Chalkboard Testimonies

(a-b-c walk)

2017, performative essay: walk & slideshow, approx. 30'

2017, installation: 11 soundtracks, 12 chalkboard drawings & 6 prints, various sizes

2018, HD video, color and B/W, sound, 18'

The montage brings together various authors, the artist’s own review of school time, and histories related to genocide and commemoration in the city of Amsterdam. At first, the narrative considers sleeping disorder experienced by the artist while working and living in a former school building. Furthermore, the montage includes homage to (nostalgia), a short film by Hollis Frampton, and Artist at Work, series of photographs by Mladen Stilinović.

As a performative essay, the work combines projected still images and readings (or testimonies) taken to the walk through the school architecture. Parallel to manually operated rhythm and relocations of the stills, the authorial voice is shifting between two narrators and occasionally revealing its vulnerabilities. Approximately eight different locations are related to the projected images and underlying narrations. Each performance is about 30 minutes long for an audience of maximum 15 people at a time.

Co-performing during the first series of walks is Abla elBahrawy, architect and visual artist.

Subsequently, this “essay-walk” is converted into a series of soundtracks that accompany chalkboard drawings and various small prints installed throughout the space.