Anna IV — im Unterrichtszimmer

* from the script and some of the 25 first names of the students which I memorised for the performance *

background of the performance series «Anna ...»

I use the same scenario as for «Anna III» at the Migma Performancetagen in Lucerne.

process of the performance

This time the audience are the students of the Institute of Architecture at the HSLU Horw. I have to memorise 25 first names and the performance takes place in daylight. It begins in a classroom and moves via the staircase to the outside space.

I place myself in front of the blackboard in the classroom and look at the students sitting on chairs at the desks. I take off my shoes, look at the students again and then blindfold myself. Since I can't see anything from now on, I invite them to navigate me. I put 4 sawn-off legs of a wooden table on a classroom-table and on the floor outside the classroom in the corridor as kind of coordinates. The students help navigate, such as: « ... a little more to the right, to the left, watch out for doors, walls ...», etc. In the corridor I move in leather mountain boots, the leather squeaks. Here, too, I call out names from memory. I hold a stack of sheets of paper in my hands, on which the students have written their names in advance; one name on each sheet. Now I distribute the sheets again and ask those present to stick them to my body with painter's tape up to the last sheet. They now 'hang' on me like fish scales. Afterwards we go outside on a parcours: we climb down a staircase, through a glass door and over more stairs we reach an open meadow. In the middle of the meadow I make several twisting movements and lose my orientation. With the students' navigational help, I climb onto a picnic table and take poses, then ask them to accompany me back into the building: Up the stairs, along the building, up the stairs again back into the corridor near our starting point. At first my movements are jerky and twitchy then they become bigger and more expansive, despite the blindfold. I risk bumping into metal cupboards, stair railings in the narrow corridor, which actually happens. The students have to make way again and again. The sheets of paper rustle and rustle. Here I call out, «now would be the time to grab a name again, be it the old one or a new one». The sheets of paper are 'torn' from my body, it pulls and plucks at me. I take off the blindfold, look around, see the white sheets in the hands of the students and scattered on the floor, I bow ...

script