This is a 2-minute trailer of the performance 'Paper is a leaf that will destroy us in its fall', premiered at Veem House for Performance in Amsterdam on November 12th, 2015.
This 3-fold project explores the oral tradition of the "proverb strings" of the Lega, a group of people from the northeastern areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A proverb string would display 40-60 miniature objects, that each represent a proverb and function as carriers of wisdom. The meaning of these objects is activated in social situations, told and re-told, often in a debate and discussion, by members of the community.
Together with fellow-artists Esther Mugambi and Alex Zakkas, van Lamsweerde explores to what extent our individual tales are collective and how (un)common our places in the world are. Real and imagined metaphors emerge through strangely familiar but clearly contemporary objects, tales and actions, creating a speculative view on what forms of knowledge can be achieved and rendered from (im)material interactions with our environment today. More than making sense of this world, they look for relations both mundane and mystical by examining seeds of thought, burning Dorito's and other breaths of fresh unknown.
Besides this performance, the project is comprised of a publication and an installation, both exploring this past tradition and questioning what it means to develop such an ideographic device in this age of disembodied images and communications.
A coproduction by Stichting Tre Tigri and Veem House for Performance.
Book published and distributed by Onomatopee.
For more information
tretigri.org/page/158/Paper%20is%20a%20leaf%20that%20will%20destroy%20us%20in%20its%20fall
veem.house/en/paper-is-a-leaf
Exhibition, book sales and distribution:
onomatopee.net/project.php?progID=6aff7002dd07898629a94e3f6457e15b
