Performance, 12.05.11, 25min

no visual or audio-documentation, no audience

I was sitting with crossed legs in the middle of the floor of l'hopital, my hair covering the face, the head slightly bended. I was repeating "You know you're right", inspired by the last recorded song by Nirvana in 1994. I moved rhythmically back and forth. I wanted to get into a trance, induced by voice and movement. I wanted to reach that state of the unknown, the loss of the self, gaining knowledge about my unconscious, and I also wanted to act out pain.

But I've chosen a sentence, taken out from a song, that is a true anti-position, that bases on a strong I against the rest of the world, and gets its force from the hate towards that other, caused by an impossible relation, a split. I wanted to direct the song-line to people that I don't like, mentally.

My voice was leading me from the start, where I initially tried to imitate Kurt Cobain's melody. I gave up soon the more melodic curves in the refrain, also to enter a more automatic repetitive state. This states kept on coming and passing away. As soon as the awareness returns, they are gone. The voice became stronger, it filled the space. I cannot tell anything clear about this (...). Swallowing interrupts the flow, then I always had to start new. Wanted also to try out different qualities of the voice, coming from the chest, or the belly.

The plan was to perform it for one hour. My voice was getting weaker, the throat started to scratch, and my energy was gone after 20 minutes. Who is alright? And why? Everybody has the right to feel right sometimes. My enemy has disappeared. In my legs started a tingling. I stopped after 25min.

The fact, that there was no audience maybe made it on one hand easier, but on the other more difficult. I start to understand better the intertwining relationship of audience and performer: without audience less energy, no communication, no unforeseen encounters. Unless I could enter that trance state in its depth. By saying "You know you're right", I communicate, even if it's cynical and full of hate. I need a You, many You's to tell this (and I don't want to address it to myself on this moment). I realize now also that mixing up the two directions, one message towards an outside, and one operating towards inside, is confusing. This is the knowledge that I gained through the performance, I guess.

I call this a performance, because it is a specific action in a framed time and space. And it's also a paradox, because it seeks a state of loosing awareness in a frame of higher awareness, but that's how states of trance have been worked on since the beginnings. And at the end: why trance? To enter an unknown state, to broaden my senses for conscious and unconscious states. But it was not about the trance itself, it was more about to perform it, in "doing so", and seeing what happens.