DIRECTOR’S NOTE
In 2005, Dea Loher was invited to travel to Kabul and work with Afghani writers. She
also encountered a war-torn city and its traumatised citizens. Afterwards her medium,
language, failed her at first, as it implies meaning. However, in K. life itself seemed
devoid of meaning in the face of all the random deaths. She said later that she felt
no artistic activity could assist the maker or the spectator in their dealing with these
matters. This resonated strongly with my own questioning.
At the same time Dea Loher felt she had to bear witness so that this reality is not
forgotten or brushed aside with the generalised sensationalist media language.
To create distance for herself she replaced the medium of language with that of visual
art, thus making it valid for all artistic activity. She felt she had to restrict the piece to
the inward view of the artist in her context in Europe rather than comment on anything
she had seen in the Arabic city. Again these aspects rang true and inspired me to
transpose this text onto the stage.
I came across the text when working at the Royal Court in 2009. The theatre is very
fond of Loher’s work but when it became clear that they will not be able to programme
this piece I asked to obtain the rights and produced it independently. We developed
the work in Berlin and premiered it at the Fringe Festival Edinburgh 2009, because we
felt it was best to present it to an international audience.
Together with Claire Schirck and Lucy Ellinson I created a plastic, three dimensional,
physical life for this lyrical piece. It is art installation and theatre play at once, the
performer becomes part of the installation at times, and progessively the materials of
the installation take over her body. The underlying dynamic of the text captivated us
completely: an artists seeks to create real experiences through abstract work, then
she is stalled because she has very abstract experiences in the face of real images.
As well as her artistic theories we visualised the artists expectations of the place,
K., she visits, and the process of those expectations being broken down when she
is experiencing war there. Back at home the materials she brought back invariably
mingle with her own – but the combination alters continously in her heart and mind
and would not be suitable for a generalised presentation in art.
All she can do in the end is allow the uncomfortable nostalgia, bear the compassion
and pain, but also, be true to herself and carry on being joyful in her own life.
These processes are ongoing during my own travels and work in the Arab world.
Lydia Ziemke
CONTEXTUAL Excerpts
Yes, you can analyse the situation in Afghanistan, you can make it comprehensible, you
can hold on to facts and figures, but what lies beneath, that – in my experience – can
hardly or can’t be conveyed: the pointlessness. I had feelings of Apathy, helplessness,
of rage. But predominant was the feeling of the pointlessness of all human action, the
pointlessness of life.
Writing means to be searching for connections, explanantions, hypotheses, sometimes
to be seeking the truth that is lost, but this search is valuable when it bounces of
reality and opens up space that only exists in language and can expand our reality.
The Afghanistan experience was and is so radical for me because on the one hand the
real reality was so overwhelming, that it seemed impossible for me to transform it into
a piece of fictional literature – which would have been my job –, and on the other hand
the pointlessness was so fundamental, that it destroyed any format of writing, – even
the attempt‚ only to report. It is, and I can’t describe it otherwise, a pointlessness,
that also penetrates words and renders them meaningless.
After: Dea Loher's Acceptance Speech, Brecht Award 2006
Our definition of beauty, then, is a certain type of emotional exaltation which is the
result of stimulation by certain qualities common to all great works of art. To apply
this definition to our notion of plasticity, we may say that the sum total of all plasticity
in a painting must be the potentiality for the evocation of a sense of beauty.
We have a variety of explanations for the origin and the nature of this abstraction.
Psychologists say that beauty evokes a feeling of pleasure. This pleasure is closely
connected with our infantile desire for security. Those forms or shapes which we
associate with the satisfaction of this desire for security will forever give us that
sense of complete satisfaction. In so far as the child’s original notions of security are
connected with the form of his mother, the curves and tactile planes in the human
body are the origin of this satisfaction. The artist draws on these areas of security
when he depicts the human body. The love for these human shapes is then transferred
to similar shapes in the world at large.
From: Mark Rothko - The Artist’s Reality – Philosophies of Art