Katharina tanscript

So there's this rectangular space. The light in the room is regular gallery lighting, with the exception of the duration of performances that are happening every few days. They last for about half an hour, maybe longer, depending on the amount of words. During that time the light will be turned down and the space will be quite dark. For the performance I sit in a chair, a nice chair but I don't yet know exactly which model, wearing one of my favorite sweaters and some basic pants and shoes. On my shoulder I have one of these discrete and functional looking IKEA lamps, that don't have a foot but can be clipped onto something like a shelf or a desk for stability and versatile use. The lamp will be clipped onto a narrow board which is hidden underneath my sweater and sits on both my shoulders, so apart from helping with the lamp it also makes my shoulders look broad and a little boxy. It's just slightly wider than my actual shoulders. I guess I don't feel like a very broad shouldered person, so it can be this sort of subtle way of creating a fictional character, so it's not really me performing it's me with shoulders that are too broad, like a slight change in proportion. And the lamp will sit there like a parrot, omg maybe it's even gonna be the lamp speaking instead of me.

On my or let's call it the performer's lap sit, one at a time, little stages, or rooms, or whatever, made from cardboard boxes and they have backdrops of photos I've taken with my iPhone. One shows the table from a friend's kitchen that has a bunch of bamboo sticks, painted white and bundled together tightly, for a foot. It is chopped off evenly at table height and has a round glass top, so you can see the cross-section of what's really just the bamboo, but sort of looks like a macro image of an organism, or some cell structure. On it stand two red plastic, sort of transparent flamingo chalices, filled with red wine, one is held lightly by a hand. Through the way the picture is cut up to cover the three walls and the floor of the stage in just one go it is slightly abstracted. Another is of four metallic screw-like objects, lying on the carpet in my room. They are placed next to each other very neatly and the photo is taken with flash. It is quite a bad photo but has a descriptiveness to it. The metal objects are necessary to assemble an IKEA bed that I bought second hand from an acquaintance. He didn't possess the original manual anymore, so I found one online. While I built up the bed, following this manual I thought I was missing four more of the metal objects, which are really essential and really specific so I sent him a picture asking if they were still lying around his apartment somewhere. After consulting the manual and inspecting all pieces I got in detail, it turned out there was a slight difference between the online manual and the manual that must have come with my actual bed, and that four of the metal pieces were simply replaced by four more simple wooden bolts that weren't in the online manual but as pieces of one whole, which is the bed served the same function as four of the complicated metal pieces would have. Through the way the pictures are cut up and placed to cover the three walls and the floor of the stage in just one go, the motives get slightly abstracted. The stages will be switched through the course of whatever is going on.

There is spoken word also, it's based on this ongoing list of words that come from vocabulary I have to look up while reading, or that I encounter in texts, or during conversation and that I find worth remembering for the quality of their sound or simply because I think they're good words to know. Also added to the list get phrases, small amounts of texts which I either just come up with, or which describe certain visible features of objects, and sometimes social interactions.

Maybe there are figures that are a mixture of wire and softer, fabric covers bits. I'm stitching them by hand. Yeah mainly I just wanna make theses doll figures and give them somewhere to live, I guess. Given the nature of the list, they might not have a lot of words, just one or two, which means there will be quite a few doll figures I guess, thinking each language item from the list will be covered by an individual figure. And they're communicating on the basis of the words and phrases, I really want to find a way to let them communicate. Or maybe, shit I'm thinking that this really might not be fair, to give them so little words only.

Anyway, so I have this body of text, which is the list, and I have the dolls and the cardboard stages, and I have my own body - which I'm sort of struggling with because I'm thinking a lot about where to place my own person within my art and to what end and by which means etc etc. To me my body has just always been this technology that I have available, I don't have to rent it, I don't have to pay for it, other than paying for it like anyway in order to stay alive, I can spend, or have to actually, an unlimited amount of time with it, so you know that just starts a certain process. I guess that's probably where the whole sewing thing originates from - making stuff that I want to wear, it's a really basic motive.

I don't yet have a detailed plan how the performance is gonna work, so I have no idea about a schedule either. But if I'm not there and performing the chair will remain in the space and the the cardboard stages and the puppets will be sitting around it on the floor, sort of ready for or left over from the last/next performance.

And then there is this whole other thing that might also just be a different show but for now I just imagine it to be all in one.

There are pieces of textile and deconstructed clothing scattered around the exhibition space. Jeans that have been taken apart and needle felted back together in weird places. Thick braids of felted wool, single shoes covered in hot glue, parts of sweaters that have wool growing like fungus or moss needle-felted into them, with bits of other clothing items attached here and there. Like it's all not really working anymore but still sort of trying. And some of this like debris is covering or dressing a flat screen that is placed somewhere in the space, not to close to the chair, though, on a TV stand which is also dressed. It shows a video that is recorded with the thermal camera, and the idea is that it is set inside of a body but it's not explicit or anything, that's just the way I frame it. The body here can be a lot of things, like an apartment, or supermarket, or tunnel, or the street even, but I was thinking it would be helpful if it was a closed space. Like one part is a changing room at H&M or whatever, which I think is an interesting place in relationship to the body anyway. But the video is a pile of different places cut together into this one body. And one of the ideas is that the way the camera works is capturing radiation beyond the spectrum of visible light, so it doesn't matter if it's "light" or "dark", the imagery looks the same, the only thing that makes a difference is the temperature, so like it's gotta be warm. And I'm thinking that actually makes sense, because inside a body, like an actual one, there is no light.