Lamentation
Dressing in my sculptures brought me to the natural consequence of performance. Through the use of my voice, which I’ve been developing through classical training, my pieces are coming to life like never before. The unexpected nature of live performance, an event which can never be identically recreated, facilitates a magically open dialogue with a minimum amount of preconceptions between the viewer and the performer.
Lamentation is a funeral march I organized for myself at a time when my life was caught in a downward spiral. Through the performance I tried to define a low point, a place of arrival. This, I hoped, would slow down the downward current and perhaps facilitate a change of the situation. Lamentation is a celebration, an acknowledgement and burial of the struggle – a burial to enable new growth from the nourishing grave site.
The sweet flower furniture fabric of the suit and the slippers remind the viewer of cozy homes where there should be no pain or struggle.
Lamentation was conceived in 2001 and I happened to be in the last stretch of its completion on September 11th 2001 when the Twin Towers fell in New York. My first staging of this performance took place in the frame of my show STRUCTURE nine days after the disaster took place in New York. It was eerie how this death march was appropriate in the time!
