#9: Unofficial Collaborators
I
I take notes and record what I hear; a clipboard in my hand, paper, carbon paper: ‘ … Haus 1, Haus 7 … 16 Million, traumatizing, traumatized, memory, language of difference, massive, disoriented, unimaginable, hide, watchmen, to leave, reception, psychology, psychological, disappear, organizing you, contest, humiliation, prison to prison, decency, dictator, difficulty, risk, surveillance, deviant, hostile dissident, betrayer, unofficial collaborators, armed organs …’I overhear a Grandfather speaking to a young man, speaking of a time when he was there. What he directly experienced we see in records and numbers, graphs and recordings, photos, an inundation of summaries and calculations, disembodied knowledge.
II
To hide – with you … the two of us whispering in the closet … I watch out of a crack in the doors … watch as people walk by … you and I … hearts all a flutter … your anxiety and fatigue and my …
Where and when I can, I hide … mostly in closets, they are the only place big enough to contain … I, hidden from, giddy with excitement, anxious to be found … out … into … these people, those … that I can hear, softly stepping through the museum, find me, their shock – jump back, run … away … hide … from … me … but, they don’t tell.
I am thankful to them – to those, who, do not tell.
It is dark humour to play with trauma, but it is one way to befriend a many-headed monster.
III
I analyse my text with symbols found in the museum. I assign meaning and movement. A score remains, a chorography for movement, a series of movements; invisible, subtle, hidden from view, hidden amidst the tourists, and us, the performers, from one another.
A secret, a whisper, a subtle gesture, empathy and lack, humility and grace … I offer you this performance, even – despite, the fact that you do not – cannot, see.
IV
A colleague joins me and wants to make his own written text; five symbols, an analysis, and a score hidden beneath. He leaves it with me. I could perform it – hidden amidst – I could try …
Photos: EWH, FvL