GENERAL PRACTICE
Performance Primmersdorf 2013

Elisabeth von Samsonow performs GENERAL PRACTICE amid an installation of sculptures of different sizes—most of them stringed and therefore resonant—that are arranged into a sort of playground. The transitory element of the setting is underscored by the air bubble foil that is lying around, indicating that the sculptures are not yet fully unpacked and, at the same time, about to be repacked. Elisabeth von Samsonow performs in a grass dress and wig. She first makes contact with the sculptures by standing still amid them like a statue. Or rather, she relates to the trees which is what her sculptures are, too. Then she starts playing on her sculptures, plucking the strings or stimulating them with one or two double-bass bows, transplanting as a queer being between woman and tree to the same degree that the trees transplant toward her. Activating the TRANSPLANT ORCHESTRA, Elisabeth von Samsonow sings and recites radically regressive sentences. Regression here serves to mark out the line of transplantation going from woman to animal, from animal to plant, from plant to mineral, but not in the sense of Freud’s death drive, but of transgeneric communication. The sounds produced by the trees have less to do with music than with the fact that the bodies of the trees get beyond themselves, become ecstatic and extend into space, fusing with the voice of the artist of whom the same is true. The rest follows from this.
P.S. The trees contain a certain quantity of SI14, which they need (among other materials) to build up their structure. They therefore are a kind of pre-industrial computer with a highly efficient memory, particularly when it comes to storing the patterns produced in them by external stimulation.

 (Translation: Michael Hall)

GENERAL PRACTICE,                                          General Practice - Hybrid Knowledge
performance Primmersdorf 2013                            lecture performance Generali Foundation 2013