段英梅 · Yingmei Duan

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Sleepless

Photos

Duration: 14 days

“BoulevART”, Kunstherbst Berlin, Germany

Photographer: Juergen Bernhard Kuck, Abhishek Singh and Chenyue Zhou

Live performance installation

The performance-installation deals with the cycle of life and death.

Since 2003 I’ve been experimenting for the duration of my exhibitions and realizing performances or performance - installations. In the same way, during this exhibition, I improvise in a period of 14 days diverse subjects that deal with this theme.

This work is a „work in progress“; I develop during the duration of my exhibitions different performances or performance installations. Each day I create a concept that is flexible and can change. For more information, one can consult a role of paper hanging on the wall, which contains sketches and notes.

The visitors not only experience a live performance installation, but they can see the realized works that are in the photo documentation.

---24th September 2007

I am completely without power and I run slowly around the people. I am in a melancholic dream state. When the public comes, I sometimes interact with them.

---25th september 2007

The paper snake connects all 5 beds. I sit on one of them and write my memories.

---26th September 2007

I am in bulky household waste of beds and other elements. I talk in a confusing way about my organs. “My brows are under my eyes, my heart is beside my gall bladder…” One can recognize a monitor among the garbage, where you see me as a clown figure.

---27th September 2007

Everywhere in the area is rubbish and it looks chaotic. I dance among the garbage like a dead person. One experiences a feeling of the end of the World.

---28th September 2007

We experience a hospital situation. Because of the stripes on the floor several rooms appear. I walk as an insane person in a room. I ask the public: ”Have you seen Sarah's daughter?”

---29th September 2007

”Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to experience a terrible situation! The Mueller family was murdered yesterday at night by terrorists…”

30th September 2007

Cooperation with Juergen Bernhard Kuck

The beds look as they were enchanted. I sit with opened legs on one bed, with a devil head in front of my vagina.

---1st October 2007

This performance installation is based on my reflective personality, because I always ask myself lots of questions. In the exhibition one sees post-its with question marks pasted on the objects. When the audience comes, I do interactive performances with the post-its.

---2nd October 2007

One enters the installation and one is in a museum. Every object is covered with old plastic foils and I’m the museums guide. I speak in third person about the exhibition of the artist Yingmei Duan.

---3rd october 2007

All beds are arranged as if they were on the sea. I am in the water and I fold small paper boats while I’m singing a children's song.

---4th October 2007

A flood has destroyed the installation. Everything is damaged and I’m lying dead under the water. There is only a rabbit that has survived; one sees it on the monitor.

---5th October 2007

Cooperation with Mi Ander

Cemetery, peace courtyard, God´s acre. We both are in an intermediary situation. Yingmei Duan (2010-2044) is not born yet, Michael Pfänder (1967-1994), alias Mi Ander is already dead. Every once in a while we abandon our graves and make a journey around the cemetery. From time to time we speak in a foreign, incomprehensible language.

---6th October 2007

Cooperation with Mi Ander

An island surrounded by mountains and water. A place of security or of isolation, an uterus-like situation. Each of us has its own access to the world. Each of us does what seems to be important and we play tarot.

---7th October 2007

One sees a lot of white islands distributed on the room. On one island a reincarnation has taken place.