Beckett Walk VI — another ghost dance
performance-ritual with collective celebration
text excerpt by Sabine Gebhardt Fink in exchange with Andrea Saemann and Dorothea Rust (translated by Dorothea Rust)
Fäden Überkreuzen! (Crossing Threads!)
Reflections on the collective performance event of the «Doce en Diciembre» group at Kasko Basel in October (vernissage 7.10.21, performances 15./16.10.21).
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The highlight and conclusion of the event was the ghost dance «Another ghost dance» by Dorothea Rust. This was based on an aesthetic political movement in South America since the 1970s, in which own traditions were reinvented in an activist sense and European inscriptions were 'eaten up'. This would become clear in Anthropophagismo at the 24th Sao Paulo Biennial (Cf. Sabeth Buchmann, Denken gegen das Denken. Berlin 2007; Camila Maroja, Framing Latin American Art, Duke University Press 2015 ). Dorothea Rust used objects from her work «L'animoteur» and sound material by Barbara Naegelin. Rust initiated and choreographed the entire process. She acted as process developer and master of ceremonies for this ghost dance. «Another ghost dance» also refers to the ghost monologue by Jacques Derrida from the film «Ghost Dance» by Ken McMullen (1983) and 'to the many ghosts that haunt us all every day' as the artist puts it. Ritual and spiritual practices are still lived in times of crisis in other cultures, but in our society they have moved further away. «Another ghost dance» is designed as a collective experience. All Doce En Diciembre participants brought their personal concerns and actions into the ghost dance based on interviews. Gisela Hochuli, for example, used a wand to animate a ghostly garment she had specially created, Jazmín Saidman wove her chosen music between those present via smartphone, and Paola Junqueira recalled the death of her father, or rather the tears incorporated in her own feelings, in a brief intensive intervention. Chris Regn and Andrea Saemann linked the question of political action with queer poetic lyrics in a wonderful song. Here is a verse from the script:
Wirklich wahr die Frau Holle
Klar, klar mit der Wolle
Unterm Brunnen über Welt
Schnee als Regen fällt
Schüttel shuttle trans dance
Schüttel shuttle trans dance
In addition, Barbara Naegelin's musical performance, which eventually became more and more intense, and the increasingly dense swirling dance of the Doce participants and the audience condensed the situation into a collective vortex.