Berlin, December 15, 1995

My performance in Hamburg was about the manual deletion of words. With tools like a ink-killer, pencil, ink, tip-ex and eraser I deleted words like I, me and my in my text. The title of this piece was "the patience of paper" a still-live with me trying to get away from myself literally as I worked with text. Parallel to this I had a little program running on the screen with text, the same text that I was working on, running as if I was writing it over and over again and letter per letter appearing on the screen. During this time a printer was constantly printing out new text that I was re-pairing, correcting or maybe adjusting by deleting. It might sound boring, it might have been boring, but people watched partially for a long time. when you pick a simple task and perform it as if you would create an image with yourself and the task, so you perform the task and the task is your piece, and there's this silent dialogue between yourself and this particular task that you pick to perform, then something else happens with your audience. The audience picks up your absorbency and gives you energy to continue as well as they take you're energy to calm down. I am interested in that moment, when the task becomes an endurance, when you're body starts to completely perform this simple task and your mind concentrates on it as if it was the most difficult thing to do. You start to realize the difficulties in the task and you get closer to reality. I like this moment when people stop for a couple of minutes and suddenly they are in the middle of an image. I like it when I feel like Sisyphus on top of the hill and I try to extend the moment between happiness and frustration, before my stone rolls back down. When I attach a pearl, sewed a sentence, or even wrote a letter or left one of my dresses to create a new one. Is Sisyphus task really in worthless?
When I see a butterfly hopping from flower to flower this happens to me. I get slightly jealous of their ability to just work enough that they can live and being completely focused and concentrated of what they are doing. I love to go into nature and watch a flower grow or an ant trying to schlep a pin. It feels like it's their meaning of life and there is no decision whether this is the way to happiness or not. I stop and watch for minutes and try to learn from them. relaxation is to really do one thing at a time, being completely absorbed in it and not having to think about what comes next?