While talking about experiences of transition, this essay itself is in a state of transition. It is moving and traveling. Starting as a lecture performance at the Sandberg Instituut, different parts of this essay have been read in Amsterdam during the past months since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Each time, fragments were replaced, characters added. According to the artist Philippine Hoegen, performance can be described as a form of versioning.
I want to start with a Soviet game called Sekretiki , [2] which translated means Little Secrets. Children dig a hole in the ground, throw in everything colorful they can findβblooming flowers, shiny stones, shimmering doll clothesβthen place a piece of glass over the pit, cover it with earth, and run away.
Only when they feel unobserved, they return, expose the spot again, and view their secret treasures through the glass. Things that were once objects disappear in order to, later, become images. Objects which were not considered as having value for the future were hidden in the present while they remained in a past which sometimes can be a deep pit.
I am searching for objects but I cannot find any; I am surrounded by images from somewhere else, by white porcelain without traces of history. Thinking of porcelain, I am thinking of white porcelain. I am thinking of my parents selling all their porcelain, books, and belongings at the 7km Market in Odesa before moving to Germany with three of those plaid plastic bags. Three aesthetic ballerinas with porcelain skin, stretching their legs, are now standing alone on a chest of drawers behind the staircase in a room with big windows facing a small garden with a Japanese maple.
