PETER GREENAWAY / SASKIA BODDEKE |
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WASH & TRAVEL (the bathroom suitcases) / WASH & TRAVEL (Luper at Lille)
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The installation Wash & Travel was initially conceived for the group exhibition Stanze e Segreti in the historic Rotonda della Besana in Milan, which gave expression to interpretations and visions of the home metaphor by Bob Wilson, Emir Kustorica, Dumb Type, Eriko Horiki, Yoko Ono, Massimo Bartolini, Marina Abramovic amongst others. Wash & Travel projected the bathroom as a place of cleansing and purification. Ten large enamel baths, variously filled with water, coal, obsolete train time-tables, ice, ink, leave space for the performers. The transience was indicated by the collection of 92 (the atomic number of Uranium) suitcases. For Lille 2004, Wash & Travel has been developed as a theatrical installation with a performance directed by Saskia Boddeke, taking as a starting point Peter Greenaway's script of The Tulse Luper suitcase. "It may be that the suitcase is an ideal metaphor for our times. As never before, people are on the move. ..Carry your world and your possessions with you. Just about as much as you can carry whilst walking. Not just a clean shirt and a new toothbrush and a change but all the information of identity - memories, hopes, anxieties, guilt, foretaste of intention, ambition, wish-fulfillment."
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Tulse Luper is associated with a life history of 92 suitcases. Born in 1911 in Newport Gwent, and possibly still alive, we know that Luper traveled the world. As an inveterate collector, collator and classifier, Luper packed and unpacked suitcases, left them in appropriate and inappropriate places, had them stolen, arranged to have them stolen, abandoned them or was persuaded to abandon them.... Luper had met many people on his journeys around the world, such as Charlotte des Arbres who met him while they were prisoners at Vaux Le Vicompte in France in 1942 or Gamber Flynt, a garage mechanic from Bucharest, who knew Luper in Antwerp and was also a custodian of some of Luper's suitcases. Both meet in Lille conscious of the bond of their imprisonment to Luper and his world. The theatrical installation at Lille is part of an intensive examination of Tulse Luper that will continue in many different ways under the project-title of the Tulse Luper Suitcases. http://www.tulselupernetwork.nl |
PRODUCTION DATES
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