Take me somewhere nice

Performative Installation

A Brief Chance for Dwelling, 17. October 2023, Richard Pettifer, Language: EN

published on 17.10.2022 at tanzschreiber.de

"Choreographer/performer Christina Ciupke and visual artist, filmmaker and choreographer Darko Dragičević’s “Take me somewhere nice” isn’t exactly an interrogation of the concept of travel, as much as a deep contemplation of its essential – possibly forgotten – properties. After entering a dreamy array of lights and pools of projections (light design: Martin Beeretz), the performance begins with the movement of water from side to side, its languid rhythm mimicking waves (or more metaphorically, perhaps a metronome or ticking clock). Time – a theme returned to by the artists throughout the performance – has a central place here as defining feature of travel, a choice of displacement that shifts the perception of reality (...)."

"The performance progresses into an elucidation of a deep exchange or dialogue, as the artists occupy different positions in the stage, becoming more personal, and eventually even premised with “Dear Christina” and “Dear Darko”. The exchange continues into a sort of old-school ‘family holiday photos’ night, where two projectors display (asynchronously) some slices of travel, sometimes accompanying the stories, and sometimes with a complimentary soundtrack (for example, a view from a train as it leaves a station)."

"The show ends with the first and final direct engagement between the two artists – who sit opposing each other against an eerie chorus of harmonies – as though simply to highlight their previous estrangement. It completes a strange feeling of “thinking with” that pervades “Take me somewhere nice” – not so much an escape in the end, as a return to togetherness through separation, a return to time through its suspension. It rounds out a complex treatment of the concept of travel as a dialectical puzzle full of contradictions: ‘a return to the self through the other’, or a search for home that occurs precisely through the action of leaving it. The desire for travel is here proposed as a need to find oneself, although it comes with more questions than answers."


full text: https://tanzschreiber.de/en/a-brief-chance-for-dwelling/