Performance in the frame of Stoffwechsel – Ökologien der Zusammenarbeit.

Aiming to connect writing and the body, Sabina Holzer is wondering which physical substances are also elementary parts of the world around us. Calcium for instance is within our bones and teeth but also found in stones, from which chalk is created.
Also Aluminium is part of our bone-, organ- and musclestructure; as a reflecting material it tells about light and darkness as human conditions of processing thoughts and touch. Connecting with the materials and their narrative while having Derrida’s
„Marx‘ Gespenster“ in the back of the mind Holzer engages in movement and space to develope a specific poetic and dedication. Within that there is the desire to investigate the possibilities of creating a situation in which a joint sensibility for space and time –
and thus for togetherness – can take effect.
Situation here should be understood as “situation of…”, i.e., without explicit reference to a subject. Rather, the reference is to something situated – seated, put, affected – and our personal movements with these circumstances. Thus this togetherness also is an engagement with presences and absences, and their interplay.

Photos: Louise Linsenbolz

Concept, space and performance: Sabina Holzer
Artistic accompaniment, light: Jack Hauser
Sound: TE -R, Sabina Holzer
Text: China Mieville

Many thanks to: Ammar Jalaly
Production: Im_flieger

Photo: Photos: Louise Linsenbolz

Photo: Sabina Holzer

SCRIPT

“I dreamed about the pit”, I mumbled. I was swaying in the rhythm of the horse. I heard the woman, and her voice calmed me. She was with me, and I was not afraid.

I dreamed about the pit, I said. I remember having said that. I’ve said it often already. I say it again and again.
I dreamed about the pit.
Although I cannot remember the dream clearly, all my memories before and after that moment – forever after, one might say – retain a necessity and heat which only can originate from that bright white, churning, corroding pit. That pit of bones. That fenced-in piece of land I was not allowed to visit yet had to seek out again and again. I’ve always assumed that it were these memories which in moments of self-absorption gave rise to an engulfing emptiness. Therefore I assume that these memories are true, even if it is unclear who experienced them.
On the other hand, I also believe that I am dreaming about another land in which the gathering of people caused a city to evolve. Another place, another word, another layer of the story than the always repeated one about the fenced-in land of the discarded. The certainty that another story is possible. Those fences are unneccesary. Others,
yes, but not those. Not like that. A certain certainty. Cognition and conscience. Only, perhaps, in order to find forgiveness oneself. Give forgiveness. A gift. To give. A present. To be present. I am sure that I always return to that land when I am drawing flowers on the wall, painting markings on the ground, scribbling on paper, and another languages appear out of the lines and curves. This peculiar bright lime city with its variations and traces, its shady houses spreading out like inkstains along its lines. All the people with manifold trades, whose boundaries extend towards the land I will eventually visit in order to count those who are my scattered fellows, and so my task. Visiting their fringe areas, their outskirts, following a certain purpose, searching for the message left for me, and where I am counting. And there is so much to write, a diaspora I’m trying to grasp. The aftereffects of war and commerce. Enumerating everything, calculating, in as many places as there are places and fenced-in fields, in cities one would like to call
invisible. In this part of the story all that can only be preface, a wordless hint, wordless pointing out. It is necessary to apply certain functions. I can accomplish that without any trace of disobedience. However keep the space of listening open for other voices make other worlds become visible. It is not my own texture I am refering here to and
to which I finally respond, with my own words and lines; it was theirs, the message which had to be delivered. Now it is my texture, too. Composed with unorthodox precision and inserted at the beginning of this story, I retyped it many times on the noise-reduced keyboard with its traipsing, pecking bird sounds. I’m now writing it again by hand:

WE THE SAVED ASK YOU SLOWLY SHOW US YOUR LIGHT AND LEAD US FROM STAR TO STAR SLOW IN STEP LET US LEARN TO LIVE AGAIN.

TRACES OF THE WRITING TOGETHER

                                  

Photos: Sabina Holzer