Performance audio documentation – please listen while reading.
The place in which I performed was very specific. In the floor I found many cavities, cracks and holes… the results of heavy objects that used to stand there. Material of the floor was very ductile, so it kept noting all these tracks of history. Before the performance I painted these traces in white.
Due to the cellar room conditions of the I based my performance on sound events generated by me and momentarily very small sources of light. I wanted to use this full darkness of the basement to stimulate the imagination of the audience, using phenomenons of echoes and afterimages.
Performance took place in the basement of the Grimmuseum in Berlin. I asked one of the workshop participants to help me bring the audience down stairs (15 people max.). The darkness was too deep for any eye to accommodate, so anyone who was entering this space couldn’t know that I was already waiting there. After some minutes I lit the cigarette, revealing my presence in the room. I draw a circle in the air with its light, creating the afterimage for the audience. Smoking slightly above the ground, I was moving arround, showing people holes in its surface, that were full with white paint.
When I finished smoking, I put out the cigarette. I took a long pipe (nobody could see it, because of the complete darkness) and I started to make noise through it: “aaaaaaaaa”. The natural ending of making this noise was when I was completely out of my breath. I did it three times, staying on my knees and moving a pipe from side to side (it helped the sound to become more dimensional). During the last moments of the last time that I was making this noise, I used a small torch and I shed some light from above my head, making me, this scene and all the marks on the floor visible for everybody. I raised my hand up, which was also painted white (like the spots on the ground) for everybody to see, and than I extinguished the light (it was on for about 15 seconds). I put down the pipe, stood up, and I started to run in one place. I run till I was completely exhausted.
I couldn’t catch my breath, respiring deeply and loudly… than I rapidly stopped… no breathing, just silence.
Photographer: Matthias Pick
PAS Crew contact: http://pas.bbbjohannesdeimling.de
PRZESTRZEŃ AKCJI K 