In the backyards

IN THE BACKYARDS

 

Kreuzberg, part of Berlin, is rich with backyards of all kinds.

They are influenced from the surrounding buildings, the residents and the regulations of the house owners and administrations. It is a colorful mixture from alternative to conventional, from old to new, from styled to neglected, from used and crowded to absolutely unnoticed.

Each one a cosmos of its own, hidden from the world beyond the front door.

As spaces within spaces, most importantly, these are non-negligible components of the whole.

 

Inspired from these backyard varieties Cora Schwindt and I started to explore these worlds.

We visited an incredible amount of backyards, entered and felt the atmosphere, talked with the residents.

We did research on what is happening in them.

 

An evaluation of this exploration was the starting material for...

the performance:

 

We developed short movement sequences. They were repetitious, but not set up in an order, rough fragments. They were sort of a structure where everything that happened in the backyards grew.

We were performing in four very different backyards.

For each of them we opened for one evening these private spaces to the public.

The residents were at the same time host and guest.

 

with Cora Schwindt

 

1992, backyards in Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany