We will delve into the meaning of crying as a tool of resistance through movement. Exploring the qualities and gestures of crying and related concepts, we will experiment with giving body and space to our tears, however, they present themselves. We will confront their inherent power as an instrument of strength.
Please bring shoes and clothes in which you can comfortably move, as well as a bottle of water.
Wednesday, 28th June 2023, 8 pm, 116 @ Van-de-Velde-Bau, Bauhaus University Weimar
I despised this carpet from the moment I stepped on it, almost 3 years ago. But I had no choice, don’t you get it? It was the only space available for my hope-nothing-hope transition.
I am Nađa, whose name was filtered by the passport control devices on several occasions, which, in its new version – Nada, has been serving me for the past years due to the untranslatable Serbian letter đ. Nadja is a Slavic female name, known in Arabic as Nadia, and in Russian Надія – in both languages meaning hope. However, in an international context, my new name Nada is translated as nothing in most cases. Hope becomes nothing in this migration, nothing to hope for becomes my life, and hoping for nothing my ultimate goal.
Today, I woke up sad as if everything drowned. But I had no choice, don’t you get it? I am thinking about the projects. What if the Crying Classroom takes place in my own room, outpouring the tears absorbed on this ugly carpet?
Who covers the whole flat with a carpet? I still have not met the owner of the flat so I can ask him. Still, I am squeezing my eye lobes on its surface while waiting for a change (of the carpet’s color at least). As it is becoming wet, the gray dots of its texture transform to a dark blue color. I start liking it more. Should I cry more? Should I cry a river? An ocean? A carpet?
Today, my tears are labeled with pressure. The pressure of this moment, partially yesterday, inevitably this evening, and always of tomorrow. The pressure dissolves my body, takes control of my actions, hurts my mind, and makes me sick. The pressure of you, of the screens, people, days, objects, him, definitely her, and myself.
I am sitting on the floor of my room imagining the person that will inhabit it after me. Will they try to untangle the complex history of this carpet as well?
Diverse range of tear colors produced in response to different emotional states.
Yellow Teardrop:
The depths of sadness, a yellow teardrop is a sure sign of an individual’s ability to produce copious amounts of tears. This skill can be developed through years of intense emotional turmoil and is often seen in individuals who have been forced to endure countless romantic dramas. The yellow teardrop is characterized by its clear, almost transparent appearance, and is often accompanied by a sense of numbness or apathy.
Violet Teardrop:
The product of deep, all-consuming grief. This color is often seen in individuals who have suffered a significant loss, such as the death of a loved one or a divorce. Violet teardrops are thick, heavy, and often seem to cling to the skin. They contain a high concentration of stress hormones, indicating a state of emotional distress and great personal pain.
Orange and Red Teardrops:
The orange and red teardrops are a result of intensely passionate emotions, such as anger or intense frustration. These colors are rarely seen, as they require a level of emotional intensity that is difficult to sustain. The sharp, jagged edges of the red and orange teardrops are a testament to the raw power and uncontrollable nature of these emotional states.
Silver Teardrop:
The silver teardrop is a rare occurrence, seen only in those with a deep, reflective personality. These individuals often have a strong connection to themselves and their emotions and are acutely aware of their inner world. The silver teardrop is often reflective, catching and bending the light like a prism. It is a beautiful, fleeting remnant of the inner world that can sometimes be seen in a moment of emotional intimacy.
Golden Teardrop:
The golden teardrop is the pinnacle of emotional intensity. It is seen only in those who have experienced a state of emotional ecstasy, such as experiencing a sudden and life-altering realization or finding true love. The golden teardrop is characterized by its brilliant, luminous glow and is said to contain a high concentration of endorphins and other pleasure-inducing substances.
Pink Teardrop:
The pink teardrop is a rare and beautiful expression of love and joy. It is often seen in those who have experienced a deep, passionate love or who have been touched by a significant act of kindness. The pink teardrop is characterized by its soft, delicate appearance and is often accompanied by a deep sense of calm and contentment. It is a testament to the power of positive emotions and the ability of human beings to experience pure, unadulterated happiness.
The illusory world of self-optimization and self-realization seems to have no limits on social media and burns itself into our subconscious which increases inner insecurity. We bring the imparted half-knowledge into conversations, allow ourselves to be influenced by superficial opinions and thus become the robots of the data monopoly that is constantly outstripping itself.
The constant overflow of information results in overthinking. As if the head were constantly banging against the wall, it should reflect an almost painful movement of despair. To illustrate this desperation, i let a randomly moving “robot” roll on the ground like a crying child. The sounds of the engine reminds of a subtle screeching scream.
In order to visualize this chaotic overthinking i made use of an mechanism i found in a cat toy. For the first experiment i attached my hairs to one side of the hemisphere of this exact toy to include a physical connection to my body. The placement on the grand piano creates this nonsense pattern of sound, no control and no harmony. The movement only comes to rest when the battery is empty, while the battery symbolizes the battery of the devices themselves as well as our battery of stamina.
2021 8,5 x 8,5 x 8,5 cm Real hair, cat toy, acrylic lacquer, acrylic paint grand piano
Sun Yuan, b. 1972, Beijing; Peng Yu, b. 1974, Jiamusi, Heilongjiang Province, China
The nothingness of life mirrored in a programmed sequence of movements. Ever more hopeless, slower and “looking older”, the robotic arm erected by the artist couple Sun Yuan & Peng Yu in the Guggenheim New York has been assembling its blood-like life fluid since 2016. It is not without reason that people find themselves in the repetitive ‘lifestyle’ of this ignorant object.
The installation “Can’t Help Myself” offers space for reflection on our everyday life and penetrates to the question of the meaning of life. She combines birth, life and death in a playful way until the initially energetic and organic arm comes to a standstill in 2019. After such a long time of fighting, the arm seems to be coming to an end after all the exhaustion. The unease triggered by voyeurism leaves emotional traces in visitors, despite its lack of emotion.
“No piece of art has ever emotionally affected me the way this robot arm piece has. […] The arm slowly came to a halt and died in 2019, but with a twist – the bot, called a kuka servo, actually runs off of electricity, not hydraulics, so it was working its entire life towards something it didn’t even need, tricked by the system it was brought into. So now I’m crying over a robot 😭” comments the musician Kricked.
“According to the artists, the robot provokes an absurd, Sisyphusian view of current issues related to migration and sovereignty. The bloodstains collected in the cage are intended to remind of the violence resulting from surveillance and guarding of border areas.”
Andre Fraser – Official Welcome, 2001, Crying Part of Performance: 01:03:47-01:07:34
The original text of Official Welcome includes quotations, unattributed in the actual performance, from a number of contemporary artists and critics including Benjamin Buchloh, Gabriel Orozco, Damien Hirst, Tracy Emin and Kara Walker, as well as comments made by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Each time Official Welcome is performed, Fraser adapts small elements of her script so that the speech includes specific references to the institution involved in the event.
For the version performed in Hamburg, Fraser incorporated comments on her work written by Yilmaz Dziewior, the curator of the show at the Kunstverein 2003.
Both the content of the speech and the manner in which Fraser performs in the video satirise the conventions of formal art events.
The work places particular emphasis on the exaggerated praise often given to an artist’s work by critics and curators, and the arrogance or false modesty that may be offered by artists in return.
In 2012 Fraser suggested that Official Welcome is about: “the profound ambivalence that’s haunted so much twentieth-century art and particularly avant-garde traditions – the kind of love-hate relationship that artists have with art, its institutions, and the people who support them.”
Playing a role:
exploring the different roles played by individuals within the art world, as well as the purposes and policies of art institutions -> institutional critique.
Fraser does not explicitly inform the audience of the specific role she is inhabiting at any one time, the changes between different personae are signalled by distinct shifts in her tone, language and posture, often to comic effect.
For instance, while she is fluid and grandiose during some sections, at other times she stutters as if struggling to articulate her thoughts.
Nakedness:
Official Welcome can also be viewed within the history of performance art, especially in its claim that the performer is ‘an object in an artwork’. In stripping down to her Gucci underwear and high-heeled shoes, Fraser draws a parallel with Show 1998, a work by the Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft in which fifteen female models (ten wearing Gucci underwear and high-heels and five in only their shoes) were positioned in the atrium of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
In Official Welcome the provocations Fraser issues while standing in her underwear – including ‘kiss my ass’ and ‘kiss my tits’ – draw attention to how the female body has been depicted in art throughout history
“I’m not a person today. I’m an object in an artwork. It’s about emptiness.“
and raise questions about the status of women within the art world more generally.
The pain of displacement refers to the physical, emotional, and psychological distress experienced by individuals and communities who are forced to leave their homes, either voluntarily or involuntarily, due to a variety of reasons such as conflict, natural disasters, or economic hardships. Displacement can sometimes cause physical pain, particularly if people are forced to flee their homes abruptly or in dangerous conditions.
Moreover, the stress and trauma associated with displacement can also manifest in physical symptoms such as headaches, muscle tension, and sleep disturbances. The physical pain experienced by those who are displaced can be compounded by the emotional and psychological pain of losing their homes, possessions, and social networks, as well as the uncertainty and insecurity of their future. Feeling displacement can certainly lead to crying as it is a natural human response to emotional pain and distress. The experience of being displaced can be incredibly overwhelming and distressing and can lead to a range of emotions such as sadness, fear, anger, and despair.
“To be torn from home and country, from dear friends, from all that has been familiar and beloved, to leave one’s own land and enter a strange and hostile land, – this is a great and bitter sorrow.” Bertrand Russell, philosopher and writer.
Why “Home” is not happening?
Displacement and sense of place are closely related. Sense of place refers to the emotional and psychological attachment that individuals have to a particular location, which can be shaped by a variety of factors such as cultural, historical, and social connections. Displacement involves being forced to leave one’s home and community, which can lead to a loss of sense of place and identity.
When people are displaced, they often experience a sense of disorientation and disconnection from the places and people they know and love. They may feel a sense of longing for their old home and community, and struggle to adapt to their new surroundings. This can be particularly difficult for individuals who have strong ties to their sense of place.
“Homesickness is a kind of vertigo of the soul, an intense longing for a place or a time that may never have existed.” Sabrina Orah Mark
Let me cry a river…
We may cry when we do not feel at home because feeling a sense of home is often associated with feelings of comfort, safety, and familiarity. When we are in a place where we don’t feel like we belong or where we feel out of place, we may experience a range of emotions such as anxiety, stress, and loneliness. These emotions can be overwhelming and difficult to manage, and crying can be a way for us to release and express these feelings. Additionally, feeling like we don’t belong can be associated with a sense of loss or grief, particularly if we have recently experienced a major change or transition in our lives such as moving to a new city or country, or losing a loved one, OR sometimes, all of them at the same time!
When we experience emotional pain, our body and mind may respond in various ways. Physically, we may feel tension or discomfort in our muscles, changes in our breathing or heart rate, and other physical symptoms. Mentally, we may feel overwhelmed, anxious, or preoccupied with our thoughts and emotions. Crying can be a way to release this tension and express the emotions that we are experiencing.
“Home is where the heart is, but what if your heart is in pieces?” Emma Bleker
This quote captures the struggle of trying to make a place feel like home when you are going through emotional pain or difficult circumstances. It highlights the fact that feeling at home is not just about the physical space or surroundings, but also about the emotional and psychological connections we have with that place. If we are struggling with emotional pain or disconnection, it can be difficult to feel at home even in a familiar setting, and we may need to work on healing and rebuilding those emotional connections before we can truly feel at home again.
We get out of our mother’s womb with a cry, a scream with tears as a declaration of the beginning of a life. Tears accompany our lack of language. Do we want to get out of the womb? Do we want life to enter our bodies? Why are we screaming into the ears of those who decided to bring us to life?
We, the babies, stretch our language into tears. Demanding food, love, & care. How could we tell our caregivers otherwise? How can we reach our existential needs when language is absent? We wail and cry and weep. Accompanying our tears with different pitches according to our needs. It’s our protest against this birth.
Babies crying is the managing stimulant of parental behaviors. Multiple developmental studies show that the pitch of a baby’s cry is a high factor in determining the response of the adult. It provides the listener with the “real” information behind the cry through breathing cues. Short cries with short pauses produce stimuli of high urgency unlike long cries with long pauses.
However, looking at the crying of a baby from a merely evolutionary lane is reductive. Crying as a mere language for food and physical wellbeing seems narrow. The baby is crying for more than materiality, it’s crying for love and care. When we perceive the family and community in a reduced form of a nuclear family, we would perceive the baby’s cry as a longitude for the maternal need. However, a cry can stretch beyond our narrow understanding of modern families. Our understanding is defined by the maternal connection to an infant that bestows the job of parental raising on one or two humans. When in other times – babies were cared for by communities rather than rendered into the heavy weight of one individual duty.
A baby cry is also a yearning for touch. It’s a yearning for a physical bond of care, to be contained in a body and to be carried for safety. Perhaps it’s the longing for return to a womb, an objection towards birth. A healthy baby in hunting/gathering peoples and primates alike, is rarely off the body of its mother or another group member. The bond might be so tight that in some primate species, dead infants are carried by their caregivers for hours even days after their death. Crying among infants is rare in cultures where they are carried constantly by their caregivers.
A crying baby is also a demand for milk, a role that has been rendered to mothers in our modern days. However, not all mothers could fulfill this need for their baby. History is filled with communities sharing milk between lactating women and babies within that community. Creating a milk-sharing system that is embedded with negotiation when the need of infants and the presence of lactating females. It’s a relationship of reciprocity beyond the nuclear family.
Perhaps a baby’s cry is an indication of our understanding of families and their constructs. A demand for reflection on our understanding of motherhood and its heavy demand. Is the parenting role bestowed on two individuals or shall it expand to constructs beyond that? A cry is to be listened to rather ignored. An indication to be read as a societal symptom to reconstruct through, rather than a voice to be silenced within the easiest material routes. Are babies telling us something? Do we, the adults, need to listen to what these cries are carrying as screams to return to a better reality?
Adults carry this confident conviction of understanding realities within better lenses than babies. Babies don’t understand the current world, which can be an advantage of a different lense to look through. Infants have the instinctive route of listening (and demanding) their needs without rendering the modern world through those needs. They give us better routes of imagining alternative realities to the constructs we reside in. We have a lot to learn from a baby’s cry.
References:
Nicholas S. Thompson, Carohn Olson, & Brian Dessureau. (1996). Babies’ Cries: Who’s Listening? Who’s Being Fooled? Social Research, 63(3), 763–784.
Andy Warhol (American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker, 1928-1987). (undated). Children [Gelatin silver print]. Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University; Gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. https://jstor.org/stable/community.18153933
Cory, Fanny Y. (n.d.). Tragedies of Childhood [Black and white print]. Modern Graphic History Library, Washington University in St. Louis. https://jstor.org/stable/community.16502787
Andy Warhol (American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker, 1928-1987). (undated). Mother and Child [Gelatin silver print]. Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, University of California, Los Angeles; Gift of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. https://jstor.org/stable/community.18069526
unknown. (1960 Feb). Calilica Alega and her newborn son Rogers in her hospital bed at the Veterans Memorial hospital in the Philippines. Two doctors and a nurse stand at the side of the bed, looking at the child who was named for Edith Rogers. [Non-projected black and white photograph]. https://jstor.org/stable/community.12264199
Throughout my life, both grandparents on my mother’s side lived just 10 minutes away from us, in their own house with a small garden and a chicken coop. They visited nearly every Sunday for dinner, took us on trips into the woods, walked us home from kindergarten, nursed us back to health when we were sick, let us watch TV shows that we weren’t allowed to watch at home, and generally spend so much time with us that it’s hard to compress every memory into a list of activities.
My grandfather passed away in 2018. His death was slow and somewhat foreseeable, he was diagnosed with cancer and spend the last weeks before his passing at the hospital in the palliative ward. My grandpa’s death was the first time in my life that I experienced genuine grief.
One of my strongest associations with my grandpa is his garden, which is also the ground on which my parents build our house on. He spent nearly every day, whether it was sunny, rainy, or snowy, in that garden while my grandma played with us on the terrace. I wanted to preserve his memory somehow, so I interviewed my grandma about him and recorded the conversation we had one sunny afternoon in July 2022.
My grandmother died on the 13th of February 2023. While her death was sudden and completely unexpected, the loss I felt was in a much calmer and quietly excepting way. I found my reaction to her death very confusing, my therapist told me that this can often occur when one had a good relationship with the person that passed. I remember my grandma as an open, friendly, and fundamentally good person, one you could talk about anything or nothing with, who accepted you as you are and that was just generally such a light in other people’s lives.
Editing the interview now was a sometimes sad, sometimes funny, and often slightly bizarre experience: normally, when I listen to interview recordings, it is pretty clear to me which oddities of a voice I can leave in to give the recording more character and which ones should be cut. But because I was so used to hearing my grandma’s voice, it became really challenging to decide what to cut and what not. I took the sound clips from the beginning and the end of the audio while walking to the cemetery where they are buried, the first one when I took the interview with my grandma and the second one a few weeks ago. While these audio bites sound extremely similar, a lot of tears were shed between the first and last recording.
in the bottom left: my grandparents, near the cemetery they are now buried in
Erinnerungen an traumatische Erfahrungen mischen sich mit Momenten von Demut, Freude und Erleichterung in paradoxem Weinen. Der 24fache Druck des Zeugnisses vermittelt einerseits das stetig im Alltag präsente Bewusstsein an das traumatisierende Ereignis, gleichzeitig vermittelt es auch die Unklarheiten traumatischer Erinnerung, sowie die Scham des Erzählens eigenen Erlebens, indem das Erlebte nur fragmentarisch zu lesen ist und Brüche beinhaltet. Die Spuren des Druckers, die einerseits aus einem Fehler im Versatz und anderseits aus Spuren am unteren Rand des Blattes bestehen, verweisen auf die Spuren des Ereignisses – auf all das, was unbekannt, ungesagt und ungezeigt ist.
Am 17. Dezember 2011 verstarb Kim Jong-il, der ehemalige Diktator Nordkoreas, an einem Herzinfarkt. Sein plötzlicher Tod löste in der nordkoreanischen Bevölkerung tiefe Trauer aus, die bis heute anhält. Einige Menschen gaben an, über Kims Tod trauriger zu sein als über den Tod ihrer eigenen Eltern. Dies zeigt, wie stark die Verbundenheit mit dem Machthaber in Nordkorea ist.
Kim Jong-il, der Sohn des Staatsgründers der Volksrepublik Korea Kim Il-sung, der ebenfalls gottgleich verehrt wird, hatte die Macht von seinem Vater übernommen und führte das Land mit harter Hand. Unter seiner Herrschaft herrschte eine Atmosphäre aus Angst und Misstrauen. Die Nordkoreaner wurden darauf konditioniert, in Kim Jong-il und später in seinem Sohn Kim Jong-un “lebende Götter” zu sehen. Als der Tod von Kim Jong-il bekannt wurde, brach in Nordkorea eine Welle der Trauer aus. Viele Menschen weinten und trauerten um den verstorbenen Machthaber.
Doch die Trauer in Nordkorea war nicht nur Ausdruck der Liebe und Verehrung für Kim Jong-il, sondern auch eine Notwendigkeit: Die nordkoreanische Bevölkerung musste zeigen, dass sie wirklich trauerte, um nicht verhaftet oder getötet zu werden. In Nordkorea herrscht eine Kultur, bei der Bürger sich selbst und ihre Mitmenschen kritisieren müssen, um ihre Loyalität gegenüber dem Regime zu beweisen. Wer sich nicht an die Regeln hält oder auch nur den Anschein erweckt, illoyal zu sein, kann schwerwiegende Konsequenzen erleiden.
Der nordkoreanische Geheimdienst, bekannt als “Staatssicherheit”, greift in die Privatsphäre der Bevölkerung ein. Es gibt Berichte über Überwachung, Spionage und Einschüchterung von Bürgern, die sich kritisch gegenüber dem Regime äußern oder auch nur den Verdacht erregen. Diese Einschüchterungstaktik dient dazu, das Klima der Angst aufrechtzuerhalten. Das ist für eine Diktatur unerlässlich, um Unterwerfung zu garantieren.
Kim Jong-il und sein Sohn Kim Jong-un haben die nordkoreanische Bevölkerung unter anderem durch Propaganda und Paraden manipuliert, um die Macht der Kim-Dynastie zu festigen und zu erhalten. Sie schufen eine alternative Realität, die von einer Außenwelt abgeschottet ist und in der die Regierung die Kontrolle über die Informationen und Wahrnehmungen der Menschen hat.
Der Tod von Kim Jong-il zeigt, wie stark da Regime das Leben der nordkoreanischen Bevölkerung kontrolliert.
Jiyeon Lee and Jethro Mullen: North Korea denies punishing citizens for not mourning enough, in: CNN, 16.01.2016, https://www.cnn.com/2012/01/16/world/ [Abruf: 13.4.2023]
