Performance

 Dispelling Myths and Magic Tricks 

Performance with Luiz Lopez 

Taming Urizen group exhibition, Berlin 2022

Text 

To swallow a sword, you do not swallow it, there’s something else going on… 

12 relaxed throat muscles and a lot of nerve. 

To test your humanness by identifying the images containing traffic lights,

Is not to uncover the scam robots amongst us, 

But to train the robots to slip more easily between us. 

The Wall falling was both a saviour and an invasion, because the German word for history - geschichte - also means story.

The blood of Christ – instead of a deep rich red tasting of all things holy, stings the tongue like a cheap white wine, served from a goblet touched by too many lips, swilled and rinsed of sin by soap water.

Teenage pregnancies are not a shameful statistic born out of boredom’s date with blue alcopops,

They are the consequence of a narrative that begins with babies being flown in by stalks, and develops into a rule book of age thresholds and warnings: “abstinence is the best form of protection!!”  Exclamation mark, exclamation mark.

“Girls, these are periods. Don't think you can't get pregnant on your period.”

“Boys, masturbation never breaks your heart, but do your homework before watching all that porn.”

Noone mentioned that sex starts with the clit. 

And that's why when two become 1, 

1 can become 2

too soon. 

Now you tell me that the

da da da da da da daaaa

A cheerful major melody doesn't just sound good in itself

it needs an ear to hear

and a thought-out explanation,

to induce a mood in a certain situation

and justify why it is worthy of playing again

E.g. At white weddings held in marquees

to construct the first clap in an applause

that will echo through a culture and define joy in sound.

And the joyless strangers

Dividing the pavement into “Right” and “wrong” sides to stroll

Dictating the “reasonable” volume for you to speak in public

Demanding order – a descending order

whereby they are 1, and you 2 –

Their mind is stiff with constipated logic

As they never managed to contort a thought

into a question mark

Never took a trip beyond the horizon

of their own perspective

And so their rules are merely unreasonable suggestions

Scratched out on the weathered bark

of a tree they cut down

And nobody heard fall.

On the windy, misty Cape Finisterre

Here the Romans came

To stare into the abyssful sublime

and witness the end of the world.

They had it wrong.

The end is not as far as you can see

Nor the nukes stashed in North Korean Basements

Or lines for toilet rolls wrapped around closed-off playgrounds

It's as far as you will...