Maybe This Time
“The dance of the receptors #3”
Rehlovice, Czechia 2022
Kulturni Centrum, Art Hall
Duration: 28 minutes
Photographs by Monika Deimling
Context:
Rehlovice is a small village in Czechia where the Kultuni Centrum is located, a beautiful barn complex with several buildings and a pond. Since 2008 this place is used for a performance course for becoming art teachers, a collaboration with the TU-Dresden and PAS | Performance Art Studies.
Each year the teachers of the course are presenting a performance to the students which is part of the teaching curriculum.
The performance “Maybe this time” was presented in the “Art Hall” a former pigsty.
“Let’s think of the book as a face or brain, and the content of the book as memories. Since we were born, we keep forgetting (tearing the book) and remembering (writing a book). What is written becomes a book. But when we get dementia, we forget more than we remember. Maybe we forget precious memories that we should not forget. We know they are precious but can’t remember what it is. It’s painful, but I feel like we forget (tear up) other memories to remember the precious memory and scream: ‘Maybe this time’.”
Video documentation of the performance
11:05 minutes
Camera: Lisa-Marie Porst
2022
Description of actions:
A collage of performance images and sounds is created by executing the following actions with selected material.
– Continuously chewing a small bundle of hay.
– Wobbling a porcelain coffee cup back and forth on a matching saucer. [The porcelain objects make a clinking sound.]
– Slowly moving a white curtain from left to right several times, hanging directly in front of the audience. [The curtain obscures the view of the action field and reveals the view again.]
– Moving a chair – attached to strings connected to guide cross – to a book lying on the floor.
– Sitting on the chair, tying the book in front of the face.
– Moving the pages with hands and head and gradually tearing the pages out of the book. [The sound of the torn-out pages is audible and the pages are fluttering on the floor.]
– Lighting the wood wool lying on four white plates placed on a table with a white tablecloth.
– Several times taking a doll’s dress from a bucket of water and showing it to the audience. [The water drops are audible while the four plates are still burning.]
– Brushing a pair of brown shoes blue.
– Raising the table and bending my body slightly forward. [The plates with the still glowing excelsior fall one by one to the floor and shatter into shards.]
– Shaking the branches to which green letters are attached. [The letters rattle and fall to the ground.]
– Hanging the letters with clothespins on the line of the curtain. [The phrase “Maybe this time” is legible.]
– Using an extended shirt sleeve to carry the doll dress across the room. [Drops of water drip onto the floor.]
– Lighting two white smoke torches that have been placed in the blue shoes. [The white smoke rises and fills the room.]
– Leaving the room, presenting the puppet dress to the audience.