Hannah Beilharz:
You

Hannah Beilharz writes after the performance of Eva Talesia Maspoli (HSLU) presented on Friday, 06.05.2022 on the occasion of ACT festival in a canal near Elfenaupark Biel

The bridge emerges first in sound, somehow alien but not unfamiliar. It stretches out in space and finds a shape, before we see it, we hear it, the arches, the dampened stones in a sound that is mechanical and human at the same time. Sometimes grating, or soaring, we hear a sound that is softened by something, the way the bridge is softened by the inexorable flow of water through it. This sound, it could be grieving, a lament, but also, the singing to yourself we all did as children, an instinctive relation to the inner world. It seems that the sound was always here in this bridge, although we only hear it now. The pigeons are at home in its presence, occupied with their usual routines amongst its echoes. Its song connects to their daily conversation, existing alongside.

The body appearing out of the shadows seems unreal at first, just a shape in the water, perhaps a passing shadow, a trick of light. Moving into the centre underneath the bridge, this body pauses, and a collective breath can be felt between the audience and performer, a moment of tension, apprehension but also collectivity.

Then the struggle begins, between performer and water. At first it appears like a fight, as though the water is standing in for another body, another person unable to be faced or to face this rage, bursting in white spray where fists and arms meet water. Over time, the movements also appear to become a futile attempt to prevent water flowing in its natural direction under the bridge, the gestures attempt to capture or push the water back, causing a great physical exertion and exhaustion. The body finds stillness in this point of exhaustion, slowly coming to a stop, until all that is left is the sound of ragged breathing, and the bridge’s moaning, almost sympathising as it hums in the air, in the stones, bouncing off the water.

The body slowly drifts towards the bridge’s wall, deeply stained shades of green and almost black with the imprint of water on stone. In this moment the performer enters a space of listening with the bridge, pressed against the wall they feel or hear something that is out of our reach, perhaps because we did not meet the bridge the way this performer has, with a broken rage and lovers embrace, an acknowledgment of relation.

After this moment of listening, it seems that a conversation has begun, between the bridge’s sounds and the performer, almost painful, almost pleasurable, almost a language. If language is the right word, they speak in one of bodies, like the mechanically fluid function of organs, the unconscious and uncontrollable. We can’t speak it as an audience, but we can feel parts of it, this moment of touching between space and body, intensified. For a few moments, we can feel something is happening, that suggests a doorway between our skins and the air, our mouths and the water, ourselves and the world.

Hannah Beilharz 2022