Theresa Zwerschke's "rocks like meteorites retain light" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on July 28th, 2023 as one of 19 AEROPONIC ACTS of WHERE THE MOON IS UP curated by Elisa Giuliani.

Here you will find the documentation of Theresa Zwerschke'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.

rocks like meteorites retain light

Theresa Zwerschke's question: Who said we can’t reinvent tradition?  

Theresa's introduction: Somewhere in a remote place on the other side of this mountain, a stage once got constructed in the shadow of the rocks. Where poisonous flowers were blooming on top of the glacier and traces of dried out rivers dissolved into another truth, a group of farmers claimed the spotlight to perform their own version of reality. Neither their traditions nor their imagination was innocent, but their acting of the liveliest concern.

In this play the alpine farmers theatre acts as a rehearsal for disidentification. Sculpting fractures into rock-hard role allocations, taking it from one side of the mountain to the other, directs nostalgia sideways into a tale of complicity, claustrophobia, uprooted morals and habitual disobedience. 

Giulia's report: Four performers await in the courtyard, the accordion is playing and the dresscode is rural-traditional-Bavarian-cute, as the audience get upstairs, the space is set up with some hay blocks and more performers sitting, and a table with a table cloth. A domestic scenography, a backdrop of two windows is pulled up over the real windows of sala comando. The accordion keeps playing all the way throughout then stops. A narrator comes in reading a script, while another plays spoons—social imagination (they say) “the scene is the scene, think of this scene conditioning memories, imagine yourself being part of that space and manufacturing it as a landscape.” Another performer comes in with an egg singing “Losing my religion” while two people come in stomping their feet and slowly dancing some simil-folk traditional dance, stomping hard on the floor, then sit on the table: “I’m so tired of doing the same thing over and over again—chicken (performer with puppet) chirps—tired of doing it this way”—chicken repeats, stomp dance, hard then lighter, the accordion plays: “Think of A history without guilt, hypocondria of the heart, think of a longing, all those part it wants to suppress conceal.” Two dancers bring in another performer sitting on a chair in front of the scenography windows “there was a time when everything was sooooooo….” (Sounding like a nostalgic grandma—funny). Narrator: “think of codes and patterns, social order bound by the shade of the mountains, hills constructed by piled up morals.” Performer comes in disruptive through the audience—“this is too cramped, with mountains everywhere, blocking the light (running around)—grandma intervenes—you know there was a time…—Losing my religion with an egg comes in again, dances. Accordion comes in again. Narrator: “set of pattern and rules full of meanings, each repetition a transmission.” Another performer (author) comes in saying: “traditions all left—and we have to come up with some new ones. We could just make them anew.” Then both chicken and egg are thrown away, the stage is destroyed and everybody dances—chicken shhs everyone and reads: “your imagination my friend is not innocent, … because spectators contextually you are all on stage”—gets off the table and bows to the audience. 

Phanuel Antwi The combination of the elements you used and the accordion had coordination, as the body—moving us along—was used ad an instrument to coordinate us. That song is one of my teenage hits, used in both singing and recitation, while the speaking voice becomes a song. There’s this idea that traditions are stable, and here we see folk culture, along with pop culture. You see the accordion almost in every uban station in Berlin, folk culture and that instrument change what we can produce. Can we reinvent tradition? It does change by context, and even the audience here it’s not homogenized. So thanks for letting us think through. 

Ayesha Hameed Thank you so much. You hold the room so well. Through the various body states, my first moment was when the chicken started speaking and made me think about laughter, that atomic moment, you know it in your stomach—that has the potential to hold the room. Chickens are domesticated but this particular one makes you rethink tradition. The way you were throwing the egg around I thought it must be boiled, then the energy coming from the rocks. These are all indicators for tradition, that is not this binary. When does it begin and where does it end? I think of all the costumes. We’re all performing all the time and the crescendo and holding the space; it was all really well staged. 

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi Is life a condition? Or rather a position through life. The scene is the scene, and it was the break into the scene, the noise, the life as a condition that can open up to some unpredictable effect. We like to see the details of this scene. Everything becomes very deep and visible, to break the possibility to see the unseen.

This allowed me to understand where I am, a very good start to move around the space. I feel the answer to your question is in your work—as folk is reinventing a template with poor means, how powerful it is to have poor means to reinvent again and again what appears as the same thing but it’s not, between revolution and reform. It made me think about Anastasia Sosunova’s rediscovery of folk techniques, and the Icelandic choreographer Erna Ómarsdóttir, working on stereotypes taken from horror movies, for instance metal concerts she revives through stereotypes.

About Theresa Zwerschke

Theresa Zwerschke's "" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on July 28th.

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

Theresa's introduction to 'rocks like meteorites retain light' in italiano