Rachmaninoff plays for 1.5 minutes
“La dictée. L’Amour Désarmé est un tableau peint par Jean Antoine Watteau en 1715 [...] Allez, on recommence!”
L’Amour Désarmé is a 30 minute surrealist performance, on memory, desire and the force of resilience. The performer is at first confined to a student desk. A tape recites the history Watteau’s painting. The performer tries to keep up with the dictation but soon looses interest and goes seeking for a blade in a jar of wine to cut the tape with, interrupting the voice and creating a fissure in the text. At this moment, the performer places a new tape in the player and removes a letter from the inside of a freshly dead fish. The poetic text recounts a surrealist story of attempting to re-build from the ruins of a cathedral. In the story, the narrator recounts a quest for gold that leads her to the most unlikely places. The performer reads while being interrupted by the tape, that plays audio excerpts of Rachmaninoff and quotes from Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, on love and desire.
L’Amour Désarmé was presented as part of Coming Asunder curated by Julia Bikra White featuring Polina Protesko, at To have and to hold in Chicago, in June 2018.
