“The book, here and now, with its author and reader, either uttered or silent, is a performance. Bookperformance is a naked, fixed and textual body. If movement is impossible for a fixed body, to turn the impossible into the possible, it is necessary to attempt the weird and the absurd. In order to successfully attempt the weird and the absurd, you must possess not only a considerable intelligence but also an extraordinary courage for realizing and accepting the significant power of the weird and the absurd. To be able to do all these it is necessary to be a good reader”.
Bookperformance Manifesto, principle 1/7
Event: Body & Sound of I & Eye: Bookperformance.
Context: Europalia Arts Festival.
Venue: MUNT PUNT, Brussels.
Dates: 14, 18, 23, 30 November 2015.
Duration: 7 hours + 40 minutes on 4 different days.
Languages: Turkish, Dutch, French, English.
Text: Pieces from MyFace Book, Çiğdem y Mirol
Text Tranparency into Dutch: Çiğdem y Mirol & Geoffrey Herfts Mys, singer
Text Transparenct into French: Çiğdem y Mirol & Camile Pier, poet
Text Transparency into English: Çiğdem y Mirol & Özge Wambach, translator & Thomas Alkins, translator
Curated by: Çiğdem y Mirol.
Created by: Çiğdem y Mirol, and the inspired audience / readers.
Videos by: Mira Mathew.
Photograhps by: Dani Oshi.
Outcome: All artwork created during the performance was ephemere.
Outcome: Digital Exhibition of all the sequences of the event shown at MUNT PUNT 1-7 January 2016.
Body & Sound of I & Eye(U): Bookperformance events showcase how a book (as an object) becomes a book in its physicality. Readers / Audience are welcome to join the performance, which is a very nature of Bookperformance that is based on co-creation. Each Bookperformance event is unique in its nature, thus most of the happening is unexpected both for Çiğdem y Mirol and the others.
The challange in this specific Bookperformance happened was that it is was long durational event that happened on 4 different days on the same page that transformed each time with the intention of becoming a book that constructs and then deconstructs: 14, 18, 23, 30 November in 2015.
The construction of the the initial page that respresents “Structure in Ecriture” lasted 7 hours on the 1st day. This duration included the outfit (especially the mark) construction of the performance as well. Upon this page, each day’s Bookperformance took 40 minutes and passed through these stages:
0. Structure in Ecriture
1. Construction stones
2. Writing on earth
3. Telling in the air
4. Destructure of Literature
Below are some images from the 4 days.