About nothing

ABOUT NOTHING

 

Always, when I am moving continuously, my thoughts start flowing.

Running, swimming, riding my bicycle, cleaning and ironing. Daily actions, movements, which need little attention to do them.

 

Inspired from this knowledge I decided to go beyond using it for a performance.

 

I got caught by laundry.

 

Always I had a weakness for material, structures and the dealing with it.

 

The process of cleaning, washing, hanging up and smoothening.

The smells which arise.

The touching and holding.

The order of the things.

 

This sensual perception of the cleaning processes of the shells, which cover, protect and adorn our first shell, the skin, bring up memories.

 

Washday at my grandmother`s, once a week, piles of clothes laying on the floor. Steam in the washhouse. The smell of soap muck. Every week a very important happening.

 

My mother ironing. Next to her a baker full of clothes. Most of the time she was listening to radio classic. The fresh smell of just washed clothes, which became stronger through through the heat of the iron. was in the air.

 

Ironing was a sacred ritual. Calmness and well-being spread out.

 

Looking at the ironing of clothes from the outside it seems to be totally unnecessary. It only conduces our esthetically sensation.

 

To iron for a long time leads to states similar like in meditation. It is work and rest at the same time. The housewife`s small escape.

 

Beckett`s texts about nothing meet the act of ironing.

 

He speaks about the searching, the longing, the fears and the never ending, for ever repeating. Wonderfully he draws poetical pictures of inner landscapes, how we remain again and again, how we are ruthlessly exposed, not knowing, how to move on, harassment, helping each other, not giving up and a possible exit: Or we walked hand in hand, without words, drowned in our own worlds, each one in its own ones, with into each other forgotten hands.

 

It was this sentence , at the end of the first text, which drew me in, which addicted me to his words.

 

The search in the nothingness for what there is.

 

Apparently hopelessly pictures and fragments of thoughts are strung together.

 

Words, coming out of the nothing, filling the ground of being.

 

Nothing, feeding itself in its borderless freedom.

 

It is the negation of being and at the same time its biggest recommendation.

 

Nothing….and I, what ever I am.

I…human being, woman, mother….I.

 

The one who gives birth and warmth , who hounds, abrades, aligns, destroys,  loves and searches, always bound to the tradition of steadily rearranging rituals, within the nothingness of civilization.

 

I learned the whole text by heart while I was ironing.

I abraded and aligned. I had the words and sentences fall through me.

All over again.

 

Two realities met.

The reality of the woman and the reality of the text.

 

The performance:

 

I recited the Text.

I spread out each word and each sentence .

As I did with the clothes.

The audience was invited to bring me their clothes.

I abraded both.

 

2002, Kunstraum Offenbach, Germany