DESCRIPTIONS

examples of descriptions of performative work as they will be published in a book

DAY 1 [1985]

I’m standing in a dark space at midnight in a circle of twelve lightbulbs, with in the middle a metronome, ticking off the seconds.
In thirty seconds I walk round the circle, past all lamps, screwing them on one by one, immediately followed by another round of thirty seconds in which I screw them out again.
During the first hour after midnight, I walk a few of these one-minute light rounds, with equal intermediate periods of darkness.
During the following hours I gradually increase the number of light rounds, in such a way that by midday the lamps are burning without interruption for one whole hour.
Then I start gradually decreasing the number of light rounds, so that by midnight it’s dark again.

 

RINGWAVE 1 [1986]

I’m walking at midday around a circle of concrete in the pavement of the park.
All around the circle, at equal distances from each other, twelve drummers are standing and playing a continuous drum roll on their snare drums.
Each drummer I pass plays as loudly as possible, while the drummer that is the farthest from me at that moment plays as softly as possible.
By continuously adjusting their individual volume to my position upon the line of the circle, the drummers make the sound go round the circle in waves, synchronized with my walking speed.
As the intensity of the daylight decreases, my walking speed also gradually decreases.
By the time it’s dark I’m standing still, and consequently the sound of the drums also stops moving.

 

RING [1990]

flyer for the festival theater aan de werf, utrecht, 1990, from the archive of horvers-connoisseur jos deuss

At each of the thirty locations in the city where, according to a seventeenth-century plan, the bastions of an oval-shaped city wall were to be located, a continuous drum roll will be played one day from sunrise to sunset.
The drummers begin at the earliest morning light with a soft drum roll, which gradually increases in volume during the morning. Then in the afternoon the volume of the drum roll gradually decreases again, eventually fading into silence as the evening falls.

LANGUAGE [2015]

The women, each of which speaks another language, are standing in a small circle facing each other.
One of them reads aloud, in her own language, a text about the sound of speaking.
The others try to speak along with her, softly and with as little delay as possible, by concentrating on the sound, intonation and lip movements made by the speaker.
Then the woman standing next to the first speaker reads the same text in her own language, accompanied by the other voices.
The individual voices and languages move in this way around the circle, connected by the softly humming echo of the imitating voices.

 

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PANORAMA

TOR LINE PANORAMA [2007]

Panorama of the Tor Line Yard in the port of Rotterdam on the 14th of May 2007 at the beginning of the evening twilight.

fragment 9-10 W-WN

Then my view to the west is completely blocked by the rear end of a large ship, the Hansespirit from Limasol, which is lying here next to me in the foreground, alongside the quay on the northern side, the same quay on which I’m standing.
The shining black painted stern rises metres high above the waterline. In it are large holes through which thick ropes run by which the ship is moored to bollards on the quay.
Above this, across the entire width of the ship, towers the bright white superstructure with staircase structures of red painted tubing, level with each storey. There are fluorescent lights under the stairs which rhythmically illuminate the entire rear side. The small windows are unlit. Attached vertically at an angle against the facade is an orange lifeboat. Right at the top is a radar construction that appears dark against the still just lighter sky.
Of the side of the ship I am only able to see a couple of cranes sticking out above the quay.