273 - für John Cage, 1987
Remarks on the used material:
With room temperature very hard bitumen has the following qualities:
1. As glass to shatter, if beaten with a hard object 2. To become distorted according to the laws of the gravity in a slow process and 3. To generate a lacquer-similar, shining surface.
The company Polaroid produces a so-called immediately-picture-material that (named shortly Polaroid) makes possible observing the development of the photo immediately under normal llight-conditions.
The performance:
Before the performance starts a cast (made of extremely hard bitumen) of a standard-trusted cover of a grand piano
lies flat on the ground. A Polaroid-Camera on a tripod is standing in front whose viewfinder fixes the black form
and the wall behind.
At beginning of the performance I set up the bitumen-sculpture with help of a steel-pole, alike it would happen before a concert with a grand piano. Then, I go to the camera, press on the trigger, take the Polaroid and hang it on the wall behind the Sculpture. Then again I go to the camera, presses the trigger... everything with a speed: Thus a rhythm originates.
The continuously hung up Polaroids document the gradual distortion of the bitumen-plastic and the growing number of the documentation photography’s, that are to be seen in the background. Through the production of the wall, the pictures get the character of a score or choreography of this metamorphosis-process. An opposite movement stands out: While the deformation of the black sculpture is going ahead continuously, the development of this process is to be retraced on the basis of the Polaroids. Concerning the respective present, an increasing "fuzziness" is to be observed on this occasion: Hardly perceived, the now of the sculpture and the last Polaroids is already memory.
After approximately four to five minutes the black bitumen casting is becoming deformed to a degree that it slips off the steel-pole, falls on the ground and becomes shattered there.
THE END.