Nackte Erde
2020-22Space Poem
Naked Earth shows the dancer Laura Siegmund on a spacious wasteland in Berlin. Laura embodies the poem Die Nackte Erde by Adam (aka Sandra) Man. The video is a minimal Space Odyssey.
There is always something already there. Giving oneself to it, seeing it, hearing it, feeling it, a stone, a person, an animal, a thing. Turning to what is there, opening a space for the living. For me it's first writing, touching the environment with words. Laura, who memorized and embodies the poem The Naked Earth for the video and a live performance with the same title, says, "For me, the text is movement. Even in the first sentences of The Naked Earth, the movement goes elsewhere and toward others, comes back to a we and then to me. There is groping, stroking, touching, hearing and feeling. Over the skin and into the body. Into the bones, and into the heart. There is walking together, lying down, and sleeping. And finally, there is a movement into a past that is also a future."
There is always something already there. Giving oneself to it, seeing it, hearing it, feeling it, a stone, a person, an animal, a thing. Turning to what is there, opening a space for the living. For me it's first writing, touching the environment with words. Laura, who memorized and embodies the poem The Naked Earth for the video and a live performance with the same title, says, "For me, the text is movement. Even in the first sentences of The Naked Earth, the movement goes elsewhere and toward others, comes back to a we and then to me. There is groping, stroking, touching, hearing and feeling. Over the skin and into the body. Into the bones, and into the heart. There is walking together, lying down, and sleeping. And finally, there is a movement into a past that is also a future."
In the place where Laura is, not far from the six-lane road, the movement of the outdoor space is mainly noise. Traffic varies depending on the day and time, emergency vehicles and trucks are sometimes more, sometimes less dominant. Exposed at this point, the body moves at several limits and along transformations.
The concrete, with its heat now stored in summer, becomes a kind of nest. The floor is soft. It curves, it opens. All around is vastness, one sees into the distance. Depending on where you look at Laura from, her body is very small or very close, in any case there is an outstanding reference to vastness between exposure, fragility, freedom. The noise of the street is brutal and bordering on violence. One hears here at this point the inhumanity of technology, the intemperance, the too much.
The concrete, with its heat now stored in summer, becomes a kind of nest. The floor is soft. It curves, it opens. All around is vastness, one sees into the distance. Depending on where you look at Laura from, her body is very small or very close, in any case there is an outstanding reference to vastness between exposure, fragility, freedom. The noise of the street is brutal and bordering on violence. One hears here at this point the inhumanity of technology, the intemperance, the too much.
Laura moves close to the ground, out of the ground, in contact with it. She lies down, she straightens up, supports herself on her arms, kneels, squats, sits, straightens up further to half height, stands up, turns, widens her arms and opens her chest. She is still close to the ground even when she is already standing. From the ground, the movement expands and continues into the distance. There is a flow in her movements that is very slow and very still. The silence is the sound that she follows; that moves her. Her movements open a silence in the middle of the chaos of the noise. In the middle of the overwhelmingness there is a moment of resting in oneself. This resting in oneself is an independent movement. Laura gives herself to it.
With this surrender, Laura moves in unison with a sound that we, as those watching, experience through her movements. Probably we are not so much watching as listening to the movements. Laura's moving body is completely listening body. It listens so long and so intensely, it hears the movement of silence everywhere. Laura hears it in herself, in the movements of her body itself, she hears it in the text that is in her body and through this listening she opens the silence even in the intolerability of the noise. Laura does not oppose the noise with silence, but she opens the silence in the middle of the noise. At some point, the traffic becomes a stream, an indeterminate movement that does not attack us, but flows through us. The text Laura hears as she moves is very pure and very foreign - The Naked Earth. She hears it all the time. In some moments the sound channel of her body opens and she speaks.
Sandra Man + Laura Siegmund: Körper, Raum, Text, Publikum, Bewegung ︎
Sandra Man + Laura Siegmund: Körper, Raum, Text, Publikum, Bewegung ︎
Concept, Video: Adam (aka Sandra) Man
Choreography and Performance: Laura Siegmund
Choreography and Performance: Laura Siegmund
The video was shot in the frame of Aeon. Aeon is a production by Moritz Majce + Adam (aka Sandra) Man.
Co-produced by Tanznacht and Tanzfabrik Berlin.
Funded by the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe.
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Co-produced by Tanznacht and Tanzfabrik Berlin.
Funded by the Berlin Senate for Culture and Europe.
