Look At Me Like A Friend Would Do,
Le Sous-Commun, Berlin 2016
exhibition and durational performance in cooperation with Janine Eisenächer
Look at me like a friend would do is a collaborative project that combines painting and performance art as art genres, bringing together the formats of exhibition and live performance. In doing so, we want to challenge the traditional or usual ways of presenting and perceiving paintings within an exhibition. Moreover, we want to discuss the different working processes in both fields, including the working temporalities of our individual and collaborative artistic practice, the specific modes of production, and the aspect of visible and invisible work. Our aim is to put the singular paintings as well as the whole space generated by the paintings into a concrete, physical and mental dialogue with the actual bodies in space. During the durational performance the light turned off and on again in regular intervals.
The video is an edited, short excerpt of the 3-hour-exhibition and performance Look at me like a friend would do which took place at le sous-commun in Berlin 2016 (lesouscommun.tumblr.com). The lights went off and on several times, it was bright or dark for different periods of time.
there is us and then there is yous. a me taking on your coughing. some word, between you and me, what forms us apart from us. can we take a breath simultaneously, to friends, looking, your witness, to work done before work, work done during work, and then, work done after work, all of which are made invisible. not now, somewhere else. as if one point in a chain took on more value than any one else, could be without the remaining lines escaping in a thousand flights, could afford to ignore them, the lines escaping linearity.
hts go on and off. we learn to see gradually in a dark room, the painting- objects are arranged and re-arranged throughout the space, from wall to floor, hanging, leaning. shadows move in between her movements, anarranging lines, white crayon on red floor, to us, the impossible community of work, of doing,
impossible things.
fold.
in & out-ward, around, overlapping, two-fold. the stretchers reveal a layer of work behind the painting, like, white gloves carrying the work to new dimensions, precious laboring of ties, enmeshed. and the outside reaching in, the external world now loosing its stability.
b-coming the side we`re made to look at, the other side, underneath the official side, tucked away side, brushed aside, siding, the dark side leaning on the light side, on & off, our side. to
our friends. an army of bodies inside one. we are not squeezed, we do not choke ourselves, we are not shattered, we are not buried, we are not surrounded, we are not crushed, we breathe.
This Poem is written by Niilas Helander who made this exhibition possible.