THIS MORTAL HOUSE
BUILDING 1
THE PROJECT
5250 Bricks (20x10x5 cm)
150 bricks per layer of wall
175 cm height
110 cm passage between walls
Each brick requires 2 ½ minutes of work
218,75 brick per day
6 days a week, 8 hours a day
The performer will spend 24 days constructing her own labyrinth from the inside out.
Using the blueprint for Daedalus’ original Cretan labyrinth, as well the new forms of communication that will inevitably arise as her other senses are heightened, the blindfolded performer will excavate and physically map out the buried, imprisoned contents of her spirit.
As the labyrinth changes shapes and evolves in perpetual construction further entrapping the performer corporeally, and, as she endures, and navigates her self-imposed blindness, she seeks to escape her
self-imprisonment by openly manifesting it. In doing so, she, like Cleopatra, will take full responsibility for her freedom.
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
“The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves” Federico Garcia Lorca
Week Four
Day Twenty One
The day I crossed the threshold
DON’T
LOOK
BACK
“Sir, I will eat no meat, I'll not drink, sir;
If idle talk will once be necessary,
I'll not sleep neither: this mortal house I'll ruin,
Do Caesar what he can. Know, sir, that I
Will not wait pinion'd at your master's court;
Nor once be chastised with the sober eye
Of dull Octavia. Shall they hoist me up
And show me to the shouting varletry
Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt
Be gentle grave unto me! rather on Nilus' mud
Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies
Blow me into abhorring! rather make
My country's high pyramides my gibbet,
And hang me up in chains!”
Anthony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare
This Mortal House
Title: This Mortal House (2020)
Long Durational Performance
Commissioned by: Sakip Sabanci Museum (SSM) and MAI, Istanbul, 11 February - 8 March 2020
Curated by Paula Garcia and Serge Le Borgne, MAI
Duration: 4 weeks, 6 days a week, 8h a day.
Exhibition venue: Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul
Photography: Korhan Karaoysal, Umut Durmuş, Billy Zhao, Nazli Beser, Serge Le Borgne, M.S.H, and Kays Aykut.