Somnambulin & Bauchaus
“In September 1998, the remains of a frozen vagrant were found at a building site on Orlanienburger Str. in the city of Vermlin.Archaeological analysis of the small corpse (see replica inside this body bag) provided scientific proof that the ‘Little Matchstick Girl’ from Hans Christian Andersen’s tale truly did exist. The child, who was nicknamed ‘Orla’, aged about 5, must have been trying to keep herself warm by lighting the matches that she was supposed to sell. As the city celebrated Christmas Eve, she froze to death and was preserved under an urban avalanche originating at Opencagen at the time of the Industrial Revolution.”
Somnambulin - Station 1, 2000
In this performance, I transformed a truck-mounted concrete mixer into a large traveling and performing music box. The transformed sound-truck served as both an ice cream van and a story vehicle. The rotating drum functioned as a cylinder, with pins attached to its surface.
Several tunes were composed for the repertoire of this project by the musicians Arik Hayut, Guy Kark, Daniel Landau, Robert Bently and Ohad Fischof. The notes of these melodies were played electronically and were made to resonate in the same manner in which ice cream trucks disseminate their tunes. The truck played music while traveling along small roads. It parked at various stops, where people gathered to participate in an exchange; I gave passersby ice lollies shaped like the Little Matchstick Girl.
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sonic performance, Spacex Gallery, Exeter, August 2000
Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg, October 2000
Curators: Zoë Sherman and Tom Trevor
Bauchaus 2004
The Armory Show, New York City
Bauchaus is a public space performance and sound vehicle, which was initially carried out in August 2000 in Exeter, the U.K. and then again during a journey in the Manheim area.
In this new iteration, I have created a bicycle-mounted concrete mixer which is also a traveling music box.
The rotating drum attached to the bicycle functioned as a cylinder, with pins attached to its surface. The sound object played music, as I slowly drove around and gave the public ice-lollies shaped like the Little Matchstick Girl. Attached to the candy, in a small body bag, was a sticker on which the [see above] text was printed:
Contrasts and movement are key to this piece. There is a contrast between this child, who failed to sell her matches, and me, arriving from the Israeli inferno and handing out to the public ice-lollies in the shape of her corpse. This counter-lullaby tour, in which I try to bring the girl back to life by orally and morally feeding her to the living, is a story of contemporary survival. In it, I express what I see as a perpetual loss and a yearning for love and life.
