D R E I E R
(engl. threesome)
Table performance with lettuce and word processor
duration: 15 to 25 mins
The performance focusses on actions strongly related
to our taste and touch senses and juxtaposes this with an electronical visual presentation
of a fragmented text narrative. The text becomes non-perceiveable as a text continuum and
appears to be a continuous flow of symbolic codes.
First you see a white table partly 'dressed' in lettuce. On the table rests a stone and a computer keyboard. Underneath the table a display connected to a computer with a launched text application. The screen shows two still lines of text. Each line contains only three hugely sized letters (including empty spaces).
The artist enters the scene and after standing for a minute or two in front of the table he gets down to the floor and starts eating the lettuce from the table's leg. Each time the mouth is full he looks up to the audience and starts shouting out short statements under spitting and choking on lettuce.
Reaching the top of the table he picks up the stone and places it on the keyboard's forward arrow key. This makes the text scroll continuously showing three characters per line.
The artist continues to eat up the lettuce now on top of the table. He also repeats the shouting, spitting and choking each time the mouth gets too full.
The performance ends when the text has reached its last letter and all lettuce has been eaten up. Well, more or less.
First you see a white table partly 'dressed' in lettuce. On the table rests a stone and a computer keyboard. Underneath the table a display connected to a computer with a launched text application. The screen shows two still lines of text. Each line contains only three hugely sized letters (including empty spaces).
The artist enters the scene and after standing for a minute or two in front of the table he gets down to the floor and starts eating the lettuce from the table's leg. Each time the mouth is full he looks up to the audience and starts shouting out short statements under spitting and choking on lettuce.
Reaching the top of the table he picks up the stone and places it on the keyboard's forward arrow key. This makes the text scroll continuously showing three characters per line.
The artist continues to eat up the lettuce now on top of the table. He also repeats the shouting, spitting and choking each time the mouth gets too full.
The performance ends when the text has reached its last letter and all lettuce has been eaten up. Well, more or less.
Based on my life-art performance DREIER I created this piece to be seen online with a web browser.
It works partly with the same elements (like the three characters fragmentation) but this time, naturally,
purely digital. It is a work of (media) art in its own right although it can't transport the physical
presence of spitting, choking, shouting and sweating during the life act. Be aware that this piece with
its flashing text graphics can become an eye-straining experience.
CHOKE PRAYER
Performance with lettuce, toast slices, chalk writings and computer screen
duration: 25 to 35 mins
This life-art performance is very much like Dreier. While Dreier has been performed in Germany, Choke Prayer is created in England for English venues. Instead of a computer-based text the text narratives here are written with chalk in circular spirals on the floor around lettuce heads. The computer monitor's only task is to illuminate the otherwise very dark scene with that grim 'chemical' green light.
