Trauerspiel 1
Trauerspiel 1 is a live performance for proscenium stage. Five ‘dances’ incorporating simple objects and ‘interrupted’ by the machinery of the auditorium (lights, curtain) alternate with five 16mm artists’ films, selected from Arsenal’s collection. A naked man sits on stage knitting. None of these illustrate each other, but produce increasing layers of allegory. - I.W.
In the auditorium – structured around Walter Benjamin's ideas about the origin of German tragic drama – films by Karola Schlegelmilch, Klaus Telscher, Hellmuth Costard, Peter Weiss and Robyn Brentano & Andrew Horn alternate with a series of actions. An allegory of Love and Time, they generate each other. It is a sketch: of architecture, the body, light and shadow – a production of images that are not there but here.
Films shown (all from the Arsenal collection):
BAUCHLANDUNG, Karola Schlegelmilch, Germany 1991, 16mm, 3 min
HER MONA, Klaus Telscher, Germany 1992, 16mm, 7 min
BESONDERS WERTVOLL, Hellmuth Costard, Germany 1968, 16mm, 11 min
STUDIE IV (Frigörelse), Peter Weiss, Sweden 1954, 16mm, 9 min
CLOUD DANCE, Robyn Brentano & Andrew Horn, USA 1980, 16mm, 13 min
Commissioned by Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art.
(White later presented a lecture-performance version of this work under the title Trauerspiel Earthwork, delivered as part of the symposium ‘Rethinking Robert Smithson’ at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, on 30 March 2012.)
Performed: 13 March 2012, Hebbel-am-Ufer Theatre, Berlin
Live performance with 16mm films | c. 70mins
2012
