Endings happen to me
The sky is blazing, the tarmac, the walls of this city where incessantly something is being painted, the stucco maintained meticulously. Lethargic people are lying on the seating facilities of MuseumsQuartier, amidst kitsch that is hardly conspicuous with all the molten thoughts and brewed-down desires. The spittle is steaming in our oral cavities. Spit.
I’m early. Several people are standing around in front of the studios, there’s more shade here, opposite the elevator to Libelle, where something is always being stacked away or loaded up, always something gastronomical is happening. I talk briefly with Hyo Lee, who is about to moderate the artist talk, then we ascend the stairs. Visitors trickle into the discussion. Hyo delineates the conceptual arc of the festival, asks, opens up the discourse for what is to come.
The first show of the evening: Elsewhere by Nina Sandino. However, when we enter the room she is still fully there, welcoming us, nodding, smiling, kneeling in front of a hanging textile work. All kinds of clothing, underpants, skirts, several rags, cut-up shirts and detached collars, handkerchiefs, labels are sewn onto this large sheet. “There’s an emotional support object that you can sit with”, she says. We take a seat. An inkling of “elsewhere” shows in indigo blue hands, in the spinning projection on the floor, in Sandino herself who gently moves towards something outside this room. Later, the upgrading of the costume by chaps, a jacket consisting entirely of textile fringes, and a crocheted mask. The sounds of crackling fire, as if Sandino had just sprung from this noise. Who would have thought that a crocheted mask could leave such an impression on me? Of the kind where I cannot look away because it does not so much frighten but rather electrify me. Elsewhere presents itself from blue to red to pink.
During the break I’m having a look at Claire Lefèvre’s installation Mini Meltdown. This is where the artist talk took place, in front of the large textile pictures by Sophie Utikal, only without the sound by Zosia Hołubowska that now fills the room. In one corner there are two small tables, nail polish on one of them, tattoo stickers on the other. I pick a bird, a tattoo swallow. Hanna Fasching, taking photographs the third day in a row, selects a unicorn. We squat next to the table, Claire takes a wet sponge to dab the coated adhesive foil onto neck and wrist, peels it off carefully. Our tattoos glisten. A few metres away, other visitors lie on large beanbags, talk with each other, leaf through books: The Fagotts And Their Friends Between Revolutions, On Cuddling: Loved To Death In The Racial Embrace, Everything Is Erotic Therefore Everything Is Exhausting etc. Waiting for Chantal.
Veza Fernández in the White Cube. Two music stands, a loop machine. Veza is a phenomenon, a lesbian, a slumbering venus in neon-green tights and white blazer. Clip-on strands. Chantal.
The first thing I consciously hear: “Disorder. But how to keep an order.” The work’s backbone is the indescribably dense text, a text composition that took one and a half years to complete. “I NEED SOME PERSPECTIVE”, a bird screeches into the microphone, reverberating in the reiterations of the loop machine, mirroring the many-layered points of entry Veza has already laid out in the structure of the piece and even before in the text.
Then, silence. “I breathe against the glass”, says Chantal, the anatomical wax sculpture from the 17th century. The sole of a boot is squeaking across the white dance floor for what feels like an eternity.
Veza and synchronicity, fathoming the possibility of the lesbian body and what it could be, the whispered, yelled, dissected, narrating body, the body asking after touch, “refusing to be unaddressed”. Gorgeous. Always.
In the aisle, Denise Kottlett announces loudly – so that everyone may hear it – that the break will be short. Smoking OR toilet! I decide for both, and even find some extra time to ingest some of the sophisticated snacks by Markus Gebhardt & Beta M. Alexander. Below, it is a bit cooler at last. Chantal pervades our conversations. Denise shouts that she meant it when she said short. We extinguish our cigarettes.
Next is not just the last show of the evening, it is The Last Show Before We Die. Right at the beginning, Ell Potter and Mary Higgins point out what it is about: they were a couple, now are best friends, live together, and moreover collaborate with each other (HOTTER Projects). And actually that’s too much. Actually, the whole show is too much: glitter cannons, oral hygiene and spitting, mop-slippers, mandarins, a bit of audience participation, dance and singing acts (about the cervix disruption at birth), and all that with probably every single light effect the small room can offer. A confession of love for the big and small farewells in life. For isolated leaves of toilet paper and the grandfather’s last “goodbye”. For separations and the potential they carry (e. g., moving into the mountains to spend the days doing pottery). It is theatrical and sentimental, campy, but first of all very, very good. I’m laughing a lot, and in the last scene I have to cry with emotion.
Although the show is over we are luckily not dead. On the contrary, we feel rather alive. Not least because of the well-curated evening.
We are sitting on the ground in the passage, Ines Bacher shoots a few last photos for the documentary. Moreover, Denice Bourbon is suddenly there, that’s how it goes. We are reflected in the ceiling. Claire Lefèvre asks Rey Molina Joichl whether they are done with their work now. Not quite – artist care has another rhythm than audience care. Driving artists to the airport, last social media post, whatever has to be done.
I have to think of a sentence Potter before said on the stage: “I am bad at endings, endings happen to me.”
Ari Ban is an illustrator, author and costumer, and currently is studying language arts (creative writing) at the University of Applied Arts. His main focus is on researching queer history, especially via studying biographies and collecting their intimate details. This shift of attention to relational content is the basis for Ari’s work with drawing and text.