Gespraum
by depart on November 3, 2007
“Gespraum”:
pathos of the inanimate in spatium mutans
installation piece (loop: video, sound)
duration: ca. 45 min.
broom, sweep sweep sweep the room.
rumbling & tumbling biedermeier blowup.
Passers-by look through a window into a (projected) rooom, which is undergoing a constant change. It shows an unstable situation that is seemingly stripped bare of temporality and causality. Furniture, books and other objects are in a tilted state or thrown in the air by unnamed forces, suddenly frozen still. Chairs bursting into flames, salt trickling from the ceiling, black beads bubbling up from an orifice in the parquet…
The constellation of objects in the projected room is changing constantly in such a manner that only the outer frame of the room (walls, doors, windows) is keeping still. A moving picture where often the speed of mutation is barely noticeable. Due to the style of production the video has a kind of slightly unreal quality, a doll’s house aesthetics maybe. There is no real reference of size and so an interpretation of the video as a documentary of real events is also constantly in doubt.
A room as an output of the subconscious. The “Gespraum”, a psychoanalytic talk of a room with itself. No tangible story, no plot can be really exemplified here, only suspected and interpreted. There are no actors, so the objects are consequently becoming independent. For want of any human presence, quite literally, “things are in a state of flux”.There is also a scent of the uncanny, the make-believe suspension of gravity, the anxiety and deadlock of romanticism and slightly unreal shadowplay reminding of the vampire genre. The viewer is throwing the voyeuristic glance into a chamber that is free of all subjects and allowed to be the actor itself.
Vexations
by depart on September 7, 2007
“Vexations”:
on & on & on, till the beak of yawn
play a loophole into your headpeace
performance for two piano players, projected video and stream of consciousness writing.
original composition (1893) by Erik Satie. duration ca. 1200 min.
our resume: Vexations is a challenge, a practical joke and a timemachine.
eriksatieeriksatieeriksatieeriksatieeriksatieeriksatieeriksatieeriksatieeriksatieeriksatieeriksatieeriksatie
“Je m’appelle Erik Satie comme tout le monde.”
we perform satie.
wir verformen satie.
we do it for us.
wir tun es für uns.
we do it for you.
wir tun es für euch.
we do it because it is not important to be done.
wir tun es weil es nicht wichtig ist dass es getan wird.
we do it because we would like to do it.
wir tun es weil wir es gerne tun möchten.
we are two people playing piano and one computing and showing the difference.
wir sind zwei, die klavier spielen und einer, der die differenz berechnet und zeigt.
we will play it note for note.
wir werden es note für note spielen.
you will hear it note for note.
ihr werdet es note für note hören.
afterwards nothing will be the same.
danach wird das nichts sein wie es war.
Short piano piece to be repeated 840 times. Performed at Schmiede Hallein 2007, first incantation of the Reverb.On Series featuring Dorian Concept.
My Myo Mayhem
by depart on Juni 12, 2007
“My Myo Mayhem”:
a platonian cave canem kafkaesque coffin break kammerspiel
performance installation piece for three performers, myoelectrical stimulation, a chicken called Tesla, video & sound.
duration of one cycle ca. 15 minutes
imperial chickensouperpowers for the white room-o-botter
what happens: groups of 10 people are lead into an anteroom where they are ordered to sit and wait. a strange person behind a counter is giving out questionaries and calling people to the desk in random order. this character is mutating over the duration of the whole piece from casual guy to kafkaesque clerk to lunatic to chicken. every 5 minutes one person is admitted to an adjoining room where an attendant is showing them about. a puppet emperor and his rural adventures are presented on screens while a glimpse into an overhead orifice provides an inverse cage perspective on the confetti chicken. the gloomy atmosphere of the first two rooms is followed by an eery transition to the center stage. There, the “emperor” is performing his private little hatching dance, controlled and hardsynced to the installation soundtrack by a mystical myoelectrical device dangling around his neck. after this shocking galvanic experience, the lounge room is a chill out, big brother-like situation with a cctv tablecloth, walls with eyes and gin & tonic served by lovely ladies. the audience members meet again and, while discussing their own experiences, are able to watch others still on the tour and enjoy the joint joyful noises unto the creator from all the performance rooms.
First installment shown at Amsterdam Hogeschool, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Final version first shown at ARGEkultur, Salzburg, Austria
Further installments with slight variations:
Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Dresden/Germany
Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich/Switzerland
Performers: Georg Hobmeier, Gregor Ladenhauf
Concept: DEPART and Senselabor
Video, Sound, Programming, Production Design: DEPART