Zakra

2004
Site-specific intervention
Durational performance

Performance: Mariella Greil

In 2004, I performed the tableaux vivantes Zakra in the frame of open space conference entitled Was ist Kunst? (What is Art?) in the chapel of castle Hernstein. Zakra was a site-specific intervention, staging a nude body. Velvet drapery reminiscent of Baroque times played at seductive contemplation of the female body, revealing a hint too much – given the sacredness of the catholic chapel space and the church’s moralism in relation to bodies and speech acts of women. A touch of celebratory candlelight and the scent of incense performed the function of slowing time, halting movement. Still-act, tableaux vivantes, with subtle, hardly discernible shifts of position. A video showed me dancing in nature, in the ruins and remains of an abandoned home, reconquered by wild nature. It was projected onto the skin of my back, serving as projection surface. One wit(h)ness at a time was offered a kneeling chair for her/his immersion in a nude body, facing away from the wit(h)ness. The durational performance took three hours. I recall having passed a variety of modes of being in contact – ‘behind my back’, so to speak – during this performance, though no direct mutual gaze was ever exchanged. Affects circulating in the sphere of the holy space ranged from coyly cast glances to penetrating looks. I sensed each wit(h)ness differently, each encounter entailing singular potential to shift the atmosphere of the space. There was a wide range of responses: from gentle and esteeming approaching of the performative situation to embarrassing profanation. I remember how the indirect, exposing relational density shifted in the space, in which moments intensity rose because of overstretched dramaturgical logics, constituting the place of the chapel anew, for another kind of contemplation than the prayers usually spoken at catholic church services