Brief an Grossmutter
(2018)

In the installative performance "Letter to Grandmother", bodies meet material and history. The tape as a magnetic recording runs through the scene like an umbilical cord. Table, chairs, lace ceiling: all props of a dining room, the central meeting point of a family. But nothing in this dining room seems to come together as a unit. An indication of a family history in which disturbances have inscribed themselves, with half-submerged or emerging memories, fragmentary: the lace doily suddenly appears huge - crocheted from tapes. The table is even present on another media level and revolves around itself in the black and white video work. The chairs seem to transcend the space and pose the question of sinking or emerging. It is not possible to take a seat (anymore) except on one of them, on which a body in an old robe sits and tangles tapes. The tape runs through an illuminated frame and is interwoven with the VHS tapes stretched across it. In the oversized frame lies the grandmother's possible dress, which she may have worn in the original picture. It seems barred, unreachable under the stretched VHS tapes. Performance In the performance I, Künzler, Astrid;, literally connect to the material, internalize tape recordings, wrap myself around them and then climb into the frame like into a ring. The sensitive documentary material and the memory make my body slow down in the here and now and I weave myself, following the tape track, with the VHS recordings. The body connects as memory material with the VHS tapes, which increasingly limit and take over my body. At the same time, the material only becomes legible through my body and my body, which becomes involved, destroys the documentary material that has become inseparable from my body with the movement of immersion. At the same time, the body is also able to create moments in which past and present briefly meet - for example, when I have reached the dress through the interweaving of the tapes and curl up on it like an embryo. Or when I pull on the tape that has just been crocheted on the other side. At some point, the tape breaks and so does the umbilical cord. The struggle to break free begins and ends when I leave the "ring", which can be a bed, a grave or a prison. The decision as to whether I get out with the tapes constricting my body or whether I strip off the tapes or allow them to be stripped off (by the audience) is determined in the moment.