Dear Anet,

Now in the digital way, because it's faster (an empty argument for someone who sees slowing down the images, opinions and activities as her task - her, that means me). Here's a message of slow thinking.

The last few days I have been listening to a lecture on Romanticism (home academy – the romantic consciousness – Maarten Doorman). Very complex and also very relevant, because, you have certainly heard. The romantic Zeitgeist is still swirling and the Modern and all its post-forms are simply part of it (perhaps it is now that we are turning away from an imagination that serves individual expression - well, not us of course, but the young artists often do -slowly to another era).

Echo the Now – in a period of transition, an in-between time. I bring it up because the first sentence of my notes, which I fortunately found, reads: Suddenly I saw what imagination is! In response to your film or rather: because of your film. And it has encouraged my undeniably romantic heart to give space to the imagination. We depict the experience – and somewhere, but very peripherally, we touch reality. I felt encouraged that imagination can touch something. For me, that is the existential (romantic term!) way you use your own body to express your inner dream images of a collective subconscious in a way that is completely authentic. A whole package of rather incompatible elements. The expression is therefore very intimate and very super-personal at the same time. The body becomes one with the subject, just like matter: hand and head are as black as the ink with which the hand reveals the flow of thoughts.

I see something of service in it that touches me. You are subservient to the image. In my perspective, this transcends individual expression, which I often find so interchangeable. All those things! (all that art). Your performances require so much attention that a simple action becomes a kind of craft. Shattering the craft of porcelain. All those dishes. Frees you from the dishes! (almost religious, right?!)(frees us from evil). I sense this liberation in everything. A liberation from the self-chosen cross, here too a religious dimension. I'm not averse to that, by the way.

I admire the layering with which you can interpret the images of your fantasy and convert them into a language that is in no way manipulative. The work of art does not dictate to me what to think (which I deeply dislike), but even or especially in the film it makes me part of something essential or universal. That's very simple. Love, death, freedom, fear, anger, old age, transference – that is also a beautiful element of this film: it carries the time. It goes further than the performance itself. Each performance is embedded in the non-chronological flow of time and space on the island, which you now have at your disposal, not entirely by chance.

This shows me that your work is your life. And that has been logically put into this form. The scenes intersect, past and future become intertwined in my opinion. I too can weave my past and future together when watching the film. And then your beautiful daughter in her blood-life-complementing red dress runs laps on the dike with the beautiful seriousness of a wise child. She is the future and the past. Interpreting the images takes me into a space that can continue almost indefinitely. Sometimes I think of Parajanov's films. Also charged with symbolism and beauty. Sergei Parajanov was an Armenian director and artist. Parajanov invented his own film style that deviated sharply from socialist realism, the only permitted art style in the Soviet Union.

And one small thing that was quite present because it was so out of place: Suddenly in the staged deserted Texel there was a cyclist who cycled past the square of a window, probably outside the script. Why was that such a powerful element: Suddenly there was world and humor. Also a small liberation, but of a different order. Perhaps it was a hint from the higher beings who sometimes order exceptional individuals to paint the upper right corner black.

I'll stick with this, dear Anet.
It makes me very happy that you have managed to bring your oeuvre so precisely to the point – the film is a very concentrated retrospective. Matching the 50. Fitting for the start of another life.

Lots of love to you.
Love rules

D.

Dagmar Baumann, 23 juni 2017