- Diese Veranstaltung hat bereits stattgefunden.
Gravity and Grace
28. Juli 2023 @ 19:00 - 21:00
Free
Gravity and Grace
A play to be read outdoors
Written by Ana Wild and Johanna Markert, with an afterword by Leila Anderson
Performed by Bully Fae Collins, Yael Mor, Steven Warwick, and Ana Wild
Co-commissioned by anorak and Diver Festival Tel Aviv
Friday 28 July 6pm | Performance
followed by drinks at anorak
Parkanlage Teilestraße, 12099 Berlin-Tempelhof
Saturday 29 July 7pm | Performance
Hopscotch Reading Room
Kurfürstenstr. 14 Haus B (Yard), 10785 Berlin-Schöneberg
Sunday 30 July 6pm | Performance
Görlitzer Park, 10997 Berlin-Kreuzberg
Limited seats. To attend the performance and receive the exact location, please RSVP at: hello@anorakanorak.com
May I disappear in order that those things that I see may become perfect in their beauty from the very fact that they are no longer things that I see.
To see a landscape as it is when I am not there. . . .
When I am in any place, I disturb the silence of heaven and earth by my breathing and the beating of my heart.
(Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 1952)
In her book Gravity and Grace, French activist, philosopher, and mystic Simone Weil (1909-43) coined the term ‘décreation’, describing the desire to empty one’s self in order to make room for something beyond our perception, both reaching into and transcending the personal. Décreation is a spiritual tool, a kind of technology which enables us to contain the un-reasonable and the unknown, wonder and awe; it allows for a sensitive, attentive and empathic experience of the self and its surroundings.
The piece Gravity and Grace was created by Ana Wild and Johanna Markert. Following a joint close reading of Simone Weil, it consists of a book and a performance. It is intended to be read outdoors. Each audience member receives a book and follows the reading, which is read by four performers.
The text is a kind of play; it indicates two types of reading: reading aloud and reading silently. This proposition evokes a cognitive phenomenon called subvocalisation: the act of inaudibly articulating the words that we read, and ‘hear’ them in our minds. This phenomenon is recognised as an essential factor in the faculty of understanding and interpreting.
The play Gravity and Grace invites the reader to be aware of their inner voice – listen to it.
Alternating between inner and spoken voice, the voice itself becomes an agent. Moving seamlessly between individual and collective registers, it touches on spiritual, philosophical and ethical themes, following the writings of Simone Weil, Jewish thought and ecocriticism.
The first iteration of Gravity and Grace was performed at the CCA – Center for Contemporary Art, Tel-Aviv, and the Bat-Yam Museum of Contemporary Art. The Hebrew book was published by Poraz et Navok and was showcased during ArtPorts’ Artist Book Fair 2022.
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Supported by the Artis Exhibition Grant; Projektfonds Kulturförderung Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin; Gesellschaft zur Verwertung von Leistungsschutzrechten mbH (GVL) with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media; and anorak e. V. members.