Cornelia Isaksson's "Point it against gravity and watch it fly" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on July 29th, 2023 as one of 19 AEROPONIC ACTS of WHERE THE MOON IS UP curated by Elisa Giuliani.

Here you will find the documentation of Cornelia Isaksson's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Giulia Crispiani and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.

Point it against gravity and watch it fly

Cornelia Isaksson's question: At what frequency do we generate repulsive force?

Cornelia's introduction:  Set in Berlin in the spring of 1929, Point it against Gravity and Watch it Fly, portrays a vibrating subject, socially interwoven with the historical context of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft and the emerging KPO fraktion. The piece explores desires of belonging amidst a backdrop of political turmoil, tensions between individual freedom and societal longings, painting a vivid image of a time where boundaries and ideas were pushed and later deflated.

The present takes centre stage, moving in and out of the Past. The future, personified through musical elements, guides the narrative's direction. At the rim of the visible world, where reality and imagination intertwine, the collage weaves together moments of joy and despair, hope and disillusionment. It asks one's perception, to follow the disarray of experience, and to seek meaning within the fragments of a fractured world.

Giulia's report: In the front foyer, there are two musicians sitting a person standing and papers on the ground scattered, she’s reciting a story “Apparently I have a fear of the flow of money. (…) my analysts says it’s because of the father, but she also asks if I am also part of a radical group? (…) power, discipline, control, I guess it’s comfort to a lot of people (…) some calla it schizophrenia, but Dr. Fink reassured me that I just lack a sense of reality” The musician sings and flute plays. Two twins come through the door with heavy make up tap-dancing over the paperwork and picking it up and throwing it towards the audience. “I mean some (voices) are truly loud, they scream in order to exist (…) what’s worrying you the most (…) the frequencies imperceptible to most of the howling and drowning of Berlin? (…) the secret of Berlin lies in forgetting, forgetting until we do something worth remembering” Between reciting she lights a sigarette and then get dragged away. Flute leads us forward into the backyard. Everyone is wearing a costume and making a scene—hand-dyed and made. The paperwork on the floor was a script, proper theatre Sheakespeare like. They awaits on the box in the backyard and some speaker on the pulpit is speaking in oration, like in a rally, while some others sit and smoke cigarettes, asking questions at times. “A united left (…) against the rulers and the authority, against the power over the present, past and future, against the spiritual forces of evil.” Then they all stand up and move to the center of the stage, one stands on a log and recites—“the present is pressing is here to remind us that if we want a future there must be a past.” Everyone recite dramatically, proper acting. The guitarist starts to play upstairs and flute downstairs. Everyone cries.

Phanuel Antwi The end is near. That was a rotation—I am trying to understand what I just experienced, I don’t know what exactly. You giving us the clue of 1989, this institute trying to fix correct subjects who do not fit. I was struck by the vibrating subject, and the musical instruments. The refrain I kept on thinking with, past and present competing with the past and the future. The continuous past and present—the grammar—when you said—“there could be a past in the future”—there’s a changing present, this institution is able to hold the vibrating subject is living through. To end on this feels a bit of a wake of something—not in a sense of morning but being in the wake of something. The sigarette—we’re in Berlin, what it means to have fire and tobacco and all that in the midst of a great depression—these are all economic objects. What we’re in right now and what was in that moment, what the subject experienced. Then we have this revolutionary impulse—the angel of progress, we’re moving, there’s this accordion like instrument in this work, it makes a different sound. How to open and close in this revolutionary impulse? Your body began almost as if, when you’re being dragged we feel the resistance of the body to this past and future.

Ayesha Hameed There were a lot of mysteries in this piece. We have a lot of opposites here. Like any dreamscape is open to interpretation, the narration—deteriorate the external. The space you used was nice you were spatializing a mind map. You have to know how to be funny, and it’s hard to generate surprise, the narrator was snatched. I felt I was being lead to a series of tableaus with a sense of questioning each. It feels like a commedia dell’arte in its schizo version. The square and the music coming from above felt like hope. We’re taken through the architecture in a psychic state. Something like a character coming from above, uses the space very well and charges their affects very well. 1929 Berlin is Weimar, in this moment of destruction and utopian possibility: a large schizophrenia. Post pandemia, everywhere I go there’s this party feeling of being in Weimar, sense of freedom but in the victory of fascism, what about this now? All the normal tools of resistance are failing. Such a moment of possibility, and the seeds of its complete decimation.

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi I want to come back to what we saw until now. Representation of pain and the language of activism are the two poles of this piece. The way I saw you talking at the beginning, and the stage outside and the political act of reusing, reinhabiting the past, it’s a political process. It suggests a possibility to reinvent our position in the social sphere through our trauma, schizophrenia and broken social sphere. Depression is about past. You were overturning the singularity of depression.

What strikes me is that maybe this was the most theatrical piece, although you avoided the stage. This expectation of sound coming down the stairs, make me feel how this could continue forever, an enduring pieces lasting 8h or two days. This is all ending with an expectation that is not fulfilled, a commedia dell’arte with the mask and the rigid gestuality, the body as an object, your body is similar to an object. It translated very well an untransmittable experience. Berlin’s biennale title “the future is the present in drag”—the very beginning of the XXI century, although now we feel is one century ago. The reference to folk is repeating itself and evolving in an archeology, where to start from again? We can shape a new history by looking at the corners of history.

About Cornelia Isaksson

Cornelia Isaksson's "Point it against gravity and watch it fly" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on July 29th.

Find the overview of all nineteen AEROPONIC ACTS 2023 here: WHERE THE MOON IS UP 

In italiano: 

TITOLO: Puntate contro la gravità e guardate come vola

DOMANDA: A quale frequenza si genera una forza repulsiva?

Ambientato a Berlino nella primavera del 1929, Point it against Gravity and Watch it Fly ritrae un soggetto vibrante, socialmente intrecciato con il contesto storico dell'Institut für Sexualwissenschaft e della nascente KPO fraktion. L'opera esplora i desideri di appartenenza in un contesto di turbolenze politiche, di tensioni tra libertà individuale e desiderio sociale, dipingendo un'immagine vivida di un'epoca in cui i confini e le idee venivano spinti e poi sgonfiati.

Il presente è al centro della scena, muovendosi dentro e fuori il passato. Il futuro, personificato attraverso elementi musicali, guida la direzione della narrazione. Ai margini del mondo visibile, dove realtà e immaginazione si intrecciano, il collage intreccia momenti di gioia e disperazione, speranza e disillusione. Chiede alla percezione di seguire il disordine dell'esperienza e di cercare un significato all'interno dei frammenti di un mondo fratturato.