we didn't like. We make recordings and we listen to them, but also then it continues to be intuitive. Also the live performance is a kind of intuitive dialogue between image, sound and word even though we have a roughly set order for what will happen.

A: I think the fact that we are not just collaborating in art but also have other things that we are doing together is important. The performance itself is a nice way to develop a language. We each have our own individuality but then we find each other. It is not as if we are one entity. We have two imaginations, two different worlds, but then the worlds cross and come together. It's a language that we build to communicate with the audience but it's also a language that we build to communicate with each other. This makes it exciting to go further with the collaboration. How does it develop with our new experiences and our lives? It's always becoming more clear.

T: I would like to add a bit more about the character of our investigation from my point of view, as someone who works a lot with sound. I have seen many performances that I found impressive in their visual aspects, in the way that the works remain as installations or paintings. I find this very fascinating. What we are trying to do is to translate this idea into sound. In a way the set-up that we have with the loop machines and effects allows us to make the sonic aspects reflect the traces left by the installation. We try to translate what happens in the performance in visual terms into the acoustic qualities.

J: Does that mean that the sound is an interpretation of the image or vice versa or is it more that they just trigger one another?

T: I wouldn't say the sounds are interpretations. What happens a lot in the performance is that the actions themselves create the sounds. The sounds are then looped and worked on, including the voice of Anaïs. Then the sounds are translated into action again, and back again etc. It is very dialogical. The technical set-up allows the sound to remain. For example, when one piece of wood falls on the ground it happens and then it is over, sound- wise, but if we loop the sound we can continue to work with it.

A: It has something of a trace, the trace of what has happened. I am fascinated with that in performance art. Maybe you do an action that you can only do once because maybe you destroy something in the action and then the trace of it is left. We are trying to work with the sonic trace in relation to the trace of the action. It is an imprint as well.

T: Yes, where does the action create sounds that are looped and how do these looped sounds influence the action again? You said ping pong, no? It's about this kind of interaction. Only that we have several ping pong balls in the game.

J: Thank you both so much!

T, A: Thank you.

About SHIFTS - INVESTIGATING SCORE IN PERFORMANCE ART curated by Anaïs Héraud and Katie Lee Dunbar on 19. May in Meinblau:

“Some scores* might be the core of the performance, others are the remaining traces. Sometimes they are material for improvisation. Scores can remain private and help to reach a certain state for the live act, others might be artwork in them-selves. Where does script end and the artwork begin? What is the shift from concept to performance? We invite performance artists: Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, John Court, Katie Lee Dunbar, Camilla Graff Junior, Leena Kela, Anaïs Héraud & Till Baumann; all of whom have developed a practice of score writing. Throughout the 19th of May the seven artists will share their methods and enter a dialog; showing visual, textual and audio scores as well as the relevant performances. *Event scores - instructionsfor a performance. Widely known as a result of the Fluxus movement.”

-from the curators

[mpa-blog]

SHIFTS - INVESTIGATING SCORES IN PERFORMANCE ART interview#4 by Johanna Gilje: Katie Lee Dunbar

Katie Lee Dunbar was born as a direct result of the miners’ strikes in the 1980s in the north of England. Her mother was an activist and artist and her father was the fifth generation of a mining family. After growing up in this artistic and political climate Katie studied at University of Falmouth (B.A. Honours) and at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Katie has travelled considerably and for the past five years has resided in Berlin. Katie’s passion has been in combining her art with political topics.

Katie's performance series, Common, is an ongoing investigation of the unemployment situation in the ex-coal mining region of the Northeast of England and the mining strikes in the 1980's. Her work was presented on May 19th as part of the exhibition Shifts/Investigating Scores in Performance Art. Within her performance Katie worked with materials of coal, cardboard and a transparent frame as well as her body. The audio and text presented on the wall of the gallery illuminated part of her research and experience around the topic.

Johanna: In the different conversations that I have had with artist who presented work at this exhibition there has been a recurring question of score in relation to narrative. In your piece you were bringing up autobiographical materials from your family history but presenting them in a way that to me was not a linear story. I am curious about why you chose to introduce this particular history in the form of a score.

Katie: First I want to un-pick this idea about narrative and the difference between narrative and score. For me the narrative part of this piece is the story that I am telling and also not telling in a way. I am relating this topic of unemployment and the situation in the northeast in industrial downs in England with the rest of the world. I am talking about that, hopefully, in a way that does not remove me from the fact that it is my personal story, but is also talking about it in a way that more people can relate to.

So I split up the information in that way. I separated the audio from the last piece and used it as a score for this performance: a piece that came from the first iteration of the project, Common #1.What I created in this piece will become a part of Common #3. So basically my answer to the question, where does performance end and score begin is that it doesn't. Often I see artists using scores as tools or as manifestos or as a game, clearly - there are many different kind of performance scores.

I am interested in this continually developing. It's almost like a bigger score. The circle continues which is the work that keeps going. Within that there are smaller scores like 10 minutes of 2 minute statues. It's a method. A method can be a score. And so when I started thinking about my work in terms of score I found an incredible amount of different types of scores within it. I got completely fascinated. Also, I realized that it is important for me that there is this continuous string.

One of the texts that I exhibited was a found score. It was very inspirational to me. I found it in a tomb in Rome. It was a whole tomb made out of bone! As you walk in the first quote that you see is: What we are now, you will be. What you are now we once were. Within the context that I am talking about I found this quite humbling. It was not scary or creepy as one might expect. I had an overwhelming feeling of: what connects us as humans is often death. I want that aspect to be in my work. That is what I am sharing when I am using my voice. It's almost this free space of humanity in its broader sense.

One score that I used was a score that I took from a piece of my visual work which I made long before my father even died, before I even started working on the Common Series. The piece was called, I want to work in Demolition. That was in reference to the fact that I had already been working for a long long time on these topics. Life events happen. I think for a lot of artists the work becomes a way to talk about what is happening in your life. It's about a conversation. It's about sharing something. I am not fixed in the moment, I'm not trying to communicate one specific thing.

J: I'm curious about this strategy of taking the previous work and using it as a score for the next iteration. It creates a reciprocal process, something like the content becomes the form to be filled with new content. It has a nice resonance with the quote from the tomb, What we are now, you will be. What you are now we once were. It's like some sort of reincarnation or recycling: form, content, form, content...until you can't quite distinguish between them anymore.

K: I think a score is something, or some-things that a person sticks to. Anything that is a result of that score is possible. A score or set of scores that I use are almost methods. It's almost like I set a frame. One of the frames that I set is 10 minutes of 2 minute statues. They are not actually a 2 minute statue but it’s a frame that I am setting for myself. There are different frames like the text that I put up on the wall consciously beforehand are frames through which you can choose to view the work. I got really into the idea of private verses public scores. What are the scores that I make obvious and what are the private scores that are mine? And what is communicable?

I got really interested in this because one can think something is a private score and it is actually public. Someone can think that a score is public but it is actually private. And so there is always an element of how people chose to view things. What are the frames that the audience is using to look at the performance? Are they focused on the fact that my father just died? Or are they looking at it through the lens of unemployment? Or am I experiencing the performance through my ideas about performance and voice? So no matter what scores you have it always becomes something else in relation to the people you share it with.

For me, narrative has less space for it to become something else, whereas a score has more space. But then depending on the practitioner you can look at them in completely different ways. So for example John's score was extremely fixed. He was doing one action and he wasn't going to change it for nobody, no money, no time. If it was going to take longer it was going to take longer and completely screw up the program and I loved him for it. He says that he doesn't know what a score is but he is using the most clear score in the program actually. But for me what really happened in viewing his work was that I noticed everything that happened around the score...everything that happened in his face and his body, his intent and what he was communicating. I found it really powerful. We got to witness his struggle. It wouldn't have been there without the score but if he didn't have his own private score it wouldn't have existed either. If he was simply just crossing off numbers of on a sheet of paper and didn't have his personal content, history, or narrative it wouldn't have been the same. What I loved was that his action edged into the corner where my exhibition was. The first thing he said to me was that he was sorry that his action edged into my space. And the first thing that I said was that that was one of the things I loved the most about it. Some people were getting uncomfortable but for me I loved that...that those two worlds were colliding.

J: Thank you Katie.

K: Thank you.

COMMON is a project inspired by first-hand experience. Is at the same time an autobiographical reflection and a social political research. She started collecting material from the unemployment situation in the ex-coal mining region of the Northeast of England where her family is from and ended up dealing with the issues of post-industrial societies. What she shows is a personal story, yet it is universally, common. Her aim is to draw a link between all the post-industrial areas around the world.

About SHIFTS - INVESTIGATING SCORE IN PERFORMANCE ART curated by Anaïs Héraud and Katie Lee Dunbar on 19. May in Meinblau::

“Some scores* might be the core of the performance, others are the remaining traces. Sometimes they are material for improvisation. Scores can remain private and help to reach a certain state for the live act, others might be artwork in them-selves. Where does script end and the artwork begin? What is the shift from concept to performance? We invite performance artists: Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, John Court, Katie Lee Dunbar, Camilla Graff Junior, Leena Kela, Anaïs Héraud & Till Baumann; all of whom have developed a practice of score writing. Throughout the 19th of May the seven artists will share their methods and enter a dialog; showing visual, textual and audio scores as well as the relevant performances. *Event scores - instructions for a performance. Widely known as a result of the Fluxus movement.” 

-from the curators

[mpa-blog]

SHIFTS - INVESTIGATING SCORES IN PERFORMANCE ART interview #3 by Johanna Gilje: Nathalie MBA Bikoro

Bikoro is an interdisciplinary artist whose works develop projects between communities and collecting fractured narratives for social change through identity, memory, dialogue, history and multi-lingualisms. Bikoro uses live art practices and photography story-telling to create living and performative archives contesting the nature of our cultures, histories and identity. She explains that her research is a time-machine reacting to sense-memory and political landscapes to create Human Monuments about spaces and peoples across all nations to re-invent memorial post colonial gestures towards freedom. These narratives are based on true stories and meander with visual fictions.

On May 19th Nathalie MBA Bikoro presented her work at Meinblue Practikum as part of the show entitled, Shifts/Investigating Scores in Performance Art. Her piece took place throughout the day, popping up in pockets around the space. In the beginning Nathalie was situated between two hanging t-shirts, sitting on a ladder and sewing a Jewish star to the skin of her arm with needle and thread. Later she selected an audience member and brought them outside to help pull out the text that was embroidered onto the shirts while wearing them. In the last section she was standing opposite another woman in the doorway as they stuffed their mouths with the pieces of thread that had been unravelled. Below is a conversation I had with her later about her work.

Johanna: I would like to start by talking about this first image: the two t-shirts hanging on either side of you with embroidered text on it. I was wondering if you would like to talk a bit about the origin of that text. 

Nathalie: The text on the white shirt are words that were written in a letter to my grandmother from my great grandfather during the war. At the time he was a soldier fighting along with Senegalese Tirailleurs against the German colonial army in the first world war. He was held prisoner in a very small German labour camp in North Gabon in the region of Woleu-Ntem. At the end of the 19th Century the German colonies had already experimented with the first methods of extermination by building labour and concentration camps in Namibia. Some of these methods were used in different German settlements up through the first world war. These same methods were re-introduced again in Europe in World War II. 

During his time as a prisoner in the camp my great-grandfather was given permission to send a message to his family in the form of a letter. Because he could not read or write a German an officer transcribed his words onto paper before sending it through a messenger to his daughter, my grandmother. For fear of being punished, my great-grandfather spoke in code so that the officer could not determine the true meaning of the message. It was forbidden to speak about life in the camp or to send any propaganda. It was an anomaly that this was even allowed, as prisoners were rarely given the privilege of sending messages to their families. They were not seen as humans by the German settlers. The message sounded like it was just a poem. It was written in a way so that only my grandmother would understand. She was one of the first generations to have been taught French, Latin and some German by the colonial settlers through the Church. In coded language my great-grandfather revealed that his treatment in the camp involved hard labor, abuse and malnutrition. He warned that she would have to prepare to mourn, to fight and to become a messenger. In highly metaphorical language he told her that he would not return. The letter was a suicide note. My great-grandfather said that he would only come back to her if she would prepare for his burial so that he could continue to guide her with the light of the ancestors. In order for him to continue as a spirit she must prepare to bury him. She had to make the ritual possible even without his body. My grandmother had buried the trauma and grief that she had hidden all of her life when, about four years ago, she told me her story for the first time.

In Berlin I found an unexpected sanctuary where I would re-discover and re-live this burial of Grandpapa M’boulou, manifesting his and other peoples’ legacies through past and present holocausts in the project Future Monuments. In the performance that you saw the shirts were hanging in the doorway like ghosts to show that his words are embodied in the legacy of the living. The words were not just written and spoken but they were lived through experience. In coded language the letter said this, “I will die, and you have to prepare the white sheets for me but I will stay with you as a God and look over you, no harm will fall on your good spirit”. The two shirts represent my great-grandfather and my grandmother. They are connected and they are preparing for the next sacrifice. In fact it is a passage, a story about love. 

In the performance I am sitting on top of a ladder and sewing the symbol of the Jewish star onto my arm, an image that was coded by German SS administration and used in the second world war to denominate Jewish communities. I find it peculiar that within Berlin's history there hasn't been much recognition or memorial performed for the loss of the Africans and their Diaspora all around the world. I think there is not enough commemorating of the lives of African diaspora: Africans that immigrated to Europe who were activists, Africans that moved to Europe to fight against the Germans and African Jews. It's not really spoken about. There is a dangerous unwillingness of the authorities and institutions to recognize this past that has defined our present. There are some documents that exists but there are very few that were saved. The documents were destroyed by the Germans to clear their traces. I found a record of my great grandfather and a photo of him in a prison vest. This is part of my story that I didn't know before. I started to dig up information and perform these lost memories. This story haunts my body. It is one to be shared because I believe it is a story about all of us, for all of us. It is your story. Without this the love between a father and his daughter the story would not have survived and been re-told.

J: One thing that was consistent throughout the performance was the action of sewing and unravelling thread. First there was the sewing on the shirts, then the sewing onto your skin, and then the unravelling of the words from the shirts once they were on your body. I am curious about this action in relation to your great-grandfather's coded letter. Could you tell me about your choice to use the action of sewing to share your story?

N: I used the symbol of the star to reference the unspoken diasporas around the world, contesting its symbolism and remembering its significance. I cut the star out of African wax fabrics as a warning, reminding us how colonization has wielded its power by creating symbols of cultures, turning them into fantasies. The African waxes (made in India and in the Netherlands) were first introduced into the African continent during the years of independence. The fabric was supposedly a gift of congratulations for achieving political independence with the ideal of beginning new dialogues and relationships, defining the age of democracy and abolishing slavery. The fabric was a modern invention that now is so engrained into African identity that we start to believe that is a part of our origin. We believe that this symbol belongs to us, that is is our roots. In fact this “gift” is a result of bank transfers and cultural exchanges that would lead to a new age of post-colonization. The fabric was a symbolic gesture of congratulations made by rich and corrupt politicians, both black and white, to keep their invisible power.

My grandmother was suspicious of this new fashion that would define her identity to the rest of the nations. She felt that she was forced to dress like a monkey, in the robes made by the white men. Ironically, she was herself a fashionista of American trends of the 1950’s. She loved her Hollywood and French dresses.... When working in the fields and plantations women would wear work clothes but in the afternoons and nights they would wear their best dresses. My grandmother resisted wearing these new clothes by burning one of her dresses as a statement. No one understood this and she was punished heavily for this act. It excluded her from the community and they branded her a witch. Her message was not understood. One of her punishments was to sew hundreds of dresses with the African wax fabrics for many years. She became a seamstress: sewing, sewing and sewing endlessly until she could not think about anything anymore.

In my mind this form of sewing was a punishment, it was labor, but it became a work of love too. Her punishment became her protest, a symbolic message for what there was to come. She resisted like her father had done in secret, in codes. She buried herself to survive. As her grandchild I feel that her message, her legacy, lives on. I have a responsibility to perform this memory. I am contesting this history: the relationships between nations past and post-colonial. The fabric was a gift but also a betrayal. We are wiped out and marked and redefined as one identity invented by privileged power. In a continent with so many languages, histories and cultures it is genocide that turns millions in populations into a singular symbol. We become myths, we become poetry, we become one history in the eyes of the terrorist, in the eyes of the criminal, in the eyes of the winner. We have become the Western fantasy that for so long millions have tried to resist and to correct.

I work through these meanings in my work. There is a lot of unresolved political tension but in essence this story is about love. The labour of sewing into the skin is a form of resistance. It is a way of telling a story, of living through it, a way of embodying lost memories and experiences to warn that we are murderers and heroes all at the same time. There is no history without mixing fiction and fact because our roots and our definitions are mythological. Our histories are not true if we speak of them singularly. We will get closer to this idea of democracy once we learn to hear multiple voices and to include them.

Once the star is sewn onto my arm I try to connect with someone in the audience and I take them with me. We go outside and I ask them to wear the other shirt with me and to pull the words out of the shirt until they disappear completely and you can't read anything. This illustrates the true amnesia of our history, our lost memory. What does history take and what does it leave? This story is incomplete without you there, this history is incomplete without your bodies.

I wanted a way to feel the text, to embody it. The text is still unknown and deeply buried. It communicated a memory that was physically felt. This is what my grandmother had to do. She had to bury, to mourn, to resist, to fight, to remember, to love. She performed a legacy. Whenever she sent a textile piece to someone she sewed her signature into it. For me the process of sewing this letter was part of the invisible process. It is the ritual that we didn’t hear, the massacre that we didn’t know. I like that the shirts are something that you can take and put on your body because they are two ghosts...my grandmother and my great grandfather. They are preparing for this passage that they know is going to come. When the letters disappear, the memory becomes hidden. Its the conundrum, when a tree falls in the rain forest and no one sees it fall, how does anybody know it fell? 

The project I am doing, Future Monuments is about trying to recollect and to reconcile, trying to heal...to become more human. For me the body, the flesh, holds memory. The body speaks. It is the thing that is going to make me connect with somebody else. I use my body because of my experience in childhood fighting Leukaemia cancer. The chemotherapy treatments prepared me. I had seven years of therapy to reconcile with my body. I couldn't speak and I had lost my memory so the only way that I could communicate was with my body to create my own memories. I still feel that the body is this terrain for history to unravel. Sewing into the skin leaves traces but then they disappear. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

J: Thank you so much Nathalie.

N: Thank you. 

About SHIFTS - INVESTIGATING SCORE IN PERFORMANCE ART curated by Anaïs Héraud and Katie Lee Dunbar on 19. May in Meinblau:

“Some scores* might be the core of the performance, others are the remaining traces. Sometimes they are material for improvisation. Scores can remain private and help to reach a certain state for the live act, others might be artwork in them-selves. Where does script end and the artwork begin? What is the shift from concept to performance? We invite performance artists: Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, John Court, Katie Lee Dunbar, Camilla Graff Junior, Leena Kela, Anaïs Héraud & Till Baumann; all of whom have developed a practice of score writing. Throughout the 19th of May the seven artists will share their methods and enter a dialog; showing visual, textual and audio scores as well as the relevant performances. *Event scores - instructionsfor a performance. Widely known as a result of the Fluxus movement.”

 -from the curators

[mpa-blog]

EROGATE/SURROGATE PERFORMANCE SERIES: CLOSING THE CYCLE

Text and photos by Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen

Ilya Noé's Erogate/Surrogate series, which has been featured in the MPA­B program for the last three years, closes its cycle with a performance wheel of 10 selected performers being both erogates as well as surrogates to each other’s work.

 Erogate/ Surrogate Circle: Illustration by Ilya Noé

The last part of Noé's Erogate/ Surrogate project started on May 17th with Jörn J. Burmester surrogating Ilya Noé's own Deerwalk from 2007. Burmester did a walk of approximately 33 km in a formation of the Berlin Bear corresponding to Noé's walk in Portugal, which route took the shape of a deer, relating to the site specificity of the animal for this region. The second part of the grand finale of the Erogate/Surrogate series was an afternoon and evening program of performances at the Month of Performance Art Hub: Meinblau. Here the outcome of the collaborations and conversations of the performers was shown, both as a process exhibition as well as the performances themselves. The process and the dialogue of the performers were here a very crucial part of the work. As the other years, it was essential for Noé to keep this an important and visible part of the presentation of the project.

The first performance that kicked off the afternoon was Adrian Brun’s surrogation of erogate Francesca Ciardi’s Holiday Inn, where the Hub was transformed into a beach with a sunbathing Brun in the middle accompanied by others, doing the same action. This seemed like a nice and relaxed way to kick off the performance program of this evening.

Speaking in tongues

Associative speech, transcendence, and the use of language and narrative were concepts used in a few of the performances. The first one was Aleks Slota surrogating Adrian Brun. The piece was inspired by a quote by the artist Matthew Barney, that had followed Brun for years and read: 

"The final formation of a perfectly hermetic circle is when you are capable of sticking your head up your ass."

Brun had never performed this piece himself before, but had for a long time intended to make a piece related to this quote. Proposing this to Slota seemed like a good match, with Slota sitting on a chair under a poster with the Barney quote above his head. After sitting down and preparing himself for the performance, Slota informed us that he would now go on a journey and that we were very welcome to join him. He placed earplugs with music in his ears, as well as additional headphones to block all external sound out. He then lit up a joint, smoked a bit and taped his eyes to deprive himself of the sense of sight. After shutting out everything around him, Slota started to inform us through speech of his inner travel, of the images that appeared in his head. A process that in some way represented the Barney quote and Slota's inward travel, going deep inside himself.

Aleks Slota performing Adrian Brun's piece

A nice observation is how this piece can be connected to Slota's own work with associate speaking and ritualistic behaviour, which was also in focus of the work proposed to his surrogate. The performance Tongue Tied was performed by Florian Feigl that evening. Slota himself performed this work in 2012.

Florian Feigl performing Aleks Slota's Tongue Tied

“Language is confused, language is confusing, I confuse languages. I get tongue tied, I trip on words, I get stuck on words, I keep speaking”, says a text connected to this piece on Slota's website, which gives us a framework for this action. The set­up was minimalistic with Feigl sitting on a chair in the white space of Meinblau. He was speaking an endless stream of words in both German as well as in English. In the piece the performer, here Feigl, stopped his stream randomly by slapping his cheek, which reset his actions and the word­stream restarted. Feigl's intensity took up the whole space and kept the audience concentrated for the 30+ minutes that the performance lasted. The set­up was made so that Feigl could have continued longer if he wished to do so. Slota commented in the discussion afterwards that he could see a piece like this to run over a longer time, to be performed to an end, to exhaustion, and in this sense also to be reaching a state of real transcendence.

Narratives and instructions

Another of the performed works that used the spoken word as prime medium, was Camilla Graff Junior's surrogation of Joël Verwimp's older Dummy: Three Day Therapy Combination Pack. The piece took its departure in a conceptual instruction kit for therapy of so-­called communication infections. The days before this program Graff Junior had already done the two first parts of the therapy, making the last become the surrogate performance for the evening. The instruction for this final part was to speak about the last three months of her life. Graff Junior started speaking about her extensive travelling and her finding out that she herself was pregnant and the impact this so far has had on her life.

The use of autobiography is not a new thing for Graff Junior, the same with the use of speech and narratives, which she herself uses as prime components in her work. This action therefore had a very natural and intimate character, where she was sitting in the seats with the audience telling her story as you would do to a trusted friend.

Lan Hungh surrogating Jörn J. Burmester's: My Last Performance

Verwimp's piece was instruction ­based, which we also witnessed in Lan Hungh's surrogation of Jörn Burmester's My Last Performance. In this performance the performer had a total of 200 cards and on each card was a sentence containing "This my last performance". The performer divided the cards into stacks and placed them onto the floor. He then picked up the cards one by one and read them aloud, throwing them afterwards on the floor. When Burmester himself performed the piece, none of the actions described on the cards took place; they were instead intended to be happening in the mind of the people attending. Hungh had another take on this, with actually placing some props and using these during the performance in relation to the actions read aloud. The surrogated piece therefore became a fusion of Hungh's own work with instructions in the shape of illustrated cards and props used for actions in the frame of Burmester's concept. 

Another piece that dealt with the use of language was Lise Mignon surrogating Camilla Graff Junior's No More Being Quiet. When Graff Junior performed this piece herself she encountered people on the street via the act of speech, imposing speech on the passers­by. Mignon chose another take on this task, reflecting on the way we use language and speech, where today we are always surrounded by voices in our engagement with society. In this sense, how is it possible to make an opinion stand out?

Lise Mignon and Camilla Graf Junior

Therefore Mignon chose to be quiet for a whole day, only communicating with her eyes and her body. In this way she wanted to give the meaning back to the voice, and also reflect on whether this act was empowering or disempowering for her, to feel if this made her stronger or more fragile. The piece in this new form, became about silence as a way of communication. When presenting the piece at Meinblau, Mignon wore a shirt with the text: "Today I am being quiet", sitting quietly in front of Graff Junior playing a sound file explaining her actions, which was in the form of a letter written to Graff Junior addressing her reflections on the topic of speech and not speaking.

The initiator and conceptualiser of the Erogate/Surrogate project, Ilya Noé, was herself a surrogate this evening. This year for Florian Feigl. He instructed her to laugh at her mirror image for five minutes. This instruction­ based piece was introduced as a part of Feigl's artistic research and so-­called Self Portraits. These pieces are intended to be each five minutes long and are primarily done as video performances. Feigl sees these performance pieces as compositions performed after a strict scheme. Noé therefore entered the space formally dressed, first she sat calmly and then started to laugh at herself. The laugh increased and the audience started to laugh with her, laughing at the absurdity of the action itself. When the five minutes had passed she stopped and the action was over as instructed by Feigl.

Ilya Noé surrogating Florian Feigl. Feigl introduces his concept

Reworkings

Joël Verwimp did a surrogation and reworking of Lan Hungh's Buy Clothes. Verwimp chose to take components from Hungh's piece and to re­stage these in a conceptual way, using the architecture of Meinblau as a central component in his actions. On the end wall was a video projection of Verwimp swimming naked in a lake, going after a box. This box he brought with him into the performance space and showed the audience that it was full of coins. Verwimp then walked up to the first floor of Meinblau and slowly started to drop the coins down, one by one. He repeated this action after the shrine was empty; like he was dropping these into a pond for luck. Verwimp additionally included the audience in the performance, where he placed three witnesses 'on stage'. He whispered a line of a song in the ears of the witnesses to sing: "Ding dong the witch is dead", which originates from The Wizard of Oz. In Hungh's performance the coins were central components and dealt with economic crisis in the symbolic shape of him needing these to be able to buy clothes for his naked body. Maybe therefore Verwimp chose this song as a reference, due to the fact that the story of The Wizard of Oz has been interpreted as a monetary allegory, which also can explain why he himself was swimming naked out in a lake, going for the shrine filled with gold.

The last performance of the evening was Francesca Ciardi's surrogation of Lise Mignon's I Always Wanted To..., which was a series of actions Mignon did some years ago in a collective of performers. Mignon asked her surrogate Ciardi to do something she always wanted to do, but for some reason has never done, or wouldn't dare to do unless somebody asked her to. Since Ciardi couldn't be present in Berlin she made a video performance from Rome, which was projected on the wall of Meinblau. The form was a simple, again language­ based, piece related to Mignon's instruction, but with another take: Ciardi chose to use negations instead, what she had never wanted to do, and instead of only one action, she listed 100 things that she never wanted to do.

Erogate/ Surrogate performers final discussion

Concluding the cycle

Essential for the concept of the Erogate/Surrogate project and the performers of the last section of the series was that of collaboration and shared authorship. Last year's Month of Performance Art had a focus on shared practices, which was a research that this evenings group of performers all were involved in, and which seemed to have been developed even further this evening. The discussion therefore also inflicted on the form of the erogation and surrogation, and the formation of the circular structure proposed by Noé. This way of working therefore seemed natural for all performers involved, which created a beautiful whole closing of the Erogate/Surrogate cycle.

[mpa-blog]

(Photos: Aleks Slota)

EROGATE/SURROGATE PERFORMANCE SERIES: CLOSING THE CYCLE

Curated by Ilya Noé at Projektraum Meinblau on 27th May. 

An "erogate performer" is one who offers, proposes a performance, sets it in motion. On the other hand, "surrogation" means putting into place of another, so a "surrogate performer" is one who carries and delivers a performance piece on the "erogate performer’s" behalf.

[mpa-blog]

PERIPHERY VISIONS review by Leen Horsford

Four years ago at a dinner party in New Zealand the performance artist and choreographer, Alexa Wilson, and the performance and sound artist, Samin Son, met for the first time. Thanks to the small performance scene in New Zealand Alexa and Samin had heard of each other long before finally meeting. Over the years they ended up being involved in the same projects, but it wasn't until 6 months ago when Alexa conceptualised 'Peripheral Visions' that they finally collaborated.

Both being performance artists from 'the periphery', i.e, not from the centres of cultural and political power that are laid claim to by the USA and Western Europe, 'Peripery Visions' was a concept of embodying the voices of artists from the 'outside'. Alexa and Samin invited artists from their own networks who come from, and work in, countries outside of these power centres, and invited them to contribute something to a performance that the two of them would then embody and present in the power centre of Berlin. Under the understanding that their contributions would be dealt with by Alexa and Samin, the 25 chosen artists offered texts, sound pieces, videos, images, clothing, objects, questions, directions and various other elements to the project. These submissions were offerings, support to the project that they had the power to enable to happen, an opportunity to be represented in the 'inside' from the 'outside'.

Samin then flew to Berlin, the cultural power centre, to begin working hands on with Alexa to incorporate all of these voices into a performance. An intense month pursued, which culminated in their first out of five performances, performed on Thursday May 14th at the MPA­B Hub, Meinblau. Laid across the floor of the gallery space were various items including a United States Flag, a selection of essential oils, plaster masks, a painting of a young girl crying and several pieces of clothing. The hour­long performance was a timeline of chapters that engaged (activated) the various items in the space, movement, dialogue between the two artists and, at times, also with the audience, readings, sound pieces, film etc. The hour could be characterised as dramatic, angry and confusing, as could be expected from an attempt to embody 25 artists in one piece.

I was expecting to witness the frustrations of the ‘peripheral voices’, but what I took away with me from the experience was the process that Alexa and Samin had been through and their relationship during this journey. At times during the performance they stood intimately close, facing each other and asked the big questions; 'Are you happy?', 'Do they understand it?', 'Is there order in the chaos'. The questions were mostly related to the present moment and their own feelings, their relationship to each other, and us, their audience. They enclosed themselves into their own world, and responding to abstract questions with concrete positive answers. It was as though they were reassuring each other and making sure they both felt safe, reminding the audience of the people and voices behind the movements and noises. And in this way, they introduced some order to the chaos. In these moments I felt that they were the power centre, and we were the periphery.

There were also more intimate moments, where they held each other or lay down together. This is the first time they have worked together, which must also have formed their relationship. They seemed so comfortable with one another, and I wondered how quickly their knowledge of, and ease with each other, had developed from their first 'rehearsal'. It was as though they now only had each other, facing the Cultural Power Centre together, relying on their mutual support. Taking on the many 'voices' of the periphery, their responsibility was huge, and thus the risk of 'failure' was greater as so much more was at stake. They were vulnerable and they protected each other. 

But if I had had the chance to see the other four performances, I am certain that I would have witnessed four new performances. The project itself is a process. It questions the roles of the cultural power centres, it brings power to those on the periphery, connects the inside to the outside, and in a much more raw sense, explores relationships, our needs, and how we can support and/or hurt each other. Thus, Peripheral Visions is not over. It will continue its process; through the artists whose contributions were assimilated into the performance; how they learn about what took place; the connection that develops between those artists and Berlin; the relationship between Alexa and Samin; the unheard voices in the periphery; in the performance scene in New Zealand; and through future meetings between people who will create space to make voices heard.

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++MAY 29, 2015: MPA-B Programme Round-Up++

FULL PROGRAMME: http://www.mpa-b.org/29-may-2015.html ‪#‎MPABerlin‬ ‪#‎Anthology‬ 13:00-16:00 at Dorothea Schelegel Platz. PERFORMEANDO PERFORMEANDO (Spanglish word, coined by artist Hector Canonge in the context of Live Action Art) refers to the creation of an event, presentation, act, action, and/or artistic corporal expression. PERFORMEANDO is a project / program focusing on featuring works of performance artists who identify themselves as Latin/o/a or Hispanic living and working in the United States and Europe. Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1586539378285589/ 19:00-21:00 at Meinblau e.V. (MPA-HUB) Haus 5D, Christinenstraße 18-19, 10119. WAITING FOR A MIRACLE The performance consisted of me arriving at the location and waiting, without a specific duration for each wait period. When I got bored, lost "faith", or if I simply had something better to do I left. Each performance was documented with a selfie type photo, taken so that I and the object of interest were in the frame. Today the photos will be exhibited, including any evidence of a miracle occurring/that has occurred. Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/371469513057135/ 19:00-Onwards at Ehemailges Stummfilmkino Delphi, Gustav-Adolf Str. 2, 13086. RITUALS Rituals are arguably the birth of performance: "...a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence... for a specific purpose, such as worship, purification, invocation, atonement, rites of passage... Even common actions like hand-shaking and saying hello may be termed rituals." In this performance event, 3 artists coming from different corners of the globe (Indonesia, Transylvania, New York) present performances which take their root/inspiration from ritual. 18:00-Onwards at Plateau Gallery 7th and 8th Floor of the Greenhouse Berlin, Gottlieb-Dunkel Str. 43 /44, 12099. ÜBER TEÜCHTER Über Teüchter is a project which aims to build a performance ‘bridge’ between Glasgow and Berlin - planting it’s initial foundations during the last MPA-BERLIN ANTHOLOGY platform in May 2015 - with a second platform being proposed in August 2015, held in Glasgow. Why build this bridge? The two cities share a common thread of cultural and social individuality. Both cities transcend their cultural and creative boundaries, choosing to lead and explore where others are content to follow.... Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/856421201091345/

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(Photos: Marco Berardi)

LATITUD 32°N / 55°S: Day#2

curated by Lala Nomada 

7. May 2015 at Meinblau

“We are convinced that through a careful selection of artists whose work is clearly away from typecasts of "Latin art" and whose methodology or technique is varied, it is possible to attest, without thematize, that performance art does not have a direct relation to the nationality of the artists, regardless of where he/ she comes from. We are aware that confronting a stereotype bring the risk of focusing more attention on it, however, we also believe that it is important to make a presentation that shows what is happening now over there.” 

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++MAY 28, 2015: MPA-B Programme Round-Up++

FULL PROGRAMME: http://www.mpa-b.org/28-may-2015.html ‪#‎MPABerlin‬ ‪#‎Anthology‬

It is not the end of MPA-B yet! Check out our extensive programme for today:

12:00-14:00 (Alexanderplatz, Weltzeituhr) and 15:30-16:30 (Brandenburger Gate) COLLECTIVE BECOMING: THE URBAN CARESS The concept of COLLECTIVE BECOMING refers to our capacity of achieving goals together, and it translates into the mutual collaboration amongst artists in order to develop each artist individual vision. Through Collective Becoming, artistic projects that otherwise would be highly difficult to execute, become a reality through a collaborative effort.

18:00-00:00 at SOMA Art Gallery, Liegnitzer str. 34, 10999. DUOS Duos' is the long-term curatorial project of S0MA Art Gallery Berlin. By questioning what relations, intimacies, being together or being alone mean in our life, in our time, the 'Duos' project collaborates with the Philosopher Matthias Haase. For the MPA Performance Festival, 9 artists duos are invited to perform, some they work as a duo, some of them are artist couple, some they choose collaborator for their performance. Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1387369094925066/

19:00-22:00 at Meinblau e.V. (MPA-HUB) Haus 5D, Christinenstraße 18-19, 10119. PERFORMEANDO PERFORMEANDO (Spanglish word, coined by artist Hector Canonge in the context of Live Action Art) refers to the creation of an event, presentation, act, action, and/or artistic corporal expression. PERFORMEANDO is a project / program focusing on featuring works of performance artists who identify themselves as Latin/o/a or Hispanic living and working in the United States and Europe. Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1586539378285589/

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MIRACLE MAN: interview with Aleks Slota by Göksu Kunak

In the mishmash of everyday life in our century even waiting for a bus might turn into a burden. We need something – a book, or, say even worst, facebook via smart phones. Duration is an important aspect of a performance, but waiting and actually doing nothing, just waiting for a miracle to happen, can be considered heroic, in our era. Do you remember the last time you just had your coffee without doing anything?

Throughout the week of the 11th May, artist Aleks Slota performed around certain locations with political significance. What Slota was essentially doing was performing waiting…

(Photo: Aleks Slota)

Why do you wait for a miracle?

I wait, because in the end it's a futile act, there will be no miracle. I'm testing my faith, considering that I have no faith this is an absurd act. But despite this absurdity, I may hold on to a tiny glimmer of hope. Perhaps there are things that can't be explained, I was waiting for the inexplicable.

Concerning the locations, you have visited the ones that are identified with power. In relation to your decision, what is significant about the US Embassy?

I'm a naturalized American born in Poland, but I grew up in the USA. Considering the power that the USA wields worldwide, the Embassy of this world power seemed like a good place to hope and wait for change. Recently there have been multiple revelations about not only the general spying by the US, but also the specific spying against Germany, and the collusion of German spy agencies with the USA to spy on other European countries. So the USA Embassy in Germany seemed like a good place to start waiting for a miracle.

How did you orientate yourself between these places?

Physically I was siting across the street from the embassy. This gave me a better perspective of the building. I was also on the opposite side of the one people usually consider the front, the side that is on Pariser Platz. The side that is facing the Holocaust Memorial simply has more facade where something miraculous can happen. Spiritually sitting on the memorial to the victims of mass murder gave me a moral high ground to judge and to hope.  

How did the people, mostly tourists and the guards around the Embassy, react your performance?

The tourists hardly noticed me or anything not directly in their field of vision. The tourist hordes wander aimlessly almost getting hit by cars and stepping on my feet. Only one guard that I saw three days in a row seemed to notice me. I thought that we had some sort of unspoken relationship. The power seemed to flow both ways. It wasn't that he was guarding and I was suspect. I did feel a sense of power as the watcher. Granted he could call on Berlin police to back him up, but my power was in my innocence, as naive as it was.

(Photo: Aleks Slota)

In the program of MPA-B, you mention that when you get bored, lose ‘faith’, or simply have something better to do, you'd leave. What were those moments, what made you to decide when to end of the performance?

The entire duration of the performance I tried to focus on the building of the embassy. Trying not to take my eyes off it but also not to have my thoughts wonder. It was a sitting meditation for me, a challenge to see how long I could maintain focus. If I caught myself straying from this I would allow myself to reset, but if that didn't work I gave up. There might have been miracles after I stopped paying attention, but if I was not there with my whole presence to witness them then they didn't count.

How were you perceiving time while just simply waiting and, say, in a way, playing with the notion of linear, heteronormative time that has generated since Enlightenment?

Time passed, I would say at a regular speed, in my perception there was no slow down or speed up. It was rather natural that I felt tired, or my attention waned, after about an hour. Everything around me had a regular rhythm; the lights changing, the cars stopping and going. As a city dweller my internal time is well attuned to this rhythm. Perhaps this why it was easy to know when an hour had passed without looking at a watch.

What kind of miracles did you encounter?

There were small occurrences that were wondrous, but I wouldn't go as far as to call them miracles. I saw two red balloons float past the American flag. Another day a crow landed right on the very top of the flag pole. Having been a fan in my teenage years of the movie "The Crow" I couldn't help but think of the connotations of that symbol.

What is your relation to disasters?

Getting better and better.... If you mean failure, then I can say I embrace it whole heartedly. I try not to design performances with failure being the main goal, but when failure appears I try to embrace it and be embraced by it. Not to struggle with it but allow it to take me where it wants to go. Disaster is another thing, that is much more dramatic, and to be honest I have not experienced any real disasters yet. Disaster to me connotes an end of life, my own or someone's in my vicinity. Thus far that has not happened.

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++MAY 27, 2015: MPA-B Programme Round-Up++

FULL PROGRAMME: http://www.mpa-b.org/27-may-2015.html #MPABerlin #Anthology 16:00-23:00 at Meinblau e.V. (MPA-HUB) Haus 5D, Christinenstraße 18-19, 10119. EROGATE/SURROGATE PERFORMANCE SERIES: CLOSING THE CYCLE The "ErogateSurrogate Performance Series," which premiered during the third edition of MPA-B, is an on-going attempt to trouble the ethos of artistic autonomy and originality by exploring and evidencing the ways we co-create with and are co-created by the other.

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ÜBER TEÜCHTER: Part 1

"Ein Geisterbahn!" performance notes from philip kevin brehse

22. May 2015 at Plateau Gallery

Curator: Steve Slater, (Glasgow) fondly remembered by last year's MPA-B 2014 edition audience for his "Black Hole" performance has returned! This time with an ambitious project aimed toward establishing a performance art bridge between Berlin and Glasgow. Tonight, the 4 Glasgow based artists and the 4 Berlin based artists present themselves in solo works, they will continue throughout the coming week by collaborating in a residency, and follow up with a second evening on May 29. Furthermore, Slater is planning presentations in Glasgow in August 2015.

Scenario: Upon arriving, Slater greets us graciously but doesn't yet allow us in! I feel something going on in there and get excited, I like this already, one feels a secretive buzzing and I know something surprising is about to be revealed. Wind up down on the 1st floor of the Greenhouse in a funky punky bar and drink a beer listening to The Clash,"The Guns of Brixton", with my companion and friendly punks from Transylvania and Poland who agree to come up with us to the performance. Feeling wonderfully thrown back in time, the old Berlin which I loved so much. Although I have friends with studios here and it is not really that far from my flat this is, in fact, my first visit to the Greenhouse. In the process of gentrification, such artists projects are getting pushed to the outskirts and one of the many wonders of the MPA-B is that we Berliners start moving around again and visiting new venues... and I love it already.

Prologue: Moving back up to the 8th floor space, it begins. Here it starts, we hear extraordinary music as we climb up to the top of the stairwell and my companion cannot resist joining it with overtone singing. Greeted by the first spectre of the evening, Plaster Fists, (Roi Weinstein) behind her on the wall, "? my revolution took a break .... does vulnerability make you hungry or holy ... ?" Her hands are inside plaster hands forming tight fists, her head inside a plaster head and a fisted plaster hand covers her plaster mouth. On the small table a bowl of liquorice in the form of spaghetti like strips and peanuts, many peanuts. She tries to offer, but the fisted hands disable her to offer or to eat. It seems to be her fate, she is stuck in time.

Entering the vast Plateau Gallery Space then finally, and having been given the "7 of Hearts" with a message, "ORACLE VOUCHER use at bar," The Lady in Red, (Alexa Wilson) behind the bar waves to me seductively but then, in turning am confronted with yet another apparition, Silver Ghost, (Louise Ahl.) Wait, excuse me, there are many ghosts wandering, and I become slowly aware that I have stepped into a living exhibition of restless spirits. The room of generous light with several balconies offers a backdrop of the beginnings of a spectacular Berliner sunset and I begin to tingle, feeling that I have many a rendez­vous in store!

Surprise: a major shift in tone. Slater is in the middle of all of this, revealing throughout the evening his prowess as a performance DJ (on wheels). Suddenly the music takes a quantum leap and it is Swing Time, and the various ghosts begin vibrating, Silver Ghost (Louise Ahl) is bouncing up and down. A few of the visitors spontaneously engage in swing dance. 

Swing time and chatting time for, in fact, some of the ghosts are flirty! I enjoy the friendliness of the very Scottish Raspberry (FK Alexander) and Tutu Lulu (Lulu Obermayer), but feel slightly intimidated by The Scottish King (Diane Torr), a rather snobby and anti­social apparition strutting up and down, or posing on the balcony. He seems to be the host, however, wears a party mask, a sporty white dinner jacket, bow tie, polished black shoes but, alas, no trousers.

I have given them all my own pet performance names, as in a play, because I became fond of them all at first glance and the scenario is functioning like clockwork. They are working their exhibition together like a seasoned ensemble in a performaturgy comparable to a well written play. 

But this is also an Exhibition: Panty Girl (Sura Hurtzburg), a vigorous young thing, arranges the last touches of her hanging exhibit of used panties, dated according to usage and titled; "Smell" "Me". Roi Weinstein's numerous Plaster fists hang fist down over a long strip of green carpet with a bouncing ball and indeed, The King of Scotland has a throne room. Raspberry has an Artaudien kitchen and Tutu Lulu has, "diva" as she is, the prestigious rounded corner niche of opened windows laid with criss ­ crossing strips of bubble packing plastic. Entering the room one discovers the last of the ghosts around the corner, Black Ribbons (Stephanie Black) standing on a wall hidden in an exquisite gown of satin ribbons, a cascade which begins on her head spilling generously to the floor around her feet. To her left hang scissors on a black ribbon. It is a clever invitation, for the scissors hang in such a way, that you cannot cut her gown and reveal her. She stands in the exhibition for an eternity, when she trembles and shakes we hear and feel her, and individuals approach with care and try to cut.

The Works: The revolutionary Russian theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874­ - 1940) once said, in reference to ideas of Moliere, "the creation of a work of art must have to do with the organization of a very strange party", and these words were ringing in my ears throughout the evening, for it was a strange party indeed. The artists continually surprising us with strong mood shifts, and Slater's music springing to and fro and taking sharp turns. 

Stephanie Black eventually begins trying to free herself of her entrapment, blowing from inside against the weight of the black ribbons, violently tossing them like a horse whipping its tail. Succeeding finally, she cuts herself free from the art work and hangs it on a nail, now empty of its living and trembling human content. 

The Silver Ghost (Louise Ahl) never ceases haunting the room, she moans from time to time, is restless. She begins to purify by burning sage: spaces, corners, audience members which she sometimes takes to her special corner, laying them obscure cards about their fate. 

My timing was such that I regrettably never caught Alexa Wilson, The Lady in Red for my Oracle reading. She takes one visitor after another to diverse spaces for one on one exchanges. As a voyeur I witness their reactions ranging from amusement to irritation. Sometimes she disappears with them into hidden corners, sometimes she abruptly storms into the centre of things with them as a kind of dominatrix; sometimes soothing, sometimes raising her skirts revealing messages written on her panties, and sometimes playfully abusive. 

Diane Torr’s pieces work well as contrasting club act intermezzos, entertaining us with her experience, precise timing and total gender twist. Perhaps the most burning Surrealistic Artaudian images are delivered by FK Alexander. Seated in her perfectly chosen niche at a table with a white table cloth, a rather hardcore soundtrack in an aggressive pink strobe­light, she wraps fistfuls of raspberries in place of her eyes with yards of gauze bandages, layer upon layer. The effect is like seeing a Dali painting emerge in action, a hallucination, dozens of eyes bleeding down over her body and on to the table, and the air becomes fragrant with the scent of raspberries. 

Roi Weinstein returns from her durational work at the entrance.Working closely with an interesting piece of music, she paints unusual hieroglyphs on the green carpet under her plaster fists, which she fills with paint. It is a dance and she ends her work by lying under the dripping fists finally completing the installation. 

What an unexpected surprise to hear beautiful poetry in German. Lulu Obermayer disperses a translation of her Robert Schumann song text by Joseph Eichendorff. In her immense ballet Tutu, the splendid sunset through the open windows behind her. She sings it for us deliciously as she pranks with popping the bubble plastic and blowing confetti toward us with a huge fan. The extension cord is too short and disconnects repeatedly which causes great merriment among us, hilarious, yet moving as she closes the windows one by one "the snow outside is not so quiet, not as mute and silent as the lofty stars, compared with my thoughts, I wish I were a little bird, I would fly over the sea, well across the sea and farther, until I were in heaven."

Sura Hurtzburg, (Panty Girl) closes the evening. Diligent performance art critics are perhaps wrestling with the question, "is this performance art?" Yes, indeed. She is squirming and stretching, getting hot and turning cartwheels while sharing with us a very unabashed monologue recounting a catalogue of her numbered diverse and uncanny sexual experiences with partners male and female. After then throwing herself on us with hornyness, she requests us to close our eyes. 

She made magic then, playing and singing a kind of sweet hillbilly song, which we were invited to whistle too, and we all did. I don't know what this was but it was special, and the audience played the final act together ending a really provocative and memorable evening of performance which flowed without a dull moment. Strange Party!

Compliments Ladies (and Gentlemen!): A lot of fine art, a little Broadway, a little Club, a dash of warm hospitality (also on the part of the Plateau staff), great music, and a whole lot of fun. It will be exciting to see how this collaboration will develop; Über Teüchter on the 29th of May. Be there! 

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EXDRESS: TRAUMA, EXCLUSION AND INCLUSION interview with Sanija Kulenovic and Adi Liraz by Göksu Kunak

Curated by artists Sanija Kulenovic and Adi Liraz, ExDress: Trauma, Exclusion and Inclusion hosted several artists from various backgrounds in MPA- B HUB, Meinblau, on 15th May. As well as performances by Ina Krasponer, Io Bil, Sophie Fenella, Holy Timpener,  Roberto Orlando, Adriana Disman, Lorene Bouboushian, Karina Villavicencio, Nine Yamamoto–Masson, were also performances from Liraz and Kulenovic. The 6,5 hour marathon ended with talks by Armeghan Taheri, Saima Mirvic-Rogge, Sanija Kulenovic and Sultan Doughan. How women perceive trauma, wars and inevitable migration was the core of the talk.

(Photo: Karina Villavicencio)

You invited several artists from different backgrounds asking them to work around the notions of trauma, exclusion and inclusion. In the process of curating this day of performances what were the main criteria for you?

First and very important, this event was also about the body in connection with memory and trauma. When we went through the proposals we noticed that most of them were very much connected to the background that brought us to deal with this themes, so the selection wasn´t hard. What was important for us was some level of understanding pain and connection to the past, as well as dealing with questions of identity and practices of dealing with trauma. If it´s a personal trauma or a collective trauma through war and/or exclusion.

We have created a kind of a development through the order of the performances:

We have started with Inna Krasnoper who, through her performance, created an atmosphere of exclusion, as she was closed in her own world communicating mostly with herself. Then we moved to Lo Bil which through her speaking and movements was relating to a personal experience of archiving the trauma.

In Holly Timpener´s performance a collection of different women and their experience of their first menstruation was read, which is the first common female trauma.

The second performance block started with Sophie Fenella who read her poems on her personal trauma as a women and a girl, but also about her search for her collective identity though her Jewish heritage. Roberta Orlando was working with inclusion by tying together individuals in the crowd and undoing the knot in the end. Adriana Disman was putting herself in situations where, through creating an action of almost hurting herself, made the public part of her dealing with pain, which is at times not visible and connects to her individual experience of trauma.

(Photo: Karina Villavicencio)

The third Block started with Lorene Bouboushian´s performance which was telling now the collective trauma through her personal story of her family from her father´s side who experienced the Armenian genocide, but also relating to other exclusions of communities. This continued to Karina Villavicencio´s performance, which was again dealing with the body, the inner and the outer, what stays outside and what goes back inside. This block was supposed to end with Nine Yamamoto Mason´s performance which was to show through a performative - theoretical presentation another connection to trauma and body (the abuse of Japanese women during the World War 2), and exclusion and inclusion (of narratives), but unfortunately due to technical problems could not be realized.

The fourth block started with our performance: ExDress and ended with theoretical and anthropological presentations, and a panel discussion by Saima Mirvic-Roge (War traumatized women in exile - coping with trauma as peace work), Sanija Kulenovic (The Arts in service of building peace), and Sultan Doughan (Weaving Injured Bodies into Painful Memories - On The Entanglement of Different Pasts) moderated by Armeghan Taheri.

We also decided to include an installation by the artist Moran Sanderovich, who also works with performance, showing the struggle of the female identity between expectations of society, the collective, and personal identity.

(Photo: Karina Villavicencio)

How would you personally define trauma?

Adi: For me trauma is an individual experience. I think most people have experienced trauma in some level, trauma which shakes your world, which shakes your body, which shakes your surroundings or, which shakes your identity. For us, choosing to deal with trauma has also a lot to do with the experience of war and genocide. But as you could see in our event, we gave space for different experience and definitions of trauma. We also left the possibility for the public to answer questions through writing on the wall in front of the bar. Actually one of the questions we hung on the wall was “What is Trauma for you?”.

Sanija: The traumatic experience is a memory that cannot be grasped because it is an overwhelming experience, which cannot fit into any context of meaning, which cannot be archived in our conscious, but stays fragmented in us. It remains all the more virulent, shapes our behaviour, our reactions in many situations that, on the surface, don´t appear to be at all connected with the traumatic experience. Trauma is, for me, not the traumatic experience in itself, it is what turmoil it throws into us and all this triggers in our life following the traumatic experience: To wake up in the middle of the night, on the hour you were raped, or, always to be in a rush because your refugee experience sticks in your bones. „Only what does not stop aching remains in memory“ Nietzsche said, and trauma is the memory that rules us by ambushing us constantly.

In your opinion, what can be done to overcome trauma?

Adi: I think first the acceptance that it might be impossible to completely overcome trauma. With some experiences, it is never possible to overcome. But the first step to be able to live with the pain of the trauma is to know that your voice can be heard and that you would not be judged for expressing your pain. A kind of a safe space.

Sanija: I agree with this, and experts do too. The Psychiatrist David Becker from the FU Berlin wrote about „de-privatization“ of trauma, that a trauma needs a social context in which it can be expressed, that the victim needs to be heard and understood. In cases of collective trauma, where whole societies underwent such an experience, it is necessary that all the victim's narratives find an appropriate way into the collective memory. Therefore it is very important which commemorations and which holidays we celebrate, which memorials we build, whose pain we hold on to, and whose we exclude from our culture. And since trauma is the memory that overtakes us in a way we cannot control, it is helpful to recognise this mechanism individually, to „detect“ the trauma in us, in order to be able to contain its power; When your body starts shaking for minutes because you saw a picture from Baltimore 2015. You try to not end up physically in a state of emergency, but to tell yourself „This discrimination triggers your war experience of many years ago, but right now there are no bombs falling over your head, it is not the real danger you feel right now, it is not adequate to your current situation.“

(Photo: Karina Villavicencio)

As you have mentioned in your text on ExDress, the displacement in your countries because of political violence is an important aspect of your work. Considering this, what were the positive effects of displacement from your homelands?

Adi: The possibility to express things which are either not allowed to be spoken in our homelands, or are being misheard.

Sanija: That's true. But this question of displacement is also an issue in itself. Wherever we can settle and build our personal network (whether woollen or of social fabric) will be our home. When I arrived in Berlin from Bosnia, after fleeing the war, I missed the sound of the Muezzin and the byzantine look of the Christian Orthodox churches. But I was born in Berlin Spandau, and when I moved to Bosnia I missed the sound of the heels of my mother’s shoes on the cobblestone pavement. I think, displacement is also an inner movement and its shape depends on the circumstances that caused the migration as well as on the environment of the new place. It is like shifting your weight when walking; you change your visual angle constantly a little bit, or compare it to learning a new language; you start thinking in differently.

In your performance series, there is an unending process of remaking; weaving, knitting, un-knitting and unweaving…  At the end, when the red dress is un-knit, you both take off your dresses that can be interpreted as your skin for the performance and leave the space as the installation stays there. Rather than being naked, why did you choose having skin coloured layers underneath when you took off the dresses?

Adi: We remove the costume which is expected by the society for us to wear, and which is also our identity and heritage. Under that there is only skin and our body as it is. We leave some kind of a barrier between our nakedness and the eye of the observer/gazer as a protection to our vulnerability, as a protection shield. But it is only skin.

Sanija: We take off the "social costume" and our skin coloured layer appears symbolically as our skin, but not exposing our primary or secondary sexual characteristics, since sexuality is not addressed per se in this performance, just the "nakedness", and the lack of a "costume".

(Photo: Karina Villavicencio)

You mention the “the female experience of pain and overcoming it”. Do you think pain is gendered?

Adi: Yes. Pain is experienced differently by men and women. For example, one of the strategies to weaken an ´enemy´ at war is rape, which is an action being practiced mostly against women, and the women are also usually left alone to deal with different circumstances of it. Other than that women experience birth, experience breastfeeding, experience drastic changes of their bodies and their function(s). And in many cases, women are not allowed to express their pain openly.

So pain has a big role in being a woman, not always, but often. I believe that also when someone is taking upon herself the identity of a women she would feel the pain, if physically, or emotionally, or socially, differently.

“Gender is a choice, or that gender is a role, or that gender is a construction that one puts on, as one puts on clothes in the morning” writes Judith Butler in Gender Trouble. When heteronormativity constantly (re)performs the gender, do you think stressing being a “female” would help the struggle against power?

Sanija: We believe that giving the opportunity for women to speak out is one of the ways to resist patriarchy.

Adi: But being a woman is not something that can be forced upon anyone, rather something that comes from within.

Do you think art should be explicitly political?

Adi: Yes. What is not political?

Sanija: Good point. Art is important. It can tell us a truth that we are not aware of, and even when we might think art is not related to a political issue, we should consider that all art springs from a social context. In my talk "Arts in service of peace building", which was about art in the aftermath of war, I wanted to underline the impact art can have, just as Alfred Döblin put it in his statement in 1929 that art is not free, but effective. With this he alludes to the notion of art militants.

(Photo: Karina Villavicencio)

You have been performing ExDress in several spots. How does the space affect the reaction of the audience, or your experience as the performers?

It is not only the space, but also the time. Our performance becomes site and time specific and is changing according to them. For example, when we performed on the Mostar Bridge 29.6.2014, one day after the 100 years after the incidents that started WWI, and which eventually resulted with the destruction of the bridge during the Yugoslavia war. As we were standing on the rebuilt bridge our dresses, our identities, and our heritages have collided with it. When we were performing on the Bornholmer Bridge, on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the date of Kristalnacht and the day when the Mostar bridge was bombed, we were letting our dresses dissolve from both sides of the still separated city- one side the rich, homogenic Prenzlauer Berg, and from the other side the relatively poor, immigrant populated, slowly gentrified Wedding.

When we were performing at Meinblau on May 15th we wrote down and remembered the villages with no traces of Palestine on the official commemoration day of the Nakba, and made all the people in the space witnesses. When we were performing at Naunynstr. on May 31st 2014, on the Day of White Armbands, we were remembering the story of Prijedor, where the obligation for people of certain ethnicity to mark themselves with armbands appeared again in Europe on May 31st 1992. It was more the date then the space which had a strong impact and we all, including the audience, had a strong emotional experience – we all were crying. In this case it became visible how much the audience influences the performance.

At the beginning of June 2015 we are flying away to Jerusalem to perform there in the art festival Musrara Mix, where our performance will deal with what is hidden, buried, and invisible. And with what is separated, and can be connected and reweaved.

[mpa-blog]

++MAY 26, 2015: MPA-B Programme Round-Up++

FULL PROGRAMME: http://www.mpa-b.org/26-may-2015.html ‪#‎MPABerlin‬ ‪#‎Anthology‬

Today you are invited to join at the HUB and from 18:00 onwards there is Manual for Perofmers (M4P), followed by a performance from FK Alexander!

18:00-21:00 at Meinblau e.V. (MPA-HUB) Haus 5D, Christinenstraße 18-19, 10119. MANUAL FOR PERFORMERS (M4P) M4P is an open platform to explore the link between the performance concept - maker and the executer. It aims to experiment the process from instructions to realisation. How does it works if you wish to perform? 1- come and get an instruction and execute 2- write instructions for a next performer Www.manual4performer.blogspot.de

21:30-End at Meinblau e.V. (MPA-HUB) Haus 5D, Christinenstraße 18-19, 10119. SELF PORTRAIT ACTION #2 FK Alexander is a prolific Glasgow based performance artist who's action based work is concerned with wound, recovery and noise music. This piece is part of a long term collection of episodes dealing with distortion of image, sonics and identity, with color, light, volume and action collaged to become a repeated morphing, using the face as a constant canvas. A previous episode has been shown here at MPA-B.