At the Edge of Emptinessperformance at the ‘The Other Side’ festival of 27-30 November 2025 in the ‘Vernissa Cultural Center’, Vaasa, Finland,
curated by Parsa Kamehkhosh and Aman Askarizad. I wanted to do something totally different. Get rid of all ideas about art and what (performance)art should be. Just an original action fed by bits and pieces of my past and the past before that. Something that could stand time. Slowly some idea evolved, I took it up and developed it further. Against all odds and guided by doubts. It took two weeks of morning freemotion meditations on the wondrous music of Rosalía’s album ‘Lux’ to get my body in the right mode for the action. Foreplay. I created a small place almost totally covered with a black curtain, a high table with a small office lamp. The audience members were encouraged to take some time to think about their greatest secret, their biggest shame or their deepest regret. They were asked to make a choice and write that down -absolutely anynomously- on a small piece of paper and put that in a black letter box. The action. The venue itself was like a black box. I asked for a circus like arena of light. Chairs were put around the circle of light for the audience to sit after a long day of talks and performances. I brought the box with the secret messages and opened it. One piece of paper after another I read out loud what was scribbled on it. After each message I put the piece of paper in my mouth and chewed and swallowed it, sometimes helped by a sip of water. After about ten messages a light trembling started in my body. The water spoiled from my lips. The trembling became bigger with each read out message. I don’t remember anymore the content of the messages, just one got stuck in my mind: ‘I was bullied for seven years’ (maybe I didn’t chew this message enough). When all was read and eaten, the trembling had evolved into shaking. I extended a hand and asked in the blind ‘can you please hold my hand?’. The hand was taken by someone, somebody else took my other hand and so it went with my feet, till four people held me, floating in space. For some seconds (or was it longer?) my body convulsed in grotesque movements. Then stillness took over. They laid me down and I gathered myself slowly out of the arena. Aftermath. The paper was digested. It took my body some three days to get it done. |
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