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Auguste Vickunaite

Slow tempo, solitude and boredom in art and performative thinking and sound as an instrument for navigating the attention in performance

O Keep on Sleeping if Your Dream is Sweet

“O keep on sleeping if your dream is sweet” is a 23 minutes long sound and movement performance which took place on 15th of August in Schwartzsche Villa in Berlin’s Steglitz district. . It is a slow tempo contemporary dance and sound étude performed by Augustė Vickunaitė (reel-to-reel tape machines) and Gotautė Kalmatavičiūtė (dance) that investigates topics of loneliness, sleep, the aesthetics of boredom, nostalgia, and solitude in one’s own room. During the performance all sounds were captured using microphones in the room and attached to the dancer’s body and processed live using analogue reel-to-reel tape machines.  

This work is supported by theoretical work “Slow tempo, solitude and boredom in art and performative thinking and sound as an instrument for navigating the attention in performance” which is a reflective investigation into artworks and theories which concerns topics of solitude and loneliness, as well as other related subtopics including the uncanny, laughter and the aesthetics of boredom. Moreover, this work concerns the role of time as an unavoidable agent in slow tempo performances and other types of artworks which take place in empty spaces inhabited by lonely bodies/human beings, where barely any activity is happening. Role of sound within these topics is investigates as a medium for drawing the visual center of attention from the whole towards the details, and from space towards the intimacy of the body; as an instrument which has the power to invite the viewer to notice and feel inner details, even while seeing the whole and vice versa.