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Review

MULTI-PERSONAE DISORDER OF MADAME DRAGU & VERB-FRAU
by Florian Feigl
by Margaret Dragu
Friday, 27 May 2011 at 10:42
Review Performer Stammtisch May, 9th Geschrieben von: Florian Feigl Dienstag, 10. Mai 2011 13:33
 
After kick off with events at Grimmuseum, Tachles, Glogauair and many more MPA started into the second week with regular performance extravaganza Performer Stammtisch at Flutgraben. A nice crowd of about fifty people attended performances, artist talk and stayed quite a while longer for some chit chat among performance art afficionadoes. Performer Stammtisch hosted Swiss artist Steffi Weismann with the sound performance Lapstrap and Canadian artist Margaret Dragu with a lecture titled The Multi-Personae Dis-Order of Madame Dragu flowing into the performance VERB-FRAU which is part of a complex web of art works and personalities that Margaret has been weaving since 2009.

Weismann’s Lapstrap was a impromptu musical piece between sound sculpture and sensitive composition, played on a sound device consisting of speakers, sampling and effect machines she was wearing attached to a carpenters belt. Herself moving in space, between the audience, the piece hovering between yodeling and reasoning about save passwords thus going back to childhood memories and jumping forward into sequences of numbers and letters.

Dragu’s mix and actually pretty wild forward/backward/cross-over of levels and layers regarding imagery and content of various performance personae from historic movies, popular culture, performance art, TV-shows and politics was in the beginning well disguised as a cultural studies lecture. It then turned out to be the starting sequence to rocket off into a performance including tap dancing on a line of flour, stream of conscienceness talk in various languages, repetitive talk of crawling artists on the floor about heavy cups and too much food. Dragu herself ironing and repeatedly spitting red wine over her forearms, eating rose blossoms – all that in front of changing video images. One was a sad looking greyhound in front of Hauptbahnhof. According to Dragu VERB-FRAU is organised like a dictionary. This version was about dance-ing, wrapp-ing – the other two I forgot.

BRAVO!