Photo: © Justin Kulske
We are sitting in the center of Berlin, which was initially empty and then newly filled with lifeless architecture. This area in the Spreebogenpark is known as a temple of silent contemplation. That sounds a bit like Far Eastern wisdom, but the panorama at this point shows the city in a way that it definitely isn’t. The eye of the Berliner without a country estate is not used to looking into the distance anyway. But here you look out over a large piece of greenery, only to see glass, steel and concrete rising up behind it: corporate headquarters and the Charité, which advertises on its website that you can see the Reichstag while giving birth. One wonders.
Karoline Stegemann invited people here. “I am (no) mother” is the name of her work, which will be heard and seen shortly. Headphones are distributed to the audience. What follows for the next three quarters of an hour is a discussion on various levels with the unspeakable paragraph 218, which regulates the legal handling of abortions and, although it currently grants impunity for abortions under certain conditions, still defines them as a criminal offense.
It is a woman’s inner monologue that we hear. We know nothing about her except one thing: that she is pregnant without wanting to be. The uncertainty, the first and second tests, the trip to the doctor, the doubts – we hear it. These passages are assembled with the social background for this situation of many women: legal history and sociology, ideas from Marx and the feminist Silvia Federici, songs from the vernacular and technocratic politicians’ language.
But this audio performance does not stop at the acoustic, but rather attempts to juxtapose what is heard with images. Through small choreographic interventions that contrast the staid paragraph German with physical experience as a different reality and that are in no way illustrative, Stegemann opens the view of space.
And that is precisely what makes the performance so special. Form and place fit together in a meaningful way, without stopping at the obvious. The negotiation of an extremely intimate life situation such as pregnancy and the supposed public interest in “protecting unborn life” find their counterpart in the isolated listening of each individual in the audience and in the representation in the public space.
In the performance, the woman’s body becomes apparent as a political issue. Unlike the audience, the passer-by hears nothing of the woman’s inner conflict; She is still exposed to his gaze. It’s an old dilemma – the private that remains political and the political that pushes far into the private.
No, “I am (no) mother” is certainly not a contemplative work, but it is perhaps wise in a gentle and clever way.
www.karoline-stegemann.de
This audio performance does not stop at the acoustic, but rather attempts to juxtapose what is heard with images.
–