Plato’s Symposium with Stéphane Querrec 2011

A collaboration with Stéphane Querrec.

Performance dinner at L40, Berlin and a 22-minutes color film with stereo sound on HD.

Verein zur Förderung von Kunst und Kultur am Rosa- Luxemburg-Platz  invited us to organize a filmed performance at their exhibition place in Mitte.

Loosely based on Plato’s Symposium, we invited 30 guests to perform love letters, collected from various literary sources, across a real diner situation. Among the guests: a lawyer, a politician, a few artists, 5 curators, some art lovers and the architect of the building. The whole event was filmed by a professional film crew and framed by the bold setting of the space, the high -albeit unstable- social status of the cultural class invited, contrasting or going along with the enchantment, boredom or despair expressed in the texts read aloud.

A 22- minute film titled ‘Plato’s Symposium’ was premiered in L40 2. June 2011. The original guests and general public of the ‘Hospitality’-week-end could view the film in its original location.

PHAEDRUS

“You came – determined,

because I was large,

because I was roaring,

but on close inspection you saw a mere boy.

You seized

and snatched away my heart

and began

to play with it –

like a girl with a bouncing ball.

And before this miracle

every woman

was either a lady astounded

or a maiden inquiring:

“Love such a fellow?

Why, he’ll pounce on you!

She must be a lion tamer,

a girl from the zoo!”

But I was triumphant.

I didn’t feel it–

the yoke!

Oblivious with joy,

I jumped

and leapt about, a bride-happy redskin,

I felt so elated and light.”

ARISTOPHANES

“Sometimes I turn around

and catch the smell of you

and I cannot go on I cannot

fucking go on without expressing

this terrible so fucking awful physical

aching fucking longing i have for you.

And I cannot believe that I can feel

”this for you and you feel nothing.

Do you feel nothing?

(silence)

Do you feel nothing?

(silence)

And I go out at 6 in the morning

and start my search for you.

If I’ve dreamt a message of a street

or a pub or a station I go there.

And I wait for you.

(silence)

You know, I really feel like I’m being manipulated.”