Forest Measure
Performance, installation, 2012
The living installation by Kristīne Alksne and Margo deals with painful self-purification and adaptation, and the interaction of these processes. These are the utopian efforts of self-examination and the tempting false measurements in the epoch-of-constant-self-comforting.
Excerpts from e-mail correspondence:
M.: Downshifting is a meditation on the aging post-postmodernism – celebrating emptiness with even greater emptiness. You put yourself into a sort of neo-silent movie to avoid the self-disciplined hysteria of markets.
K.: This new ritual is a creation of western men who recognise values through productivity and consumption. The western man is overwhelmed by the wish to come first. Thus he ends up having a heart attack at an early age and, understandably, downshifting follows. In these moments this bestseller works as good medicine. Maybe the westerner has been stuck in a self-created mechanism and destroyed his natural instinct? Does he find a solution in a supposed 180 degree turn? What comes afterwards? Is it a truly natural process? Or just a new version of a mask, allowing one to spot changes for a moment when it is put on?
M.Z.: Possibly. Surely. I often see downshifting as a toothless occlusion. Predators that have pulled their teeth out to lose their lust for meat. Predators in a vegetarian restaurant. Wolves in grandmas’ bonnets. But do you often hear about or talk about downshifting? I don’t deal with this theme on an everyday basis. Except that every other Berliner has already taken up yoga and other methods to slow their heart rate.
K.A. Downshifting. I often hear this in the small talk of elegant gentlemen at fine dinners; they have calculated their daily budgets and the price of wines they could afford until the end of their days! Downshifting is a word rubbing shoulders with consumerism. It is what happens when an exhausted westerner digs for prosperity 16 hours a day for many years, and then discovers he had reached middle age and the limits of his health. Resisting this, he establishes a chicken farm which he observes for hours and builds his vision of the new world according to the hierarchy of his winged companions. And a Mediterranean view just happens to be the backdrop for all of this. Isn’t downshifting proof that humans have weakened themselves, by blindly participating in the mainstream?
M.Z.: But possibly (and surely) lucky middle aged men have always covered those who slowed down. But the present metamorphosis of democracy to anarchy allows for the slackening of praise. So, “less is more”, and diligence has become a swearword. If both your muscles and mind are ok, your brains send them a signal to act. These are biological processes. It is impossible to stop them at will. Thus in my worldview, downshifting is a flirtation with necrophilia. I’m alive but dead at the same time. You can do nothing to me.
Downshifting? K.A.: The tempo can be reduced only by those who can afford it.
M.Z.: All of this tempo reducing, when thematized, is just public pretence. From the moment you start breathing, your only choice is “a life without choice” – to do only the things you cannot live without. Full stop. No need to contaminate yourself by imagining that you have a million opportunities. If you have an overwhelming desire to bite into a fresh cucumber, then why run around the market archiving all the different kinds of flora and fauna available. And fashioning a mask is possibly one of the most established traditions of self-forgetting. Urban carnivalism. Me? I’m - bunny!
Artists' Bios:
Kristīne Alksne is based in Berlin. She has graduated from Brera di Bella Arti Academy, Milan, Italy. Alksne has had seven solo exhibitions in Italy and one in Latvia, has taken part in more than 60 group exhibitions in Europe and the USA, including the Moscow Biennale for Young Art 2012, MMOMA (Moscow), Modern Tape (Berlin), South London Gallery (London), SURVIVAL KIT 3, etc.
Margo is based in Berlin. She Studies anthropology and opera direction. She is author of texts, performances and shows.