Broken Heart (2020)4h
Autobiografische performance waarin de geïndoctrineerde gehersenspoelde en getraumatiseerde persoon een innerlijke zoektocht maakt en verstrikt raakt in de netten van zijn geheugen die zich steeds strakker om hem heen trekken. Dit spinnenweb wordt zijn eigen gevangenis. Totdat hij de netten gaat visualiseren. Hij krijgt inzicht in het labyrinth. Door dit inzicht kan hij zijn gebroken hart helen en ruimte gaan geven om weer vrij te kunnen ademen. Hij voert daarbij nieuwe harten aan die hij letterlijk opent, om ze te reinigen van giffen als angst en haat. Zijn eigen hart kan hij hierdoor voor het eerst voelen en hij ziet voor het eerst wie hij is: Een man. Zijn gebroken hart kan weer helen en de nieuwe harten worden deel van zijn ziel. Zijn geslachtsdeel en hart hebben geen verband meer nodig. Het hart is ontgift en zijn ziel kan gaan leven. Zijn authentieke leven kan geboren worden. Door de touwen los te laten, krijgt de ziel vleugels opdat de mogelijkheid kan ontstaan om de toekomst in vrijheid tegemoet te treden.
Is identity a place we enter, or that of simply being?
We do not operate in a vacuum. Our history, environment, context and cultural background feed into the work we produce, when it is creative by nature. It is the same for our identities. They exist in our corporeality and mind structures. They consist of the same matter of our dreams, where everything coexists in the very instant of its disappearance.
But we should never forget that our lives are ruled by time’s inevitable, relentless passage. Always we have less of it than we had a moment ago. How do we move through time? How does time move through us? What is its effect on our actions and our bodies? What is its impact on the audience? We ask them to spend their time with us. What allows them to feel that it was worth surrendering a portion of their lives to the experience of our work?
We can think of time as a tool, and our task is to more consciously use time in performance. The element of time becomes apparent through material and physical processes. But how often do we ignore or resist its impact? What happens when we actually allow those processes to unfold over the real time that they need? What occurs when we actively apply different time frames to our actions? How might we transform our own or other people’s sense of time?
broken heart
We perform our identities, differences and diversities every day through how we present ourselves publicly, and how we engage with each other is often based on our assumptions about others’ potential identities. At times we shift between presentations of ourselves that we are actively constructing, to other more unconscious manifestations of ourselves. However, a fluidity emerges as we move between diverse contexts and encounter a variety of people and communities. In this way, our changing expressions of our identities also recuperate dissent for equality, which is not only a crucial political issue but a profoundly philosophical dilemma.
And yet, as artists, it is crucial that we remain fully present, and as fully aware as we can possibly be of every nuance of who and what and how we are at this very moment in time. To the degree that we are conscious of who we are – what we are feeling, to what we are paying attention, what choices we are making, our fears, our hopes, our dreams – will allow us to make use of all these elements in the creation of our art.
