Erfahrung – II
Documentation of Performance
Goethe-Nationalmuseum, Klassik Stiftung Weimar
2017
Literature performance activated installation „Faust“ of Goethe-Nationalmuseum der Klassik Stiftung Weimar (https://vimeo.com/64891159) focusing on phenomenology and translation of nature. It created parallels between works in nature science of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and novels of Ukrainian writer Taras Prokhasko, who has degree in biology.
The work is practical part of the Master Thesis of MFA program “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. The thesis approaches from artistic perspective the topics of language and translation.
The performance consisted of two parts: in the first one was presented an extract from the book of David Seamon “Goethe’s Way of Science: A Phenomenology of Nature” that gave insight into the key ideas of phenomenology and Goethe’s approach to the research of nature. According to David Seamon, fewer people realize that Goethe also produced a sizable body of scientific work that focused on such diverse topics as plants, color, clouds, weather, morphology, and geology. Goethe himself believed that these studies, rather than his literary work, would some day be recognized as his greatest contribution to humankind. Afterwards was presented short biography of Taras Prokhasko and an extract of an essay, written about him by another Ukrainian writer and his friend Yurko Izdryk. Taras Prokhasko together with Yuriy Andrukhovych (who received Goethe Medal in 2016) is one of the major representatives of so-called Phenomenon of Stanislavov, associated with a group of postmodern writers, artists and intellectuals, based in Ivano-Frankivsk, the city in Western Ukraine (old name of the city is Stanislavov).
The second part of the performance consisted of extracts of original texts of authors, presented one by one. The texts of Goethe originated from the book “Goethe. Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft“, the texts of Prokhasko from the collection of his essays “Lexikon des geheimen Wissens” (translation into German – Mariya Pavlenko with help of David Dstroy).
Team:
Mariya Pavlenko ― artist, concept, translation and performance
Prof. Dr. Jörg Paulus ― Professur Archiv- und Literaturforschung, theoretische Gesamtbetreuung
Anki Hannemann ― artistic supervision, organisation and consultation
Vincent Brière ― video director, video and sound
David Dstroy ― media theorist, assistance in translation
Alan Feng ― artist, photodocumentation
Realized with the friendly support of Klassik Stiftung Weimar and MFA “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” of Bauhaus-University Weimar
“Erfahrungswörterbuch” is an artbook, based on texts, presented during the performance at Goethe-Nationalmuseum, as well as new texts and images from the publication “Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft” that is possible to show in a book format. The book provides opportunity to compare writings of authors, as well as their approach to the notions of nature, experience, memory and death that reappear in the texts. For both Goethe and Prokhasko the experience (die Erfahrung) is a starting point of thinking and investigating of the world around, however if in case of Goethe it is more scientific, rational approach that equalize experience with experiment and mathematical measurement of its results, for Prokhasko it is emotional state, sensitive journey (das Erlebnis) that he considers to be a source of genuine knowledge.
The book is printed with support of Frauenförderfonds of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.