L'animoteur 8 + 9 — selfie or I am donkey and cacti
performance
* from the script *
background and contents
Since 2015 I have been dealing in performances, interventions and image work with the donkey. In these projects I look into the blurring-lines between human and animal and other beings. The titles of these works are referring to Derrida’s speech/discourse «l’animal que donc je suis» («Das Tier, das ich also bin», «The Animal That Therefore I Am»). [1] In this speech Derrida uses the portmanteau word «l’animot»: The violence that is done to the animal begins with the pseudo-concept «the animal», this word used in the singular, as if all animals, from earthworms to chimpanzees, formed a homogeneous whole, to which «man» was radically opposed. As if in an answer to this violence Derrida would use this portmanteau-word «l'animot». It is said that the french philosopher and writer Hélène Cixous had been using «L’animot» for the first time in 1976. This word which can’t be translated, this neologisme is for Cixous a word animal. [2] I use Jacques Derrida’s and Hélène Cixous’ portemanteau-word in the title «L’animoteur …». The title is a portemanteau-word again. It stands for the climate that is created in the milieu of a (performative) situation and at the same time constantly redirects it: L’âne is the french word for donkey. In these performances and installations I open a somatic knowledge field about the donkey with speech, movement-gestures and action. The donkey is not a metaphor, the donkey is a laughing one with big ears, and as such, he is not naturalistically in his flesh present, he is a redirective thinker.
L’animateur is the french word for a person who works as an animator in social-cultural contextes and also as a creator of animated films. Last but not least in ’l’animoteur’ is also the word moteur which is the french word for motor. The performative situation assumes the function of an animator and as such is a motor for the climate in its milieu. Through my curiosity on the subject of the donkey I get in touch with people. I find out and collet facts and hear their stories thus learning more about the different eco-nomical-logical and cultural values of donkeys in different world regions: In 2018 I did the performance and intervention «L’animoteur 5 + 6 — selfie or I am donkey» at Digital Ecologies 2018, Fold I, 2018. Operaismo Naturale: Ecology of the Event in Plovdiv Bulgaria. I started with a performance in the Ancient Bath, a historical place from the Ottoman period, followed by an intervention in public space, where I got in contact with passers-by, asking them questions about their relationship to donkeys. If they allowed it, a selfie was made with them.
The latest encounters with donkeys and a resulting performance had happened in December 2018 in Argentina: Up North, in La Puna, in the Andes between 2'500 and 4'000 m I had not only met a lot of half wild donkeys but also cacti and aborigen [3] people, who live in this region. I interviewed two people living in pueblos, asking them about the relationship between humans and donkeys in their environment. Spanish speaking friends* had helped me to transcribe the interviews in Spanish.
These experiences and other facts and stories, which I had picked up have merged into this new performance/intervention in Plovdiv. I extend Derrida's «The animal that I am» to «The plant that I am» from the donkey to the cacti: I become a something with pointed ears and a prickly thing and more ... The donkey animal and the cacti plant are resistant in character, they need little resources and can survive in dry and stony terrain, are fit to move and withstand in these extreme conditions. Donkey and cacti are oblique in the landscape and could be seen as ecological beings referring to the queer.
Whether and how I can stand up for the queer in and between people, animals, other beings and plants is as open as what will happen in the performance/intervention in Plovdiv. I will follow a script template with text. Both depend on the environment and its context in Plovdiv.
notes
[1] refers to Jacques Derrida's 10-hour speech in 1997 on the autobiographical animal, transcribed retrospectively.
[2] Notes from the supplement of the publishers (p. 62) «Hélène Cixous. Gespräch mit dem Esel. Blind schreiben.» with two supplements. Published by Esther Hutfless & Elisabeth Schäfer in German, Zaglossus e. U., Wien 2017.
[3] The people living in the pueblos in the region of Puna call themselves ‚aborigen’.
script scenario L'animoteur 8
performative intervention, planned for the opening of the exhibition at Antic Bath, not realised
script scenario L'animoteur 9
performance at symposium (realisedt)
description my work and its background on website http://digital-ecologies.arttoday.org