Time melting
On the way to Gootopia. Containers with yellowish content line the corridors. Where once splendid grey horses flooded the sewers with their urine, cooks are now filling dozens of black, coarse-looking hardware-store buckets with ingredients of varying degrees of viscosity. New alchemists.
Stagehands hustle and bustle about. Painting work. Nothing seems to be in its final shape or form. The black floor of the stage and audience area is structured by way of low, meandering dams that form routes or headlands. And again there are lots of large black buckets full of viscous, bubbly liquids, like marshy pools. A pale, naked figure on all fours with knee pads leaves a trail of slime, its complexity increasing. More figures populate the headlands at various points to start engaging with the content of the vats in a strange manner. Slime of surprising density and elasticity, forming air bubbles with each movement, takes on a sinister life of its own through the performers’ interaction with it. It covers naked bodies, blankets them like shrouds, wraps them in cocoons, holds them tight in amniotic sacs, forms skins and strands, blurs the contours, makes people appear to melt away or dissolve under the sparse stage lights. Some of the figures shed their skin. Distorted voices can be heard from the auditorium, where a microphone is at the performers’ disposal, which they take turns to integrate in their grueling work. Gravity and the deceptive ground tug at the actors, forcing them into minimal movements. Memories of surreal paintings of the Viennese School of Fantastic Realism or Salvador Dalí emerge. Melting clocks… Time seems to melt as well, to expand and compress. We have been experiencing a waking dream for more than 30 minutes, further stimulated by pulsating music. Transformations. Metamorphoses. Melting sculptures made up of one or more people.
A turning point. Reality takes hold. Stage directions, excuses, costumes are in the washing machine, explanations that do not reach the dreaming writer. Then the actors, perpetually in motion to avoid getting cold under the mucus layers, gather on a headland to form an agglomeration. A grotesque choreography unfolds in a deceptive silence, broken by the panting of exhausted humans and the soft whirring of technical devices. Even more mucus is distributed, mixed with water and air. This primordial soup condenses into landscapes and star nebulae, forms bubbles, pulls the bodies in, which combine to form flexible chains, structures and lumps. A star cluster calves. When did the music come back on again? The confused author of these lines cannot remember, his scribbled notes become incoherent as well, lost in associations and quotes from horror films. Memories, believed to have been lost, of his own performative excesses with hectoliters of paint and slime made from potato starch emerge. Tragicomic accidents on slippery surfaces, hypothermia, poisonings. The repressed always returns in the city of Sigmund Freud. Nevertheless, I am generally inclined to take a dip in this primordial slime. Despite the massive prevalent darkness, the performance paradoxically radiates warmth. But the train back to the provinces serves as a ridiculous excuse for me. The strange microcosm begins to transform. The actors condense the slime and gather it up again with all kinds of devices, filling the buckets with it. The slime seems to be retreating into the containers, clearing the stage, pausing for a moment to discharge its true energy in two final solos. A creature appears, utters wild, primeval sounds under a thick layer of slime. Wrestles with the slime it seems to be secreting itself. Pulls a being from itself, out of itself, creates additional organs for itself. Disappears among the audience after the act of creation. Another person appears and is sucked up by a puddle of slime. Becomes a primeval sea dweller. Dives and breathes through a hose, making low gurgling noises. Speaks in strange sounds from an ostensibly great depth. Rises, the hose covered in primordial soup. Nature overgrows the artifacts of civilisation. Or a failed symbiosis, as in the horror film The Fly by David Cronenberg, when the test subject mistakenly amalgamates with machine parts? The performer too loses track of things. Darts aimlessly about and finally find his position for the final image. Fantastic – in more ways than one!
Dr. Didi Bruckmayr, performance artist, musician, university lecturer, boxing coach