Poster of the 7th CLOUD Festival 2023 in Tirana, Albania
created by Monika Deimling & BBB Johannes Deimling

Context:

THE CLOUD (Reja) Festival is a yearly festival for traditional and contemporary art in Tirana, Albania curated by Edit Pula. The name of the festival is given by an art installation (pavilion) constructed with white metal beams by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto that is placed in front of the National Gallery of Arts in Tirana. Since 2016, the Cloud has served as a modern art space for cultural events in Tirana, like THE CLOUD Festival.

The performance “Broken Morning” was presented inside the cloud pavilion.

Description of actions:
A collage of performance images and sounds is created by executing the following actions with selected material.

– Taking a doll’s dress out of a glass bowl with water and presenting it to the audience. [While holding the wet dress up, the sound of the falling drops is hearable.]
– Painting my head and face white.
– Taking down two white metal chairs, which are connected by a coiled rope. [The chairs spin for a long time until they swing slightly a few centimeters above the floor.]
– Drawing a childlike-looking sun with yellow chalk on the concrete ground.
– Creating sound by letting two wooden sticks tipple on the floor.
– Creating a clanging sound by moving the sticks around inside two squares of the metal cloud construction. [The whole cloud pavilion sounds and vibrates.]
– Drawing a tie on my white shirt with brown chalk.
– Laying a plastic water bottle on the table. [The water is splashing on the ground.]
– Burning a center-folded big white sheet of paper. [While the fire burns the sheet in two halves the water is still splashing from the bottle.]
– Sitting at a table and burying the head in a pile of dark earth; Suddenly quickly rising the upper part of the body and taking a deep breath. [By the quick movement the earth flies around.]
– Dipping the left part of the shirt into a plate of red paint.
– Placing two little cardboard houses on the two sticks and waggle them by moving behind a white curtain.
– Blowing blue paint through the white curtain. [A blue line is running down the white curtain.]
– Placing the two brown houses on the chalk sun and lighting up the created scene. [Sun and houses disappear in flames. The houses burn completely to ashes.]
– Placing the little doll’s dress on two sticks. [The dress has now “legs”.]
– Binding a wilted palm leaf in front of the face; Walking slowly with the doll’s dress away from the scene.