OPEN SITUATION - PRAGUE

23.6.2007 / 10:00 - 22:00 /

near the statue on the Wenceslas Square
(during a day of trade unions demonstration)
Tomáš Ruller (CZ) & Habib Kheradyar (USA),
Alastair Mac Lennan (GB), János Szirtes (HU),
Jacques Van Poppel (NL), Roi Vaara (SF), Pio Troski (PL)
invited by Tomas Ruller, these artists have prepared for the PQ a twelvehour sitespecific jam session in action.

Based on an idea by Martin Buber:
“All rules of living are an encounter.
This meeting does not pertain to time and space,
but time and space pertain to the meeting.”

Communication is based on attention here.
Everything is possible, and so the gestures
and relationships are points of reference,
and the shape of the atmosphere is moulded.
This is a game played with vital energy as it transforms.
Art in deed.
The performers do not act as a group,
they do not work with a script,
nor do they tell a common story. Each has his own input,
but with an awareness of belonging together.
Working together is carried out in real time and space,
between history and the future, across cultures and frontiers…
Performance is a continuation of the
OPEN SITUATION – EUROPEAN PROJECT
held in Prague in 1989,
based on the principles of the SCHOOL OF ATTENTION,
BLACK MARKET and GROUND WORKS.

Habib Kheradyar (Los Angeles)

has cooperated on the project
Dialogue Prague – Los Angeles (1989/90 + 2002)
director of Post Gallery Los Angeles

spolupracoval na projektu
Dialog Praha - Los Angeles (1989/90 + 2002),
ředitel Post Galerie Los Angeles

 
 
 

TEXT TO PERFORMANCE

Personal climax of my action is not visualy recorded.
Habíb, who attentively observed me, then said:
„In that I couldn’t follow you“.

When exhaustion striked me so overwhelming,
that even sitting on column, I ballanced on the edge of swoon,
all body in pain, asking to come down,
I resigned to slow motion down fall.
By itself my carnal case exposed to slowest possible turn over,
every part submited,
all relaxed to euphoric flow
- some dance of dying.
After conceivable hit,
through simulated collapse
to imaginary death.
I perceived every unnoticeable movement
in continuously streaming event.
Freely drifted on surface of time
and tossed by wooling space,
I slowly by slowly died in action.
Downfallen bones stopped on ground,
tied by sinews rested leaning against the bollard.
Stayed only deep relaxed breathing.
And then
in full consciousness
the body laying on the square
remaining motionless,
separated,
while me,
in other body
was swiming
in burbling chilly current of shiny lighted water,
commotion of the city carried from far distance,
and I drunk full swallows from pure spring…

Returned back and puted together with collective breath of other bodies,
warmed and burdened - broaght back to life - resurrected.

Tomáš Ruller
14.7.2007

Jacques Van Poppel (Amsterdam)

has been a part of the Black Market since 1986,
at Documenta Kassel (1987)

účastník projektu Black Market od roku 1986,
Documenta Kassel (1987)

Pio Troski (Warsaw)

founder of the School of Attention /East–West 1983,
co-founded the project Black Market (1985 – 1988),
at Documenta Kassel (1987)

zakladatel hnutí School of Attention / East-West (1983),
spoluzakladatel projektu Black Market (1985 – 1988),

  Documenta Kassel (1987)

János Szirtes (Budapest)

spoluorganizátor performance festivalu Szentendre
(1987 – 2003), Documenta Kassel (1987)