Dream big little one

Mysterious Barricades #4
Mannheim, Germany
zeitraumexit
Invited by Johanna Baumgärtel
Duration: 26 minutes
Photographs by Monika Deimling

Context:

Founded by German artists Gabriele Osswald and Wolfgang Sautermeister zeitraumexit has existed for over 25 years and recently moved to the city centre of Mannheim with its characteristic square urban structure. The art venue is well known for its diverse variety of art projects and the performance festival “Wunder der Prärie” and is an integral part of Mannheim’s cultural landscape. The new location of zeitraumexit offers a friendly working environment for performance, theater and dance productions. The new director: Johanna Baumgärtel (former PAS | Performance Art Studies participant) offers a space for artistic dialogue that combines several aspects of performance practice.

The performance “Dream Big Little One (Mysterious Barricades #4)” was presented in a hidden, abandoned former workspace. The location is right beside the zeitraumexit but is not visible from the outside. To reach the location you need to go through a completely overgrown wasteland, that looks like a secret garden. The site of the performance was covered in sand, rubble and leaves. I cleared the centre with a broom by pushing the sand from the centre outwards in a star-shaped pattern so that it looked as if my performance set up had been thrown in the middle of this abandoned space.

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

– Laying in a white bed covered with flour. [This is the situation in which the audience enters the space. From a hidden speaker, the sound of waves splashing on a shore fills the abandoned space.]
– Moving slowly the body on the bed and with time increasing the movements. [The flour dusts up and falls off the bed onto the floor.]
– Holding two big blue eggs and slowly moving them around the bed, placing them on the bed and quickly rolling the bed around the space until one egg falls off the bed. [The egg crashes into pieces and the rapid movement immediately stops.]
– Lifting the bed, placing a plate with wooden wool on top, and lighting it up. [Flames appear and burn for a longer while.]
– Sketching with charcoal a skeleton on the white mattress while the fire burns.
– Turning several porcelain plates on the floor. [The turning plates create a loud ceramic sound.]
– Painting a blue egg shape on the front of my white shirt, holding the intact blue egg in my hand.
– Moving a book fixed to a little guide cross over the action field; After a while setting the book on fire.
– Beating several times with a stick the skeleton figure drawn on the mattress. [With each hit flour dusts up from the mattress.]
– Placing the porcelain plates on the bed and filling them with red liquid paint; moving the bed slowly back and forth. [The red color in the plates moves accordingly and eventually spills over onto the mattress.]
– Very slowly lifting the bed again. [The plates on the mattress fall one by one.]
– Walking with a bowl filled with water and moving a small silver bell in and out of the bowl while slowly leaving the space. [The sound of the bell changes each time it touches the water.]