• CONTINUE TO "D"

Uncertainty in everything

because

nothing is straightforward and turns are

everywhere, the only

straightforward constant is death. Dead

people, all of those I’ve ever

seen, have diminished, caved in on

themselves, were tiny

like overgrown toddlers and

straightforward, lying,

horizontal bodies and horizontal minds.

Silence must be straightforward.

When grandma was dying, when her time was drawing near, she got smaller

every day, she started to resemble a teddy

bear. She shrivelled up, was constantly sleeping and yawning. Whenever someone

yawns, I think of her.

Death doesn’t arouse fear or defiance in me, but wonder. Whenever someone

yawns, I’m not afraid he will die, but the notion I have is unpleasant, that

I will experience that wonder of the unfamiliar again. That he is unfamiliar again. I yawn so

that no one

can see me. Maybe not, maybe I yawn and don’t know about it. I don’t know whether it

is true,

but

the last time I was at my grandpa’s, late at night, grandpa was yawning,

and I didn’t want him to die. I’d be surprised if he were gone. If gone was

one version of the world. Corporeal, heart-warming, unfathomably close and

every movement (because

the movements of this unfamiliar body

are so familiar

to me) reproduced in me. I probably won’t

remember a single

word – I don’t remember words – but the

body and voice.

I saw myself on video once, I was saying something – it was in high school – I was pretending to be our math teacher, when I was through with it, I was supposed to play myself. I made movements and gestures, which seemed awkward, disjointed, inappropriate to me. When

I was doing them, I felt

so sure of them and yet in the reality

which

the camera captured, I didn’t want to

identify with them.

I didn’t recognize them. I couldn’t tie in to them. I just know the gestures and movements of people around me, I don’t realize my own ones and around-the-clock self-reflection would destroy me. I’m afraid to deal with something as trivial as myself, but in fact I do nothing else. To dig out. Or dig through. To get out, under it, over it, to see the narrative, recount it and start another. But once again I’m sitting in front of a pile of myself – not again, I’m sitting once more in front of the place where I should assemble a pile of my own body, emotions, thoughts, perceptions, that place is empty because it’s not possible to grasp it all at once. Hana laughs at me for constantly dreaming of some kind of models, systems or procedures I would like to use to achieve this, but sooner or later, they collapse and get twisted and become just another piece along the path from which I should (should I really?) pick it all up and arrange it in a pile, or at least into that sort of mess you have in your room which looks like a clutter to everyone and only you know very well where everything is. And then move on. I remember this chaotic order. I know it existed. And that it exists no longer. I have to. I don’t have to!, but I want to start again. Ondřej, the body of Ondřej and the mind of Ondřej are sitting on a wooden chair, probably Thonet, at a round, silvery café table whose surface is decorated with polish in the pattern of some kind of silver scales. The table, chair and Ondřej are on a stage which resembles a quarter note – a circle or oval with a little black stem attached to it. The stage is stuck into the corner of the room in the shape of an irregular quadrangular with high ceilings, papers covered in writing are situated on the left wall, there are blank papers taped irregularly to the right wall and both walls are connected by a black elastic band, in the middle of which is another paper with the number 4 on it attached to a paper clip. The room connects to another one where a video is being screened, in front of the entrance to the room, there are another two rooms on the left and right where more videos are being displayed. In the room itself, apart from the table, chair, stage and Ondřej, there is also a glowing sign indicating the escape route (and the situation is therefore not hopeless) and furthermore: a data projector, a backpack, a bottle of water, wooden numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5, a sign with the number 44 above the door to the room with Ruti’s video, 7 floodlights and 2 battens from which cables lead to an outlet above the doorframe with the number 44 sign.

COLOPHON

Ondřej Buddeus — A me

Is part of Ondřej Buddeus‘s participation in the Adaptation.

“But the need to adapt, uncoordinatedly, individualistically, without any authority, leader and order, to changes we initiate ourselves. Adaptation signifies now (asynchronously) and here (various places) an affinity with Utopia, which remains a non-place. Adaptation to conditions of reality which the collective dialectic of individuals without leader and order themselves create.“

Babi Badalov, Hafiz, Lia Perjovschi, Loulou Chérinet, Ondřej Buddeus, Ruti Sela, Shady Elnoshokaty, Vít Havránek, Xu Tan, Zbyněk Baladrán.

Curatorial Consultant Visual Arts:

Anne Faucheret

Translation: © Tereza Novická, 2013.

Graphic design: www.mutanta.com

We would like to thank all participants of the festival who took part in the project.

We would also like to thank

the following individuals:

Hana Buddeus, Věra Krejčová,

Antonín Mareš

Published by Steirischer Herbst Festival

GMBH Graz 2012 in collaboration with

tranzit.cz

© Ondřej Buddeus, 2013

ISBN: 978-80-87259-18-4

steirischer herbst festival gmbh

Sackstraße 17 / 8010 Graz / Austria

Supporters:

Land Steiermark Kultur

Stadt Graz Kultur

Bundesministerium für Unterricht,

Kunst und Kultur

Programm Kultur 2007-2013 der

Europäischen Gemeinschaft

Graz Tourismus

Sponsors:

Legero / con-tempus.eu

Steiermärkische Sparkasse

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