A performed conversation through time
In the Guardian newspaper on Saturday 8th April 2008, Sean O’Brien wrote of the ‘loss of liberty’ experienced when the past is closed down, and how ‘the present becomes the measure of all things’. In contemporary consumer capitalism, there is no history; it is a culture of forgetting.
How might Bodenwieser (through imagined words) be brought back to life in Gertrud to reveal the impact of this extraordinary forgetting? A remembering of her might underline by stark contrast a choreographic world in which my performed physical and psychological state is as restless and alone as can be imagined within a culture without a past.
The research and development of Gertrud – in the northern summer of 2008 – was documented in detail, and presented online at skellis.net/gertrud/blog. Some of the links in the blog are no longer live but, for the most part, the posts capture a good sense of the decision making process for the project's development.
