by Dieter Sperl
From June 6 to 8, 2019, Dieter Sperl, poet and editor of the literature folder flugschrift, was invited by the language artist Hanne Römer to the castle Wolkersdorf in Weinviertel. He participated there in the art project THE CAST^LE, a self-internment. Using a box found in the cellar of his parents, on which his first name is written and in which were letters and postcards addressed to him from many years, he worked with ten other artists in the so-called Marek Rooms to present and perform working and thinking processes as an open stage performance. During one of the Corona lockdowns in 2020, the author read through all of these recovered letters and postcards (every word, every line, every postmark) and created a text composition out of text particles. He also let himself be carried away by the free particles he picked up or recognized (in the sense of Marcel Duchamp) and called free, i.e. freed from context, to new connections and/or narrative maneuvers that found their way into the composition. Text composition in this case means: montage of and improvisation on text material. The fragments from the letters and postcards are carried and arranged by the author's pulling inclination: The highly personal and the general slide into each other, creating an in-between that opens up in multiple directions and vibrates in the present. In them, one senses the past days and their thoughts and grasps something of the people (even if only in a homeopathic trace) who were the writers of the letters at that time and who have now disappeared, and the author who he was then and who has now disappeared. The acoustic postcard could be seen as another answer to the question that has been troubling the author for years, namely, who are we? And what it means if we do not answer this question with reality, because we can always answer it only with concepts, thoughts and language. Reality as a linguistic and thus social construct generated and constructed by societies? And further asked: Is there a reality (Wirklichkeit) beyond linguistic constructs? In 2021/2022 Sperl set the piece to music together with the instant composer Michael Fischer and the singer Nika Zach. Composition and improvisation form the pillars of the radio piece in this work stage as well. |