READING DEBORAH HAY: USING THE SKY – A DANCE

North by Northeast, Deutscher Künstlerbund, Berlin

2020

Silent reading performance, in HIEROGLYPHENDECKE, reading desk, 2015/2018, paper, carbon, silicone / When thinking moved me across the room: I like the texture of bodies that move thinking. These are movements that are guided by absorbed thinking and understanding. Without being carried out in the consciousness of direct action, they take place. The reading performance is based on the thinking calm of the reading body. Movements of the head are directly transmitted in the sculpture HIEROGLYPHENDECKE by a head prosthesis. The head construction, also called HEADSET, is a vertically carried rod on the head of the reading person, at the end of which there is a piece of charcoal. Holding it physically, between floor and ceiling, the head movements become visible as a drawing when the carbon piece touches the paper ceiling. What impulses of movement does the body receive while thinking? What happens when I transfer words, sentences, and their content into space as a three-dimensional structure? Following the inner logic of the body is for me a sculptural question of the inner structure of a movement, a word, a sentence. The reader is not alone when reading. The read word was thought and written down by the writer. The presence of the reader is a shared presence of the writer with the reader and vice versa.

The Performance took place in the exhibition NORTH BY NORTHEAST, Deutscher Künstlerbund, Berlin / A drawing-performative dialogue that repositions the relationship between movement, space, and time through the line. Initiated by Katja Pudor and Nicole Wendel / The following works can be seen in the back and foreground of the video: Katja Pudor, “Could I possibly have been you?”, 2020, installation, different Media on Paper, 4 m x 1.55 m / Nikolaus Gansterer, FIGURING VITALITY, 2015, HD video clip, sound with voiceover / Saskia Wendland, O.T., drawing framed, 160 × 160 cm / Nicole Wendel, “Co-Rhythm”, 2020, performative drawing and video, table, and paper / Stella Geppert, “Reading Robert Morris, Notes on Sculpture”, 2016, reading drawing, charcoal on paper, 150 cm x 150 cm.