Michael Post
Duet with virtual twin
Michael Post’s reception of the video by Andreas Sorg
“EX PULS II for two identical singers after a poem by Kornelia Koepsell”, performed by soprano Carola Schlüter
Dear Carola,
Your video inspires me. Coming from the self chosen solitude of the vast landscape of the Corbières of France, I watch your performance. Contemplatively attuned, I experience the two voices, gestures and actions of the identical singers as a magical event with a strangely poetic intensity. The garden as a stage set enriches the enraptured atmosphere of the congenially transformed poem. Symbolizing the strange change, the scene of the event is transformed into an ideal place for your metamorphic art.
In the presence of homely vintage garden furniture, which obviously does its job as „objets trouvés“, you unfold the grace of a high priestess without a religious mission. The silvery shimmering leaves of the arbor-like trees and bushes indicate a waving breath that does not stop at the wind permeable enclosure of the garden. Some lovingly arranged potted plants signal a kind of domesticated nature along the way, which suggests the proximity of enclosed spaces and thus awakens the expectation of an approaching consumption of coffee and cake, as the crowning glory of Sunday idyll. However, this turns out to be deceptive.
Rather, the setting of the ongoing scenario testifies to an acausal storyline that is characterized by the magic of mystery and seems to evoke the image of an in-between world. Your action in front of a fictitious audience in three dimensional space takes place in a linear chronological sequence. However, the detailed structured conception of the performance on set unfolds its pictorial impact as a result of the subsequent cut-up process, which enables the simultaneity of formerly successive sequences of action. In the pictorial being, this reality mutates into a meticulously collaged grotesque. The multimedia composition condenses into that bizarre game that leads to a fascination of the unfathomable.
In two part solitude, the simultaneous behavior of the two identical singers is now celebrated. In minimalist expressiveness, the strict accentuations of the singing, facial expressions and gesticulation achieve an almost hypnotic effect. In the paradoxical duplication, the presence in our living space appears in the manner of a carnivalesque juxtaposition or in the alternation of an approaching painful abyss into nothingness.
Towards the end, the two high priestesses meet, kneeling opposite. Succinctly, they let the permanently present red and black cube slide back and forth on the bench in between, then it goes over the Styx before the identical singers disappear into each other’s chiaroscuro. I am pleased that my cube is present in this imposing artwork as a “Mac Guffin”.
Best Regards,
Michael