L'animoteur 14 — donkey stor(i)es

intervention and ritual in public space in Płocku Poland

* images from the script *

background information on the series «L'animoteur 1 bis 12»

The performance series goes back to an image scene that I realised in 2012 in the ATACAMA desert, the driest desert on earth. It shows a dead animal body (donkey) lying on its side and a human body lying on its stomach with its head turned towards the animal's head. This resulted in the kinetic image objects «L’animoteur 1», «L’animoteur 4», «L’animoteur 12»: the image rotates around its own axis, either driven by hand or by a motor, the contours blurring into a flickering something.

In 2015, in the first performance «L’animoteur 2», in an exhibition space, I talked about the donkey, its physical characteristics, its cultural status (it is generally considered stubborn) and, above all, its hidden qualities. A radio journalist present was inspired to investigate stories and relationships with the donkey around the world. This resulted in the 6-hour radio program «Der älteste Kleintransporter der Welt (The oldest van in the world)», for SFR2 (Swiss Radio 2), which in turn inspired me to do further researches. I developed the performance «L’animoteur 3» for the 'International Performance Art Festival KIPAF' in India.

«L’animoteur 5 + 6» took place in 2018 at an art event in Plovdiv, Bulgaria as an intervention in a historical exhibition space and in a shopping street in Plovdiv, and its further development with «L’animoteur 8 + 9» in 2019, also in Plovdiv.

In 2018, I met semi-wild, live donkeys and people who told me about their relationship with these donkeys in the north of Argentina, in the Andes, between 2,500 and 4,000 metres above sea level. This resulted in the performance «L’animoteur 7» in Buenos Aires, performed in the garden of an art space. In 2018, the performances «L’animoteur 10 + 11» itook place in Bad Dürkheim in an institution for people with disabilities and in Heidelberg in the Prinzhorn Collection (Clinic for General Psychiatry) as part of an interdisciplinary exhibition project on 'Outsider Art'.

In the meantime, I have learnt that 'with the donkey' I can come into contact with people from different scenes. They can tell stories about their encounters with donkeys or about their valuations and ideas about the donkeys. I continue to focus on the donkey and its value significance for societies in our time. I see them as a compass for societies, because donkeys are under a lot of

performance intervention in public space, in front of the Muzeum Mazowieckie w Płocku

The script is based on the lecture performance of «L'animoteur 13 — was bisher geschehen ist (what has happened until now)», which I realized in 2023 for «Spot On. Fachtagung zur Kunstpraxis in der Lehrer:innenbildung (symposium on art practice in teacher training)» in Dresden Germany.
In the performance in Płocku I have spoken in English. All text panels were translated into Polish (with www.deepl.ch) and were laid out in a circle during the performance so that the audience could (re)read the texts if they didn't understand them in English. 

choreography script   ...   text script english   ...   text script polish

report by Dorothea Schürch

performance intervention in Plocku «L’animoteur 14 – donkey stor(i)es»

Dorothea Rust's mashup of lecture, workshop and performance comes to its provisional end in an exuberant karaoke chorus. Donkies of all countries unite: «we are the champions»! The audience is enchanted, everyone sings along, in the pedestrian zone of Plock time stops for a moment.
At this point, it was clear to everyone in the audience why any form of donkey knowledge is of utmost importance: from herds without leaders, from being stubborn as stigma and the possibility of stigma reversal, as performative coming out, from the noblesse of «willing to serve with reserve» to motionlessness as hiding place, because what moves reveals itself as prey. Dorothea Rust spread out the donkey universe as a parallel world to the performance cosmos. Donkey knowledge is performance knowledge. For each chapter of the multi-part lecture, of which unfortunately not all could be opened, so extensive are they, workshop-like instructions were added. Donkey exercises that wanted to be tried. The «Eeehoou» was rehearsed in all languages and thus also the inhaling speech. Dorothea’s costume shows signs of her transformation into a gray animal. The tattoo-like stripes on her legs are painted after the model of the Somali donkeys, not too thickly applied, but still clear signs of the embodiment of her donkey performance knowledge, which she understands excellently to pass on, to transfer. That’s her mission — very much accomplished!