BBB Johannes Deimling
ART Habens
Since more than 20 years I am working with the concept of cycles or series in my performative art practise.‘ What’ s in my head’,‘ Blanc’,‘ leaking memories’,‘ Around the World’ and‘ a rolling stone gathers no moss’ are just a few titles of cycles in which I include several performative collages. The given titles are often metaphors for topics or themes which I cannot specify or extract in one art work. They are more like fields or landscapes on which I need to look from different perspectives in order to grasp their holistic meaning and potential. In several performances I try to shape this territory. This work is highly process based. Even though each piece of a cycle is standing for itself, each piece is transporting the experience of the performance before.“ a rolling stone gathers no moss” is a new cycle of visual performances which I have started in 2013 and have presented over 11 performances since then. In this cycle of performances I focus metaphorically on motion and use very much the language of poetry to create these visual pieces. Following the fact that our whole life is based on motion as a consequence of a variety forms of repetition( e. g. breathing), I try to create performative statements talking about the coexistence of motion and its end. The English proverb“ a rolling stone gathers no moss” can have both a positive or a negative acceptation, on one hand being in a constant state of movement means to keep on evolving, changing without letting time impose its traces, on the other to be a perpetual wanderer implies do not have the capacity to settle down some necessary roots.
Simple wooden chairs, a metaphor for the English proverb, are appearing in all of the performances within the cycle in various forms( piled up on a heap, standing in line or circle, …) and formally creating a repetitive form through the whole cycle. Other elements and materials are changing according to the stage of the research and process of the cycle. There is a connection
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