Performance, Festival: "Lite Site festival 07"Amsterdam 19.4.-22.4.2007

The Performance "nascent" takes place on a canal in Amsterdam. The performance adapts itself to the place and creates a special atmosphere and a melange which allows the water and Performance to become a unity. The townscape of Amsterdam is stamped by a lot of channels, bridges, close streets and the narrow houses. The place which stands in Amsterdam like no other for freshness and freedom is the canal itself. The water streets of the city are brand names and open up the city. They free the city so to say from beeing closed alive. Besides, the canals stand for two different things: On the one hand they are a symbol of live, and however, on theother hand, they are also impassable. The artist (Nezaket Ekici) has chosen this place for her Performace on purpose. She tries to take possession of the water way. With a white dress of (8-m length and 6-m width) the artist is taken on a boat to a platform in the middle of channel. During the Performance the artist stands on the platform and spreads out the dress with 37 square meters slowly on the water. Every Performacne is, as well as this one always an experiment as life in itself. If the artist succeeds in spreading out the dress entirely on the water, a majestic sight arises. The dress is provided below with a flexible tube, which will be inflated slowly by the artist. like a Lotus bloom, the dress spreads out slowly on the water in all directions. So the beauty of the dress adapts itself to the beautiful surrounding and supplements the channel, the bridges and houses around. After the dress is spread out, it swims on the water like a living sculpture : now the work of art comes to the true validity. With every single act of pumping, the dress moves further. The manual manipulation of the pump deliberates a some what contradictory perspective onto the Performance, which is orginally quite aesthetic. The white dress radiates something solemn and majestic. That work is always necessary to establih a beautiful appearance, is easily forgot. So to speak. the noble appearance is irritated by the physical activity of the pumping. The scene loses nothing with it, however, not the brilliancy, but wins on top of that, because we now also know how the beautiful appearance was produced.

White bases on the water; dress; inner tube of a bicycicle 2 each 21 m long; 2 pumps; boat; driver

20 min.

Video;
Photos by Myrna; Camera by Ide Van Heiningen