Collected Tales: 500 Days Later

2015

cross-media installation

In spring 2015 I was invited to collaborate with de Appel Art Centre in Amsterdam by presenting my performance Collected Tales of Mi(s)s(ed)Fortune, my production from 2012. Next to it they offered me exhibition space for a couple of weeks after the performance, where I could exhibit something connected to the performance.

The Collected Tales of Mi(s)s(ed)Fortune performance wasn’t really a performance one could so easily exhibit. In had hardly any set design (3 tables for book signing with chairs and copies of the book) and 4 chairs for 3 role-players and the moderator), there were no costumes and no script. Leaving the set design in the space after the exhibition wouldn’t make sense, because visitors of the exhibition wouldn’t know what to relate it to – they would miss the memory of the performance.

Intrigued by this notion, I set myself on a journey to look for the memory of my performance. 1,5 year before the scheduled performance at de Appel I had performed this same performance in my hometown, Škofja Loka, so I decided to go and look for people who sat in the audience or role-played me on stage, and see what they still remembered 500 days after they had seen the performance. 

The result was a cross-media installation, featuring part of the set design (the 3 book signing tables with copies of my poetry that visitors could take with them) and a audio-visual loop with editing of people’s memories of the performance.

Format used: cross-media installation

Element of disturbance/subversion: talking about the memory of a performance memory while the performance itself remains a mystery

Method: pre-prepared curating

Key topics discussed: memory of art, value of art