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"Line, losing line" is a performative Audio Walk in the attempt to respond to a series of sketches by the late Clara Berger. Considering strategies to perform an archive, I am approaching the line as an architecture of memories, containing lived experiences and perspectives, materialised both in the immense body of work Clara left behind, such as within the immaterial, yet concrete after effect when encountering her work in her absence. Clara, who suffered dementia made me consider wether memory may (strive) to extend beyond the limited lifetime spent on earth, or if, perhaps it can be approached as a tissue, interfering within encounters of past, present or future, co inhabiting spaces, after having permanently moved out from who or what is considered "alive". In this context I look at ideas of auto consumption and auto creation as an integral aspect of life, death and art ♲ artist.
As initiation point for this research I selected drawings of bog bodies, made by Clara in the 80s and playground for this performative experiment is the sourounding landscape of Oldenaller, Claras home and atelier.
Endless Gratitude to Wim and Clara and Fransien.
Dedicated to my beloved Sophia.
video stills by Ester Eva Damen
DRAWINGS Clara Berger
PERFORMANCE,CONCEPT, DEVELOPMENT Toni Steffens
SOUND COMPOSITION Toni Steffens
SOUND SOURCES "enough", Brian Eno&Fred...again, Buchla concerts,Suzanne Ciani,
Free sound archive, artists in order of appearance: Hitrison, VKProduction, MATRIXXX_, Michaelvelo, fractanimal, lukabea
TEXTS Toni Steffens
DOCUMENTATION Eva Esther Damen
PRODUCTION AND COMISSION : Fransien van der Putt, Wim Berger
When a tadpole is growing into a frog, its electromagnetic field already holds the information of its legs and body shape. In the essay ‘TransMaterialities’ , Karen Barad refers to a (cruel) experiment,where the electromagnetic field of tadpoles were changed by scientists, which resulted in them growing additional limbs, eyes in different places and other bodily mutations. Following this experiment, scientists concluded that tadpole bodies do not have fixed or defined borders. They carry their suggested futures, just as our DNA, bones and cells carry our inherited pasts, eventually manifesting anew in future times to come. The space in the air, for tadpoles at least, is sensible, intelligent, loaded with information and very much subject to intervention, interaction, and, as the experiment shows, open, porous, vulnerable and corruptible. Space is a part of the process of being, likewise it is part or the extension of beings. Space is oftentimes thought as filled with unlimited potential and possibilities. Yet the tadpoles are connected to space, as space is connected to them, from material (the body of the tadpole) to immaterial (the electromagnetic field of the tadpole) and across timelines. Space is specific enough to carry planted seeds for futures, while those are not necessarily fixed. For it to become a frog in the future, space needs be strong enough to carry information and at the same time remember how a frog is created. What is a future vision is also a memory. Such operation of space could be seen as a form of a creative, spatial training. When training starts in the brain, and something new (or old) is learned, neurones craft new pathways. The brain changes. Being enters the space, and the space enters being.
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