Schakaranda

SCHAKARANDA

 

Schakaranda is the name of an perfume my grandmother dabbed behind her ears.

She understood giving rise to moments, making them something special, sweetening and celebrating them.

She smelled terrific.

 

Schakaranda is a magic spell. The key to a parallel existing world.

 

In this world you can flee, if uninvited reality pushes you to the wall and you can`t breath any more when it rages inside.

 

Schakaranda, the formula for bearing the seemingly unbearable.

 

Schakaranda is the story of transformation.

 

The performance:

 

The projection of a slide:

You see the structure of two over-used rags.

These rags were once part of garments.

I found them in an old wash house that was out of use for years.

The cloth, the wash house… history in each fold, each chink.

Perceivable elapsed time.

I imagine and fantasize about it.

But this is not the point.

The object itself tells of all the stages it went through.

I continue the transformation, now, after the cloth became the object of the performance.

First I filmed the cloth, then I did a slide shot from the screen. This slide I converted into a negative and had it printed.

 

The photograph became part of an exhibition.

 

The slide became projection space for the performance.

 

Following the structural development to a possible beginning I ended with organic material. I started harvesting grass and plaiting it. From these plaits I wove a carpet.

 

The grass carpet, the real object, was integrated into the projection.

I was moving inside the projection, changing between silent and deep breathing and furious jumping and crying. At the end I rolled myself into the grass carpet.

 

Grass will cover everything.

 

1999, Gefühlskompressor II, Berlin, Germany