Steef Sarah Boulton
Verbally instructed her performer. He could choose his own moment for the performance.
Steef: About the verbal instruction: This performance was a very personal one. It was thought out by the artist with me (my body) in mind. I met the artist in a cafĂŠ in Amsterdam. She had own in from London, I was there from Berlin. The meeting acted as a point of transference. Here, she would tell me what the performance would be and what I needed to do. She showed me a simple movement of touching the back of my head with a few ďŹ ngers, and added the instruction to do this every time I felt someone standing behind me. As it happens, this movement is something I do a lot anyway, but now it carried an extra meaning. She told me she had been thinking a lot about my head. An uncommon remark to hear from a stranger. This remark to me was not personal, but rather more sculptural. She was thinking of the body that would carry the gesture. How it would look, and correspond to it. In giving me this gesture, her role was complete. I now owned this gesture and was free to use it. Throughout the weekend I made it several times. It triggered no response, and might not even have been seen, but that was not the important part. The fact that I carried this gesture with me now was the essence of the performance. Since the end of the festival weekend I have not performed this gesture, but I still own it. I may pass it on to someone else eventually.
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