One month residency & site-specific performance presentation at Sub Rosa Space an independent platform for performance.
Invited and curated by Macklin Kowal.No Silver bullet, the title of the performance means there is no simple solution to a complicated problem. I thought of this title because I wanted to perform the rose.
The rose is a symbol of female empowerment, creativity and love. When I was invited to perform at Sub Rosa space I was inspired by the term Sub Rosa and tried to embody it in a lyrical way.
Sub rosa literally means "under the rose" in New Latin. Since ancient times, the rose has often been associated with secrecy. In ancient mythology, Cupid gave a rose to Harpocrates, the god of silence, to keep him from telling about the indiscretions of Venus.
I invited my partner to perform with me, who wrote on a paper and I transferred it on the floor:
“Unlike a flower that burns we reborn from the ashes united and strong but vulnerable like the first flame, like a storm of stars, lightning up the darkest night”.The two performers during the action are playing with each other and with the rose in front of the spectators in order to unfold fragments of this secret-archetype of femininity, love, violence and share it with them in a consensual, safe “sub rosa” space.
Anaïs Nin in her diaries and fiction books is expressing her individual vision of feminine sexuality where the fragmentation of self that is involved in the search of love, is profound. “Dressed in red and silver, she evoked the sounds and imagery of fire engines as they tore through the streets, alarming the heart with the violent accelerations of catastrophies; all dressed in red and silver, she evoked the tearing red and silver cutting a pathway through the flesh. The first time he looked at her he felt: everything will burn!” (Anaïs Nin A spy in the house of love)
On Mobile album/international 03, review on performance-body-fiction, Sophie Taam writes on Anaïs Nin:
Born in 1903 Anaïs Nin was, albeit without realising it, a precursor of Fluxus performances.This word must be understood in its primary anglophone meaning of “theatrical representation” when Maureen Freely (in the Guardian in 95) uses it to list Nin alongside Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan and Zelda Fitzgerald as key women who ”reinvented the modern erotic female, and did so through performance.”Helen Tookey, in “Anaïs Nin, fictionality and femininity”,writes that “it is precisely Nin’s performance — both textually and extra-textually —in the role of the erotic, rebellious, unfettered woman that so many women have responded to”: a kind of role beyond the theatre stage, extending to life itself.For a very long time, Nin’s writing was not recognised because it does not conform (and, to be more precise, it is too “feminine”) Nin says: “Criticism breaks me down because […] I feel handicapped. I feel I am making superhuman efforts to dominate not only a language that is not mine but to say things I should have said with music and dancing.” And also: “ Writing is not enough. I need to use my body.” Special thanks to Macklin Kowal and Vasilis ApostolopoulosPhotos by Alexandra Masmanidi