Monotonie (1978)

Performance, "Performance Art Festival", Brüssel (B)

This video is a recording of a performance given by Boegel and Holtappels in front of an audience. Holtappels is walking naked in a circle having a stick with an infusion bottle tied onto his body. From the bottle, Valium is gradually released into his blood, making his walking steadily degrading and staggering. In the meantime Boegels, wearing a metallic band on his forehead and turned with his back against the audience, is hitting rhythmically his forehead against a metal plate fixed on the wall. The rhythmic sound is being amplified through speakers. Boegel and Holtappels are using their performance as a means of provocation while they are attempting to impersonate the inner world of schizophrenics along with the subdued desolation through sedatives. At the same time and since the actual actions are the essence in their work, they are attempting to reach their own inner world through the internal processes manifested and experienced within these acts.