After spending the summer in 2018 at the former Linda Mary Montano Art/Life Institute residency in Kingston, NY, I felt incredibly connected to Linda Mary Montano’s approach to performance art and to life. So I chose her as the inspiration for my next performance. I was excited to honor her lifelong research on spirituality and her generous openness to a diversity of religious-based healing techniques. In the durational, three-hour performance, I displayed an installation of religious cards collected by Montano and juxtaposed them with personal objects from communist East Germany. I grew up in the suburbs of East Berlin, and my personal history has profoundly influenced my time-based work, in which I explore belief systems throughout history, ideologies, the notion of belonging, sociopolitical transformation, the trauma of freedom, and collective memory.

I invited the audience to enter one-on-one experiences based on poetic touch, somatic healing techniques, and hypnotic mind states, where they trace nostalgia, the subconscious, the notion of time, cognition, and empathy with compassion. I felt incredibly touched that the performance was surrounded by original video and sound art and objects by Linda Mary Montano. The experience of meeting beautiful souls in such a profound and deeply connected way was movingly illuminating.