I’m flapping my arms like a bird. While the audience enters the room, I continue until my arm muscles are too tired to go on. I stretch my left arm, pull the sleeve of my shirt back and cover my mouth. Immediately, I start to breathe, loud and rhythmically, until I nearly hyperventilate. Small feathers start to fall, hidden under my left sleeve. I take a tin from the floor and walk towards the audience. I stay very close to some of them and breathe in and out. The breath I exhale goes into the tin, which contains a pre-prepared red powder. With every exhale, my face gets more and more covered in this powder.

After a few repetitions I step in front of the audience and take a toy bird out of this tin. I start to move the bird gently until my right arm is shaking as much as possible. Now I take off my clothes except my underwear and step in a pile of feathers. On the backside of my legs I draw a line with a shaver and go over this line with red lipstick. I start moving and speaking. The movements are close to sign language and connecting different body parts with the sentences I speak. The sentences always start with: “I suppose…”

I go to a big, black wall behind me and write the sentence: “Enough with poems for afterwards” on the wall. I repeat this sentence and go to an inclined chair covered with earth. I step on the chair and jump directly towards the audience. I fall on the floor, stand up and go back to the black wall. I put my covered face on the wall and rub over the written letters. Afterwards, I take two rubber balls in each hand. Finally, I stand with my back to the audience, and start to flap again with my arms, but only for a short time; I let the rubber balls bounce. I leave the space.

Background:

For me, the idea of flying is one of the most radical I can imagine. It is a simple gesture which constantly contains the potential of change. Lately I have also become interested in situations which are frozen in time, like photographed moments. I am trying to involve the aspect of flying in this phenomenon.