264

Louise Trueheart: Leaps of Faith (on the Holy Couch). 15.06.2019. In the frame of 48 Stunden Neukölln / CosmoFeminism at Fortuna Wetten, Berlin. *

I

I wanted to write this text in German to allow myself to float on words, but I had to recognize that there is a problem with floating in German. We don’t float. Floating has a sense of volume that “Treiben” or “Gleiten” lack. Louise asked us how we float and nobody properly knew. Now, as I am searching for the missing German word, I recognize that floating is about having a sense of volume that is slightly lighter than the matter around you. Your body floats in water like a bubble floats in the air. Floating means getting lighter; you do it by allowing something else to carry you, and at the same time, by creating a kind of tension – like a membrane – which separates you from your surroundings just a tiny little bit. As soon as you melt into it, you are not floating anymore. Floating is tension keeping volume together. Floating is life; if you lose the separating tension, you won’t float anymore, you will be a part of the matter around you. Losing your bubble.

II

Louise sits on a sofa. Above her head there is a cap hanging from the ceiling. She wears a rose, white and violet-coloured batik T-Shirt with shorts and socks in the same style. The slip cover of the sofa has gone through the same colour bondage process, as well as the sheet hanging on her left hand side. Opposite, as part of the CosmoFeminism exhibition that Louise’s performance is part of, a Melanie Bonajo video about female orgasms is playing, resonating an almost violently pornographic atmosphere. A little remote behind the temporary stage setting a coat turns in the air like a guru dress, scarecrow or bathrobe depending on how and in which moment of perception your attention is attracted by its moving. In my memory, it is like an intruder. Still to mention is a spiral staircase in Louise’s back; a video plays behind it so that from time to time, the moving images seem to climb the stairs, and when I focus my vision on Louise, the blurred effect of  the stair-climbing images create an impression of the bouncing light as her assistant, bringing her some water or taking some of her thoughts through the roof-hatch to heaven, or bringing some down or painting those smiles on her face that are simpering and complicit and full of refulgence all at once. A guy in the right side of my vision melts into this vista – not without a little observational distance, like being a little bit stoned and knowing it. Seems I’ve become that guy now: I’m melting, smiling back in memory, maybe experiencing what Louise tells us about the heart. In an imagination exercise that can be used when you train release technique, it is supposed to melt. Anyway, yes, I am released, walking out much more friendly than I came.

III

Louise’s mum is there and after the performance I get introduced to her and while I’m searching for words, she says exactly what I was looking for: that her daughter produces a mixture of innocence and self-confidence. Mums are sometimes right and sometimes their compliments are the best thing you can get, because it means your work has allowed them the effort to overcome the state of being your mum, to see beyond that. I think it is interesting how Louise creates innocence. Dedication to form can create an aura of innocence and that is what Louise surprises me with: even though she is one of the over-talented bastards who does everything and nothing and mixing it in a hot soup, she devotes herself to form. She composes songs, dances a ballet adagio, a lordy knee-centered K-Pop, tells short stories, entertains us, she alters states and tools – it’s easy to access but not easy to grasp, an amateurish practise held together by highly (self-)aware aesthetics. It is the best cocktail I’ve had in quite a while.

* Editorial note: This tryptic was written in a 4.5 format. After the editing, this time by a none-core contributor of 4.5, it was not in a 4.5 format anymore. There we go: 4.5 as an orientation, not as an obligation anymore.