Long after the days and the seasons
As a part of the piece 'Let me sleep! Let me boil, On the altars of Solomon; Let me soak the rusty soil' London, 2013, duration: 12 days. I re-enacted Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Barbaric.
I chose this poem, because (as I find in many of Rimbaud’s poems), the words does not only change into images in my head, but into acts/actions I know how to perform on and with the clay. The whole composition of the poem is shaped as choreography of movement and motion of material, not only as a gesture, but driven by spirit.
When I study the words: - being beyond mere language, they have that rare quality of carrying saturated materiality. Not only is the poem loaded with materiel, it furthermore achieves to describe materiality in lyrics. In words depicting the actuality of the world - both as incomprehensible phenomenon and as the heavy solid soil - within manageable images we can bring with us.
-- Oh! the banner of raw meat against the silk of seas and arctic flowers;
(they do not exist).-- Bliss! Live embers raining in gusts of frost.--
flung out by the earth's heart eternally carbonized for us.
O bliss, O world, O music! And forms, sweat, eyes
and long hair floating there.
And white tears boiling,--
Photos by: Kirsten Abildgaard & Alida Sayer
