Ode to Friendship is a performance born out of the feeling of love. It is an intuitive reflection that takes up Byung-Chung Han's argument in his essay The Agony of Eros. According to Han, love demands the courage to accept the abnegation of the self for the sake of the discovery of the other.
The nudity of the performers, Sophie Bauler and Blanca Barbat is a resource widely used in feminist art in the 1970s. In the 1970s, although it was used to present rather than represent, in this performance physical nudity becomes metaphorical nudity. A metacognitive resource of the resource itself. In this work, Nudity is a sincere declaration to show live the value of love and the vulnerability it entails, or the value of accepting self-denial in a narcissistic society.
At the beginning of the performance, Sophie wore a dress spun with a single thread. In the end, Sophie was naked and I was covered.
For 43 minutes we spun on ourselves, moving freely through the space, in a mobile dialogue, while other performances and happenings took place, coexisting in an ecology of creative flow.
This performance took place at Performance Weekend, a happening of happenings and performances in an alternative space in 2016 in Bonn, Germany.
The Performance Weekend was a happening Argia Werner and I organized in Bonn in June 2016. It was an experimental event where different artists participated in different performances, such as dance, dance theater, lecture, sound, music, and jams. The performances weren’t strictly scheduled and they were unpublished new works. Things could overlap, miscarry or nothing could happen. Spectators were invited to improvise and join other performances. It became a fluid event, almost a river.