A peep-show.

Ariadne and the Lamb is a work that belongs to the viewer. It is a cluster of fragments, has no beginning and no end, it is as much future  passing through the present as it is past passing through the future. At it’s present stage it reflects an internal perspective on profound transformation and on the force of circumstance that drives it. The meaning in this performance emerges from a series of actions and visual representations which intersect in two transformative events: Ariadne having woken up in the NOW and the silent sacrifice of the lamb to human desire. There is a hidden symmetry, a likeness, but also a common bewilderment between them, as they are entwined in the shared inevitability of their fait. This being the stuff of much of classic drama, the underpinning of the performance is my personal challenge to destroy an object still infused with inherited value.  

There is however no plot in the performance. Actions and imagery unfold dreamlike, drawn from the universal persistence of the imagined, the fantastic even, which I see necessary for the continuity of the self and central to the feeling of being alive in a world of individuals. The work plays with a certain randomness that is central to my work, as I think the poetry of unintended juxtapositions is part of the riches of our modern lives.

Performance as narrated knowledge. 

My platform as a performer is that of being messenger, as narrating some truth, some hidden view that must patiently unfold in the form of a testimony, detailing, quoting and inferring cause. I do not see a need for the messenger to be a moral authority. As actions flow along a timeline, the viewer is invited to slow down, to experience the transient events, the erosion of ephemeral values and to dicipher hidden connections for himself. Asserting the claims of my memory I aim to compensate the forgetfulness of our present-centered existence. I feel free to re-frame a particular truth or trauma or a repressed fear with the actions.

In the case of Ariadne and the Lamb being presented as a peep show, the viewer is denied direct access to the actions, the unmitigated “consumption” is withheld, the performance thus becomes participatory as meaning has to be assembled through peeking in at various times and from various perspectives as it evolves. To conclude the performance, as the messenger I will simply step away from the set, leaving it “airborne” in time.

Performance at Novilla Berlin, 2017. Produced by Moving Poets Berlin