final presentation (day 1) at Grimmuseum

1.1 Michal Samama (Israel)

Title: Over and Left, Duration: 35 minutes

Description of action: When this performance started the audience was standing outside in the garden and I was standing in the gallery space very close to the window, so they could see me from the outside. A sign saying “Emergency exit – Please cut in case of” made out of simple A4 paper was hanging on the window and hiding my face from the audience. In my hand I had a pair of scissors. I peeked through the sign and cut a piece of my hair with the scissors. After that I invited the audience to get inside the space, sit around and become partners in a ritual. I got inside the circle, crawling on my knees with the scissors in my mouth. On the floor in the middle of the room were laid in a row: a piece of my hair, a pack of cigarettes, some cigarette butts, a pencil, a sheet of paper and a glass of water. I cut my nails and added them to the row. I drew a man figure on the paper sheet and cut it from the paper, then filled the empty space in the paper with cigarettes butts and hair. I started to smoke a cigarette and then put it lit in my ear; I did the same with another cigarette and my other ear. I sat with two lit cigarettes in my ears. I asked out loud several times: "Sprichst du Deutsch?" ("Do you speak German?"). I filled my mouth with water and went through the crowd, touching them in different places of their bodies. Then, by moving through the floor I tried to transfer to it the touch of the people, to leave something from them on the wooden floor. I left the room, got close to the window, this time from the out side and spat the water out of my mouth on the window.

Background: This performance is the product of my first encounter with the city of Berlin. The workshop and my recent travels to foreign countries, have led me to explore the possibilities and impossibilities of expression through sound, movement, and speech. This performance was born out of the sometimes desperate hope that something absolutely private and singular can find its way across the room and touch another.

1.2. Arttu Palmio (Finland)

Title: IF NOT THIS THEN THIS, Duration: 7 minutes

Description of action: The audience enters the room listening to the opening credits of Michael Hanneke's film Funny Games (2008). I enter the room walking backwards up the stairs from the basement, my eyes closed. I walk along the wall until I reach a chair. I open my eyes. I wait for a few seconds and I walk across the room to switch of the music. I place myself on my knees in the middle of the room, and I start shaking my body. First slowly, but gradually increasing the speed and the action until I am banging myself to the floor. I maintain eye-contact with the audience throughout the whole action. I continue the shaking until I cannot continue  any further and I crawl to sit on the chair next to the wall. I let my breathing calm down and I drink a glass of water and I wait until I feel that the audience is loosing interest in me. I take a white plastic bag and start throwing sweet pop corn at the audience. I place the plastic bag open in the middle of the room and I take a piece of paper and I start shouting as loud and as fast I can a text written on the paper. I continue like this until the end of the act. I finish the shouting and I leave the space.

Background: I would consider this as a time-specific performance. It was self-reflective commentary on the topics present at the moment in my life. I was wondering about the situation in which I put myself as a performer or what is happening in a performance act. How should I relate to myself as a performer? When am I performing and when not? What does it mean to perform and why would you like to see someone performing? Also, playing with the expectations of the audience: what is a performance? What do you want to see when you go to see a performance? I wanted to challenge myself physically and to look for ways of projecting direct messages, or images, to the audience without commenting or making statements - yet, certain elements of self-judgment and commentary are present in the work.

1.3. Renee van Trier (Netherlands) www.reneevantrier.nl

Title: Karstadt, Duration: 12 minutes

Description of action: Short actions on various islands throughout the exhibition space. The audience is scattered through space. Waiting for the performer. Dressed in a nude suit, I pull the toilet door open of the Grimmuseum. I spray like a madman with the ocean spray on the toilet. Then I walk to the first island. There is a light blue box on the light blue box is laying a blond hair extension. In front of the light blue box is a little bag with light blue sand in it, a skin colored folded paper napkin, and a glass filled with light blue putty. I kneel before the light blue box and pick up the napkin and muzzle it hard, after blowing I put the napkin back on the ground. I will seize the light blue bag with sand and lay down a horizontal line. I pick the blond hair extension and clip it on my head. I go sunbathing on the horizontal light blue line and grab the glass with putty. I turn the glass and save the putty from the glass on my left hand. I put the glass to my mouth and create sea sounds with my voice, with the left hand I make movements like waves, the putty is becoming more fluid. I put back the putty back in the glass while I'm doing this I move my feet quickly back and forth. I get up on my knees and take of the hair extension place it back on the light blue box. And leave the Island. I walk to the next island. The next Island has two red shoes covered with fake diamonds standing on the floor and a red pole with an elastic thread and a white ball with colored strings. I put the right shoe on and the shoe moves while raising the heel and tap a rhythm on the floor, the same happens with the left shoe. I make with both feet through the heels of the shoes a rhythm on the floor. There is a dance. Because the shoes are too big I almost fall but I go on. The dance is intense the tapping is going into stomping. Then I pick up the red pole and take it during the swing dance. The swing of the stick creates a wind noise. While swinging around the elastic wire get stuck on my arm. I stop with the action. Put down the stick and take off my shoes. I walk to the next island. On the floor lays 3 little feather brooms and 1 big feather broom. I pick up the feather dusters and take place against the wall, I'm in the middle of the wall. I hold the feather dusters on my face. I shake the feather dusters. The hairs go up and down. During this action I make a sort of Indian / shaman sounds. And sometimes I cough. I stop. Put down the feather brooms and walk to the next island. There is a small Bonzai tree, a gong with a stick, a whistle and a kids-guitar on the ground. I pick up the gong and hit it one time. Put the gong back. And take the whistle. I begin to whistle in the Bonzai tree. It sounds like a bird is talking to the tree. I put back the whistle. I take the kids-guitar. I play a rhythm with the lowest tone of the guitar and go sing with a children voice a la Chinese style. I put back the guitar and walk to the next island. There is a folded black towel on the ground and a yellow rubber bal which you can connect to your finger with a rubber wire. While bouncing, it gives light. It has a funny face and I have drawn him a black mustache. I stand with my back to the audience and my face to the wall. I put the black folded towel on my head and get the ball and make the rubber wire to my finger. I turn my face toward the audience. And start the ball to bounce and heave sometimes a Somali scream. I take of the towel and take of the ball. Put it back on the ground. I take my kids-guitar and walk to the next island. There are two rows of sparklers in the floor sampled and a lighter on the side. I'm going to stand behind the rows of sparklers. I begin to play a melody on the kids-guitar. I ask the men in the audience to help me light the sparklers. A few man start to light them. During the lighting, I sing a selfmade song called "Love, Love, Love, Body and Mind." A la punk style with a low dry voice. I just wait until all sparklers are lighted. A man light the last one with pain in his thumb. I play the kids-guitar as long until it's done. I put the kids-guitar on the floor. One sparkler is still running and making fire-noise. I walk to the window. There is a kalimba on the windowsill and I play a short tune. I open the window and climb out and walk away.

Background: During the PAS-Studies I did a material and sound research. The combination of sound, materials and body I found interesting. I want to create islands where an action arises. The talks with artists gives me an interesting perspective. One talk was about the material-research. How do relate to each other. What are they saying. The next talk was about making a composition for the performance. To make a soundtrack for the image that I create. The visual aspect versus the audio-track. The last talk was about the frame. For example: how do I travel from Island to Island. I can run, or I can walk slow. I can talk during the walking with a low loud voice. Make time-schedule. You have 90 sec. to run from Island to Island. I was totally confused from these talks. And I lost myself. I totally forgot how I work, how I make a performance work. I'm always getting inspiration by going shopping and search for materials that are attracted to me in a way. While shopping and walking, I'm thinking about the actions I can do with. I bought the whole Karstadt and Euro-shop empty. I came back with two big bags full of materials. The day before the performance I locked myself in the space, where I was going to perform. I needed time to be with my materials, myself, my voice, my body. I was playing with the materials, give the objects a place in the space, remove and add objects. Creating islands. I started to film the action on every island. The actions were made intuitively at that moment while the film camera was recording. After each action I looked back on my film camera and reflected, what was working well and what totally not. I looked to the time-span of the action, if the image is working, is it a strong image.

1.4. Ieke Trinks (Netherlands) www.ieketrinks.nl

Title: I like to educate myself, Duration: 15 minutes

Description of action: A series of up following actions that brings learning in to practice. Materials: coin, pen with cap, flower in pot, chewing gum, egg, shoe lace, lighter, bottle of water, 2 glasses, blouse, white sheet A4 paper, wooden floor, apple, orange, white plastic bag. From a plastic bag I take out a flower and from my back pocket a pen. I tosh a coin and grab the pen and hold it above my head. I open the pen and try to place the cap back without watching it. I use the pen to draw the borders of my socks. I watch the flower and do this again by changing perspective using the flowerpot and stand on it. With chewing gum I’m chewing a melody. This gum I stick on the floor and place an egg on it. On both sides of a lace, which I took out of my shoe, I knot loops. I take off my shoe and sock and let my foot hang above the egg by using the lace and my forefinger. With a lighter I burn the lace that causes the dropping of my foot. With my blouse I transfer water from one glass to the other. I drink the transferred water with open mouth. I try to catch thrown paper in the air. I imitate the person in front of me. I give the observed flower to someone. I knock on the wooden floor. I’m eating an apple without moving the apple. With the pen I try to stab a rolling orange. The empty plastic bag I fill with my body.

Background: What means extension to me? Learning is a way of extending myself. Education on school hasn’t always been so easy and stimulating for me. Now after some years learning has become something I enjoy more and more. Learning makes sense when bringing it in practice. Learning is creating.  Learning is a way to survive. In life we need to learn a profession to fulfill a task and earn a living. Learning doesn’t necessarily goes with expanding knowledge in a “positive” way. Learning is also by losing or failure. The process of coming to this performance started with the desire learning something when others are watching. For this I had to think about what I could learn and what I would like to learn. Could that be something that I don’t know yet, should it be practical, a language, a movement or a song? Then I thought about different ways of learning, like learning from a person, by heart, fiscally, by imitation, by repetition, a book, an example, by instructions, etc. I figured out that the ways of learning are endless. The next step was writing out several ideas that I could use for a performance. I came up to 8 possibilities. 1. Learning by instructions from others; written, voice, drawings, video. 2. Getting to the end of the performance by a route of things I need to learn to come to the end. 3. Learning from an animal, i.e. a dog. 4. Learning to operate a machine in 5 varieties. 5. Learning to make a straight line. 6. Building a technical object with self-knowledge and others knowledge. 7. Learning things on location at a site-specific place. 8. Learning by exchange. Out of these possibilities I used 2 and 4 for my next brainstorm session. I got stuck, because number 4 caused me some moral obstacles. The idea of encouraging consuming didn’t make me feel comfortable. I checked Lili Fischer’s work and saw an installation of household equipment. I figured out that I didn’t necessarily needed to use machines. I could have a look what I could find in my nearest surrounding. Actually the best thing was to build a performance by integrate the formalistic aspects of a performance as elements to learn from. I.e. if I needed a costume I needed to use a sewing machine and design a costume. If I needed internet for this I had to operate a computer and play an instruction movie from youtube etc.

1.4. Felix Fernadez (Spain) www.felixfernandez.org

Title: More, more, more!, Duration: 15 minutes

Description of action: When the public comes in the space, the performer is already in the room like an sculpture inside of an installation. He is completely painted of black color and dressed with a black shirt and trousers. He hold a pair of tyre in each one of his arms, and in the white wall is written "MORE, MORE, MORE!" with black duct tape. He keeps his hieratic posture for one minute and when the room is in silence he leaves the four tyres in the floor. He builds a little tower with them sticking together with the black duct tape, and takes a power saw to start to cut them. While he carries out this he opens a champagne bottle of "Moet Chandon" that is in the center of space over a silver tray. He drinks a glass of champagne and he continues cutting the tyres stopping once in a while and staring at the public. The duration of this is eight minutes approximately. Them he puts on the different pieces of tyres over him, sticking them to his body with the duct tape, like if they would be prosthesis. Afterward he puts himself over the silver tray and a electronic song starts to sound. He spins around himself doing stops with bodybuilder posses while the song, that´s done with screeching of brakes´ sounds and machines´ sounds, is playing. Finally the song finishes and he waits half a minute staring at the public, them he asks them shouting a lot: "do you want more?". This question will be repeated two or three more times without to wait answer. The performance ends.

Background: More, more, more is a proposal between installation and performance. The author drives our look to a figure that represents symbolically this concrete moment of capitalism, which is defined by Edward Lutwak as "Turbocapitalism". This figure or character, which formally is a white man completely black painted, it set us in a scene that fluctuates between the ridiculous and the heroic when he cuts various tyres with a power saw to puts on after as body prosthesis. During the action the sounds connects us directly with the concept of machine´s velocity, that looks like fighting with itself, in a absurd try of bionic transformation. The performer puts himself over the tray and realizes bodybuilder´s posses accompanied with a rhythm built by screechings of brakes´s and roaring plugs´s sounds; this is very related with the futurism´s aesthetic of Marinetti, whose aesthetic values were the power, the speed, the velocity, the energy, the movement, the dehumanization, and the war like the only hygienic labor in the world. More, more, more! is, after "Turbodriver" and "Only for money" the third piece that Félix Fernández presents us in relation with this subject matter, questioning the political-social-economical moment we are living.

1.6. Ana Alenso (Venzuela)

Title: ETWAS, Duration: 8 minutes

Description of action: I begin the performance by sitting on a chair in the middle of a small room with the audience entering and sitting around me. I try to make eye contact with every person as they enter the room. I then get up and stand behind the chair, where I start to make small movements and sounds with my lips.  After about one minute, I move to the front of the audience and take off my panties from under my dress and toss them onto the floor to the side of the chair. Next I start to gesticulate. Focusing on my voice with an attempt to formulate words, but not quite making any words coming out. I aim my voice at different people in the audience to try to establish some kind of conversation, as it were a conference, but never arriving to a spoken language. Naturally rather a simple vocalizations and basic body language happens bordering on apparent physical tension. The visual encounter and confrontation with the audience establishes a rhythm in my gesticulations as the intensity changes producing a range from subtle to visceral vocal sounds. Finally, I stop using my voice as well as stop moving.  Looking calmly into the audience, I take from my hair a small spoon.  I put the spoon in my mouth, tasting it twice and then finish by leaving the room.

Background: Working with the voice has been a very intimate act since I have been practicing such vocalizations for a long time alone. On this occasion, being invited to present a work during the performance series: “Extension” at Grimm Museum in Berlin, I considered it appropriate to explore a primordial and personal form of communication. This action somehow fulfills a need for communication, as well as, exposing the feelings of inability that produce the apparent lack of communication between people.

final presentation (day 2) at Grimmuseum

2.1. Amelie Ares (Canada)

Title: Nailed, Duration: 180 minutes

Description of action: Description of action: Sitting at a table, I would invite people to have a seat and ask for them to give me their hands. From the tools set on the table as well as from the features of their hands, I would cut a finger nail, remove nail polis hand intervene in different ways.

Background: From the idea of nails as the defensive and agressive extension of the animal nature of humans, Nailed is part of a process to use performance art as a medium to examine the discursive dynamics of anger, care, violence. 

2.2. Helene Lefebvre (Canada)

Title: De la terre, Duration: 120 minutes

Description of Action: I separate from the audience and enter the interior garden of Grimmuseum, dressed in a slight white petticoat, the audience now in a semi-circle attending the performance. I dig out plants and push them aside to clear a large enough space. With a spade, I start to dig a hole. This initial action lasts fifteen minutes, and will carry on as a durational performance for at least two hours. When digging I uncover stones and bricks, lodged in the soil as ruins would be. I also with my large spade discover a small red child’s shovel, which I use for further digging of the hole, which will measure one metre thirty centimetres in depth. While standing in the hole the edge reaches my shoulders. It had been raining earlier in the day and the soil has the consistency of clay, and the hollow sound of the shovel against the rock and brick is projected to the audience. The visitors are invited in between other performances to verify the development of this performance in the backyard. The Grim Museum provides window views from the inside which encourages onlookers to observe intermittently the evolution of the performance through the persistence and repetitiveness of digging. With the small shovel in hand, the performance loops back to covering the hole, burying the big spade, leaving only the wooden handle exposed, like a presentation of a flower stem to which I add floating pieces of paper with the word “petal” written on them. I rake the soil and put the plants back into the earth. Now facing the audience, I conclude the performance.

Background: This performance deals with my personal and political relationship to Germany. How to address questions of war, death and time in a poetic and visual way. How to use the theme “Extension” in a concrete physical, historical, spatial and metaphorical way. The process for this performance permitted me to use my body as a tool that aroused unknown memories and unleashed psychological forces lodged in the intimacy of my being. 

2.3. Garielle Barros Martins (Netherlands)

Title: Eight imaginary spaces, Duration: 8 minutes

Description of action: I'm standing with the audience in an empty room with the door closed. I ask the audience to stand alongside the walls.Then, I verbally give a unique number to each person. I tell them that it is very important to remember this number. I ask the audience to move towards one side of the room. A clear line defined by the structure of the wooden floor marks this. Now I can show them my eight colored imaginary spaces. I point out and trace the other lines on the floor, that are becoming borders of these different spaces. I describe the spaces, each being one of these colors: red, blue, orange, yellow, purple, pink, green and black. Also, I'm speaking about how much people can fit, standing, in each space. I let the audience change there position from one side of the room towards the other side of the room and I describe to them the other spaces. Without speaking about the numbers, I let the audience leave the room.

Background: With the notion ‘Extension’ in the back of my mind, I chose to use a drawing that I finished during the PAS-studies to create a performance. To use performance as a form I extended my drawings. The drawing consisted of little planes on a sheet of squared paper. The process to make this drawing consisted of: structure, abstraction, the non-figurative, the child-like, anarchy, harmony and disharmony. Through the process of drawing, I try to understand the functioning between color, geometry and ratio versus intuition. To me, the coloring of the squares is a form of meditation, that helps me to get a hold on the acceptance of existence. The squared small room of the Grimm museum has one entrance with a door. At the other end is a large window. The wallls are white and the room has a wooden floor. What struck me was that clear lines defined the wooden floor. Imaginary, I colored the planes on the wooden floor, which led to eight individually colored sections. The different sections of the floor have becoming the eight colored imaginary spaces. As a last step I wonder how many people would fit in each of the individual spaces.

2.4. Marcel Sparmann (Germany)

Title: No Thing, Duration: 20 minutes

Description of action: I start the performance by holding a frosted glass bowl filled with 9 liter of milk. I pass this bowl to an audience member and ask to let this bowl circulate among the   other people in the audience. This is an ongoing action for the whole duration of the performance. I start to walk in circles around the ice block in the middle of the room. I take a chisel and begin to destroy the ice with rhythmical hits. I continue these action till the ice block is mostly broken. I take a rubber ball out of my pocket, show it to the audience, cover it with milky cream and let the ball bounce through the whole room. I leave the room.

Background: I started my  process of development for this performance with nothing than a blank paper.  And because of this usual starting point, I  have identified a big interest for the whole philosophical topic of nothingness. What does nothing mean and what are consequences of this mind? I realized the philosophical concept of nothingness, as a visual concept, is impossible to show. There will be always a reference point, a trace of a former concreteness  or just an anchor in the real, physical world. So, I began to search for pictures of different ideas  of nothingness, coming from a physical background, narrative poetic background or from traditional sayings.  This brought me to ideas and images of transition, physical replacement or initiation.  My final keywords were white noise, holes, silence and no existing objects, and the biggest recognizable  string were transitions (ice to water, from high level to low level or among the audience) and movements (working with the ice, dripping of the milk, among the audience members or the rubber ball).

2.5. Bernard Roddy (USA)

Title: Carnal Visibility, Duration: 10 minutes

Description of action: I enter blindfolded, touch hands with audience members, then lay down a strip of tape.  I gesture for a volunteer who walks with me, holding hands, along the strip.  I thank the volunteer, I jump rope and gesture for a second volunteer, who I position on a cushion chair holding an empty glass.  I carry a second glass filled with water several paces away, turn to the volunteer on the chair, and begin to tip the glass.  The volunteer rises and comes to me to receive the water in the empty glass.  I exit.  No words are spoken.

Background: There is a close relationship between the sense of touch and the experience of seeing.  This piece is intended to explore the manner in which a body without sight establishes an understanding with an audience that sees.  It suggests certain romantic roles between performer and volunteer, but by denying the use of vision to the performer allows for unpredictable results.

2.6. Sebastian Funk (Germany)

Title: Loose / Lost, Duration: 15 minutes

Description of action: I am standing concentrated in the room.I take two bicycle tubes and pull them crossed over my body, from the heels to the shoulder. I put a prepared cigarette, filled with little stones into my mouth and blow the stones out of the cigarette and smoke the leftover paper. I go to a flower pot, mix in a big bottle water with sunflower seeds and drink the whole bottle. After a few moments I puke out the mixture into the flower pot. I take another prepared cigarette, inside a  little piece of wood which is not visible from outside. I lit the cigarette, the ash is falling into the pot and the audience can see now the piece of wood. I change my place in the space. I take glasses and a mirror and bring them into a certain distance and connection, while moving them them a bit back and forth. I go back to the flower pot. I balance on a fishing-rod, which is connected with a measuring tape in the flower pot. With each step the measuring tape is coming out of the pot until I am standing directly in front of the pot (the measuring tape is up to my height). I cut the bicycle tubes, leave the place and the measuring tape collapses into the pot.

Background: The performance combines three different and important stages of my past life.

photos: Matthias Pick