Beckett Walk VI — another ghost dance

* from the script *

«Beckett Walk ...» is series of works with performances, interventions, videos and installations.

«Beckett Walk» in the title refers to many things: to a man of letters and his still current texts - Samuel Beckett -, to a work that belongs to the canon of art history - Bruce Nauman's video work «Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) 1968» - to the latent risk of losing balance, of losing face, to landscape and our relati­onship to nature and our relati­onship as a whole to life in all its strati­fi­cations.

initial situation

Beckett Walk VI - another ghost dance is part of a series of ghost dances I started in 2021. It is the second ghost dance in this series. It was preceded by interviews I conducted with the participants of the project DOCE EN DICIEMBRE, Basel edition. I asked them about their relationship to ghosts: whether they believe in ghosts, who their ghosts are, what they want from their ghosts and more ...
An iron column in the middle of the exhibition space acted as a focal point. Pictures and objects from my work series «L'animoteur ...» were temporarily attached to it with magnets. The whole sequence of the performance was choreographed. I was the process developer and master of ceremonies of 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 surround us all every day. 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 participants of DOCE EN DICIEMBRE brought their personal concerns and actions into the ghost dance based on the interviews conducted with them.
Barbara Nägelin developed a 22-minute soundscape for this ghost dance, which she was subsequently able to improvisationally extend to the 40-minute performance.    

script