Komprimierte Leere (1995)

Performance, Symposium "Meeting Of Minds", Hogeschool Utrecht, Amersfoort (NL)

Four monitors stand side by side behind a circle of 12 metal bowls. In the middle of the circle is a bowl filled with small transparent bags. On each of the monitors you can see the picture of a fish swimming quietly from one monitor to the next. At irregular intervals this image is interrupted by a 10 second image: I lie on the ground in the grass, on my chest a jet of water directed from a fire hose. The monitors continuously emit the sounds of Yves Klein's "Monotonous Symphony". Somewhere in the background of the room there is no visible bag with fish. Creeping in the circle of bowls, I pour with extreme concentration the only bowl filled with water into an empty one. This then again into the next empty one and so on. I repeat this action for about 30 minutes until the pictures on the monitors change into a monochrome blue. I stand up, place myself on the spot where the bowl filled with water stands, take it and hold it with stretched arms over my head. I pour the water over my head. I ask the audience to leave the room one by one and stand next to the door with the bowl filled with the bags. I offer each spectator a small bag with inside the following text: "The infinite of which I speak is below. It is above. It is in the west, in the east. In the south, in the north."