Day sculptures

Emmilou Roessling

November 3 - November 18 2023

In Day Sculptures three boxes, each referring to a specific date, hold miniature models which serve as allegories to three differ ent live performances. They are equally containment and concealment. Choreographies, in parts shrunken and reified, are carefully collected and put away, protecting what is inside from the outside and what is outside from the inside. The sculptures suggest that the boxes can be opened, propped up and accessed or easily packed and stored away. Yet they are displayed closed, descriptions of what they hold pouring out of them in the form of paper scrolls.

Even in performance it is not easy to make a truly ephemeral work. After all, we live in a material world and each action leaves a multitude of traces. We collect bus tickets and flower petals, scores and charms. We seek to attach something that cannot be grasped in hope to perhaps encounter it through these mundane objects again. Performers carefully hide personal and lucky items of clothing under their costumes, place a score note, so long that it is impossible to read, under a prop or slip a gemstone into their pocket, connecting each to a given work so that they become indispensable for performing it again. Stages and spaces can become charged with phrases, movements, scores and other moments of presentation. A not uncommon sensation when doing the same action over and over again, can be that of a time warp, in rehearsal and for real. For real meaning the moment when other people are watching and are able to confirm this reality, even if it is make believe. It is unclear whether repetition makes something be experienced as less or more real. Maybe what a time warp allows for is a next to real experience. Not real but also not not real.

In Day Sculptures the days are contained in boxes and hidden from view, their performativity is in their withdrawal. The way to access them is via their descriptions, which flow out of the cracks as scrolls, giving meticulous details and subjective recollections of the day and performance as it was experienced. Printed on thermal paper and under a consistent exposure to light, these scrolls make no claim for permanence. As the exhibition goes on the descriptions slowly fade.

E.R.

Publication in collaboration with Lucas Eigel

Printed in Frankfurt

Edition of 100

With special thanks to Printshop Städelschule, Aerin Hong, Jackson Beyda, Moritz Tontsch, Silja Korn, Zishi Han, Arnaud Ferron and Friedrich Hartung.

Documentation: Ivan Murzin

Day Sculptures was kindly supported by the City of Frankfurt a. M. — Department for Culture, Naspa Foundation and Hessian Ministry for Science and Arts.

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Day Sculptures