The meetings of the Bukta Paktop group take place around a table, as do so many. These get-togethers have taken on a life of their own and are in effect a performance taking place is a semi-private zone. This form of gathering has been extended into the realm of public performance, continuing to develop towards a double-bill, shown in Berlin at the end of April 2016.

We sent a delegation (and friends) on a sort of goodwill tour to receive guests at a large table-based gathering. Conversations flowed with drink that participants provided, food was prepared, exchanged, and presented, perhaps even eaten. It started off at Grüntaler9 with a meal of falafel, rice balls, and dumpling-style vegetable concoctions, offered to guests while various presentations were taking place, beginning with the deconstruction of the former installation—a prerequisite format of the space. The performances spilled out into the street and included neighboring shop fronts. Passers-by would linger and some even ventured into the meeting room itself.

The next day, we presented a performance connecting both venues by way of a trans-apparition collecting street garbage with specially prepared sticky hands. We wandered to and fro across the now invisible boundaries of the two Berlins to arrive in time for the next tea-party table laid out at GlogauAir. Here too there was cooking, even though it was originally billed as a kaffeeklatsch, but the Spanish influence in the Glogau residence catered for some sumptuous hearty Iberian tidbits.

Whereas the performances at Grüntaler9 were more impromptu intermingled affairs, the series was more structured at GlogauAir, but still interjected with interventions by various local visitors. Food and drink was plentiful and the format of gathering around a large table, from which the performance emanates, created a natural environment for burgeoning creativity. People felt at ease, enough to participate and intervene. Feeling like part of the group allowed participants to join in freely in a context which could be likened to family gatherings, pantomimes, or birthday parties with games and such. Yet this event had more gravitas, at moments becoming very quiet and pensive, while at others boisterous and noisy, even verging on unruly.

The performance acted as a sort of revitalization of Banquet Years by R. Shattuck, with obvious Dada references and akin to Filliou’s “Fête Permanante.” These realms of performance explore the concept of life and art as eternally related.