Delicate Instruments Handled with Care (2014)

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 20:00

Delicate Instruments Handled with Care (2014)

Location: Former Czechoslovakian Cultural Institute, Leipziger Str. 60, entrance Jerusalemer Straße, 10117 Berlin-Mitte
Tickets: 5 EUR / 3 EUR
A project in collaboration with HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

Together with Mădălina Dan, Farid Fairuz and Manuel Pelmuş, Alexandra Pirici presents a mash-up of moments from the globalized memory of mass media in the empty halls of the former Czechoslovakian cultural institute in Berlin. Without a stage, props or costumes the images are performed by bodies in everyday clothes in direct response to the audience who, by choosing from a list of possible scenarios, call the performers into action and set the rhythm of the compilation. Beyoncé’s 'Drunk in Love' music video, Vladimir Putin’s picture with a sedated tiger, the pyramids and the sphinx, an excerpt from John Cage’s 'Lecture on Nothing', the image of the corpses of Nikolae Ceaucescu and his wife, emoticons and many other scenes are inscribed in a flexible chronicle with variable narrations: Delicate Instruments Handled With Care!

The performance is part of the interdisciplinary performance and exhibition project THE FORGOTTEN PIONEER MOVEMENT (October 2nd – November 29th) about the experiences of the last, transitional generation between socialism and post-socialism. As a fictional movement, TFPM addresses the impact and the societal perspectives of the "last pioneers": a generation whose childhood and youth is linked to the times of the Perestroika and the “pOst-Western” Europe of the 1990s.

Alexandra Pirici, Delicate Instruments Handled With Care, enactment of emoticons, 2014, performance, photo: Andrei Dinu
Alexandra Pirici, Delicate Instruments Handled With Care, enactment of emoticons, 2014, performance, photo: Andrei Dinu