A performance event with video projection.
Performed at Gallery PIANO NOBILE, Geneva, Switzerland, 10th and 11th
of February 2001, 11.00h to 19.00h
A video is projected onto one of the pillars of the space. It shows images
of London busses as a perpetuum mobile of steamed up windows and helpless
passengers.
The commuters appear and reappear as if caught inside the moving spaces,
and the buses heave and sigh under their load. [ view
stills ]
The rhythm of the public domain of the buses is set against a quiet rhythm
of reading and speaking of the performer.
The performer's text is the imaginary speech of Effi Briest form the book
"If you had spoken, Desdemona", by Christine Brückner.
In this book the author has given imaginary speeches to mythical and real
female figures of history, whose words have not been handed down.
Effi Briest is the wife of a high ranking German politician at the time
of Bismark, who reflects back over her failed marriage. She did not fit
into the world of her husband and was not able to realise herself.
Taking on her fate, the artist attempts to learn her speech and to perform
it within the two days of the performance, and fails, like her protagonist,
through the impossible scale of the task.
stills/video: Andrew Downs