Der Vogel kann nicht schlafen 1
'the bird can't sleep 1' — performative scenic score
* from the score *
announcement
Gestures of standstill produce (evoke) body-full-less power that every body can appropriate.
Sound Gestures Sonic.
Musicians and performance artists fall into movements that go nowhere.
Intensity. Micro-movement, each repetition a fall into deceleration.
Gesten des Stillstandes produ(evo)zieren körper-volle-lose Macht, die sich jeder Körper aneignen kann.
Sound Gesten Klang.
Musiker*innen und Performance-Künstlerin verfallen Beweungen, die nirgendwohin gehen.
Intensität. Mikrobewegung, jede Wiederholung ein Fall in die Verzögerung.
initital situation
In Lockdown, in March 2020, I was in the forest a lot. Once I saw the bright green silhouette of a bird sprayed on a tree. Flashy green, small, it looked, fragile, because I was far away, but it was glowing. A message? In any case, the bird burned itself into me and triggered an initial ignition:
«.. ramble through the forest ... a bird, sprayed in poison-green paint on a tree trunk, leaps into my retina ... then the sentence DER VOGEL KANN NICHT (MEHR) SCHLAFEN (the bird can't sleep any more), which I had written a long time ago, comes into my hands ... from then on I turn to dissimilar things like trees ... together we practise otherness in being close to each other ... exchange genetic information via skin and tree bark ... together we draw on the fictional to describe the real ...»
Whether this score and the passages of poetry woven into the musical-gestural episodes have anything to do with the pandemic, I don't know. Once a piece of paper flew to me on which I had written THE BIRD CAN NO LONGER SLEEP.
I now have a photo of this tree with the silhouette of a small green bird. A text has emerged along with the question of how to write a gestural composition/score. Gestures in improvisation that have to start somewhere but go nowhere, intensity, micro-movements. Each repetition a fall into delay, into stasis. The gestures are simple, anyone can adopt them. Gestures and sound lapse into each other, eventually leading nowhere and fading into the ether.
The score «Der Vogel kann nicht schlafen 1» with performance for 3 musicians and one performer is part of a series with further visual works, installations and texts:
* Der Vogel kann nicht schlafen 2, an unfinished installation with different materials
* Der Vogel kann nicht schlafen 3, two visual works