Dark organic soil formed by the decay of plants over a very long time, 2021
Performance documentation installation
Video, 1’1’’19’’’; glass plate, petri dishes, milk, cocoa, tahina, lemon, cumin, garlic powder, boiled chickpeas, 35 cm x 75 cm; The letter to the audience, print out on two A4 papers with signature
Hello, this is Mk.
Here you can see the video documentation and the materials of the performance that I realised during the pandemic in August 2020. In the course of the performance, these materials were brought into contact with our bodies by spreading their scent into the space and made each of our experiences both collective and unique.
I hope that your experience will be akin to the memory of the experience steaming from the moment of performance. Therefore, if you wish you may follow the instructions below in the suggested order:
The performance is about to start. This place is an old cocoa factory.
Hoping to recall the memory of this space to the present moment, we will start with cocoa.
Please, slightly lift the lid of dish number 1 up and take it in your hands.
First, smell the inside of the lid, if you can not smell the scent properly because of your mask, bend over and smell the cocoa inside the dish.
Did you smell it?
Now, gently put the lid back on the dish.
In the video, it is now the time when I start crushing chickpeas while letting the floor absorb them, then the smell of chickpeas begins to spread.
You can lift the lid of the dish number 2 and smell it, or just bend over again and smell it from the dish.
Now, once more please gently put the lid back on the dish.
Now I start to crush the garlic; Yes I know; it is an elusive and unique smell.
Please, lift the lid of the dish number 3 and smell it. If you inhaled the smell, you can put the lid back.
It is time for sesame.
Under the lid of the dish number 4, there is the essence of sesame: it has oil and tahini inside.
Lift the lid, smell it and please put it back.
And the amazing Lemon, one of the most beautiful and incomparable scents.
Now, I rub the lemon on the floor, the scent spreads as the lemon peels mark off the floor.
I run my fingers into the lemon where it gets thinner and transfer the juice onto the floor with my bare hands.
Try to hear the voices and inhale the fragrance inside the dish number 5.
Oh the Mediterranean.
The Lemon gardens in the back.
We are getting closer to the end.
If you are still here and you have come to the 52nd minute and 27th minutes of the video, please watch how the cumin particles fly in the air and smell that bitter yellow color for me as well.
The end.
The tale tells about the wolf woman's milky colored eyes, and -in the video - this is when I place two round milk ice cubes for cocoa eyes.
The eyes are melting slowly; they first blend with cocoa, then gradually merge with the other fragrances.
The sounds of the bells pull us somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.
This is how the performance ends.
My phrases for you also come to an end at the present moment.
I would like to thank you, as I wrote this letter to you, it transformed something inside me, and I hope that somethings have been transformed in you.
Hope to meet you in some other time and some other space.
Mk
