A labyrinth as evergreen as prejudice. Populated with white cone-shaped masks. There are no faces under the masks, just a pair of mute CCTV lenses.

Assigned to every tenth mask, there is a red femme with a white wonder nose. Now, every second femme is busy cradling a baby and every now and then they pick a mask and shoot it with a golden gun. The bullets make red flowers blossom on the masks’ bodies, but masks don’t seem to get troubled that much about it.

Unlike a handful of males crawling around, collared and leashed with latex balaclava pulled over their heads. They lack the privilege of getting a golden bullet and being spied on.

(oil on canvas)
artist and title unknown

First of all, there is no uninvited relative demanding retaliation in this story. Instead, a board of certified wizards meets and declares a major threat for the sleeping beauty. It is the linen barb or anything you get rid off moaning sadly once it is driven under your skin, no matter you’re a fish or a part-time receptionist.

The tale carries on with a simple plot. There is an accident obviously involving the beauty and the barb and the whole kingdom falls into a coma. “Even the partridges and pheasants being prepared for the royal table fall asleep, not mentioning the fire.” says the narrator.

Here comes the prince. He breaks in the golden chamber, finds the beauty, but fails to wake her up despite the fact he has a paramedic course. The prince is by no means discouraged and falls in love with the beauty anyway. They live together practising an open relationship and in nine months time, the beauty, still asleep, gives a birth to sleeping twins. The prince remains the only entity in the kingdom retaining consciousness, though he forgets why the hell he ended up there.

installed at the Museum of Installation, London

Sleeping on a chair, radiating subtle grace of a limited edition silk ragdoll sitting sideways on a scooter speeding down a night-painted town. His head rests against a concrete wall of a deconsecrated chapel, his observers far from pretending not to feel cold at 10 p.m. somewhere in October. Is there really a dream flashing by behind the sleeper’s immaculate face?

Ma Liuming

inside a tent filled with artificial twilight
lead into a corridor narrow and dark enough to give a feel of a train passing through a bottle of ink

therefore

functionally placed inside a lion’s cage, with the lion embodied in a slim figure of a man with black trousers and overall, who looks like slowly, but resolutely approaching me

barefoot

his face with a cropped white hair frame – a style not far from what a Roman Emperor electoral candidate’s would ask his stylists for

hic sun August the August aka T

somehow

he keeps looking at me but it is a look you give a snowman made of complexionless ideas

indeed

this makes one feel very transparent

as he is getting closer I wonder if he would make it through my body in the same fashion as ghosts routinely deal with fireproof walls

it feels like it and off he goes, leaving the tent, entering the light of the day

here comes a second one, equally barefoot, but much stockier, sporting colours of pumpkins and oranges , which make every single fold of his cushion-like frame come out

up in his face topped with froggy glass solution remindnig of a chief architect of yet another solution nicknamed the final, resides a pair of eyes which, like those of his partner, make this impression of their rightful owner’s soul having been fished out and sealed in a tiny flask marked “choking hazard”

his hand is cold as he grabs mine. It is a  fishy handshake, more or less the same grip you can expect when introduced to a well cooked lobster. Though there is no confirming message in his eyes, he apparently likes my bag, so he takes it. Simultaneously, he snatches a chair with a girl formerly seated on it, now rushing away, just too slow, for he is even slower, slow enough to catch her handbag and making her follow him outside the tent.

that’s Pumpkin aka R

Packing their chairs, the rest of the audience flows out as well.

Procession. T in the lead, then R lazily pulling his girl, then a cloud of people with chairs, giggling. On course to seek for a new stage.

Procession encamped in a park.

T and R spread around. Their walk betoking a pair of trees that has just managed to grow a pair of legs, but retain their sense of time…very, very slooooow.

they pick twigs and some of the audience, making them all dance in a circle the way you’d dance if the atmosphere consisted of mixture of vasoline and feathers

they clash, if something involving two objects meeting with a speed of a stoned snail could be classified with such a term

they clash and they entangle with tenacity of a very keen pair of lianas, merging into a single mass without the need for a meat mincer

a jogger decides to join in. He softly lands his precise body on the grass and goes for push ups delivered in a style aiming straight for divinity. With T and R busy making a panting skein out of themeselves, the three might surely get connected via a channel our brains can just dream of, unless the jogger is busy regretting nobody finds him a splendid opportunity for a youtube moment.

SPETTACOLO, says a mother, placing her two kids in front of T and R. Aware that this is a piece of theatre, the children go for LOL the moment T and R form a statue of a four-eyed god of honey.

a respectable lady of even more respectable age desperately seeks an explanation of what is this stuff all about

but nobody satisfies her

Reverse procession. Back to the tent, having fully explored the art of slowliness when making a 50 metres distance in ten minutes.

T and R petter out. The audience may need some time to regain their daily pace.

Thomas nad Ruhller – ORANJE

performance

When earning enough not to worry and not to think that much about anything

When massive boredom is worth the safety of having a vision of undisturbed continuity of your cashflow

When her exploding and him trying to swallow the blast…with disturbing continuity

When both of them suffering from lack of the ultimate

When she runs under a van out of pure despair

…there might be some room to reverse things

…options to make the loop of breakings up and hugs of forgiveness seem less infinite

For boom to doom press 1

For boom to blossom press 2

For boom to nowhere press 3

Alexandr Brandt

The Next Second

2006

video

She’s naked in a very formal manner. Sitting at a bar stool, facing the audience motionless, pale, her eyes indicating she might be busy chasing astral pets some five dimensions above the ceiling. Hands folded neatly in her lap, feet resting on a silver frame. She blinks repeatedly, her body trembles. Silence all over.

Pushed by a man in black, casually senior with a professional look, a nursing table appears on the scene, with two rows of glass flasks on board along with a tray full of napkins, a burner and a bowl containing something yet to be seen in action. The man’s look is fire-proof, no emotions leaking. He takes the first flask, lights the burner, then a stick with cotton wool soaked in alcohol. He finds a spot on the woman’s back, quickly puts the burning stick inside the flask and presses it against her skin. Trapped in the vacuum, the skin bulges instantly . He withdraws his hand – the flask remains sitting on the skin.

Soon the woman wears quite a revealing costume made of light bulbs. One by one, the flasks are removed, and there’s a scalpel in the man’s fingers. The skin opens like a smile.

The flasks go back on skin, filling with blood slowly.  It’s like a rubber tree being
tapped.

Flasks away. The napkins’ turn. Scent of disinfection. One by one, the man picks cakes of blood. They stick to the napkins, so they can be pegged on, just like washing on Sunday afternoon.

My neighbour softly leans against my shoulder. She’s unconscious.
We take her out, soon she wakes up. Was that a thumbing sound of one of the cakes hitting the floor?

Kira O’Reilly

performance

after kira 1

after kira 2

Phase one – a walk through indoor infinity

Me standing next to me, next to yet another me,
followed by a line of about a sextilion of…me.
The landscape made of mirrors gets quite crowded by “me”, it is honestly filled up to the horizon.

Phase two – a tripple monologue

Me as a figure facing an imaginary auditorium. Me as a second figure watching
the third me which lurks from equally imaginary backstage.
Three be or not three be?

Wendy Bornholdt
Subspace
(installation – box of mirrors)

Some standing, some rolling about on the floor – that’s a band of birds who managed to laugh their beaks off. They all grin at me with their tiny strange mouths full of thin sharp teeth. Few of them go through something which could be identified as massive fits of happiness – as being granted a mouth means they no longer need to twist their necks horizontal, when there is a need to say “cheese”. The birds’ glossy nylon fur, that makes a cheap but cool alternative to otherwise very unaffordable feathers, shine, shine, shine.
ANNIE WHILES
HA
(mixed media beakless birds)

Sand scratches under soles, solid damp walls form a web of corridors – narrow and blind.

Stepping out of darkness while making no move at all – objects.

Wardrobe. (A couple of doors in fact, but such a resemblance is much better to handle)

It’s doors opened a bit. There’s a strip of light leaking out – it runs across the floor

and rests against the wall. The light doesn’t come from inside the wardrobe though. It just acts that way. It gives the wardrobe a false hope it contains something – a swarm of fireflies or a figure holding a torch that burns with no drive to fume.
2 Doors (Remembering my father) (2000)

Door, slide projector, shoes

Door.

Light licks the treshold.Seems to be a day behind the door’s mat glass belly.I grip the

door handle, expecting to get a proper shower of light. Nothing.
On (2000)

Functioning door, neon, perspex

Table, book, candle.

All wearing the light of their own projected selves.
Imaginary Light (2000)

Table, extinguished candle, book, slide projection

Boat

Fast asleep, with night sky reflected by the boat’s own petrified sea. The night stands still, holding its breath.
The Sea of Unknowing (1996)

Modified wooden boat, black pigment, water, toy boat and nightlight

David Johnson