Anna VII — una Lección de Español

* performance panels *

background of the performance series «Anna ...»

This performance is another version, in the series, in which I approach the cosmos and the character of my mother Anna. It is also the transformation of a forgotten past, which I bring into the now, and with which a new, challenging and possibly irritating situation is created. With each new version I expand the material. This time the blindfold is the pivot point to the versions «Anna I-VI». The performance is based on the previous versions, with the script 'coloured' by the stay in Concepción and Lota.

process of the performance

In the days before the performance, I collect messages, instructions and names on signs, prohibition boards, transport buses and from graffiti in public spaces. I write them on white sheets of paper and learn the fifty to sixty terms by heart: «47 ANOS DE LUCHAR MIR ... ACCESO SOLO RESIDENTES ... COOPERE CON EL ASEO ... CUIDE LOS FLORES ... DOBLE VIA ... EVACUACION PROFUNDA ... LAS GALAXIAS ... FUERA DE SERVICE ... PELIGRO CAIDA DE MATERIALES ... GAVIOTAS ... PELIGRO PENDIENTE FUERTE ... PELIGRO SALIDA DE AUTOS ... NO BOTAR BASURA ... PULSE EL BUTTON PARA CRUZAR ... TI AMO NASNOO ...»

Zu Beginn der Performance verbinde ich meine Augen. Obwohl ich nicht fliessend Spanisch spreche, bitte ich die Zuschauer:innen auf Spanisch, mir bei der Orientierung zu helfen. Meine stockende Verständigung und die Orientierung in einem mir in vielerlei Hinsicht nicht vertrauten Raum werden zu den Grundelementen dieser Performance.

Beforehand, I have determined a performance course. I describe to the audience where I want to go and try to find the place with their help. At first there is a lot of difficulty in communicating, the audience does not answer my questions. I have to ask them very loudly, clearly and insistently to help me. The course leads me first from the gallery space into the garden. I get hold of two long roof laths from a dark corner. I use them as 'feelers' to scan the garden and as a yardstick to measure my body: they are pushed across the floor, balanced on one finger, placed on my back, arms, head and held against my buttocks. Not only do I ask the audience questions about the direction I want to take and the place where I actually am. I also ask them, as I struggle with the Spanish language, to help me out with the missing words. In a metal cupboard in the garden I have deposited sheets of paper with texts on them. Each paper is connected to a place, a corner on the further route: either the inscriptions on the papers are identical to those on the path or arbitrary connections are made through my claims. I hold up the lettered papers one by one and recite from memory from the remembed text. I ask the audience to stick each paper to my body with tape. I become a densely covered 'leaf tree', so I walk out of the garden onto the street, along the pavement, across a busy road to a nearby park where there are very large old trees.

I climb a tree and then return from there to the gallery space where the performance parcours began. Now I play «Shake your Hips» from the laptop, a little-known song by the Rolling Stones from their CD «Exile on Main Street», and move my lips and body to it while the inscribed "sheets of paper" fall off me of their own accord or I tear them off until there is not a single one left sticking to me.

script   ...  vocabulario 1  ...  vocabulario 2