Sometimes moving forward feels like going backward

The performance Sometimes moving forward feels like going backward took place on Monday the 23rd of December 2024, between 15:00h and 17:00h in the foyer of the Gropius Bau, in the framework of Rirkrit Tiravanija’s untitled 2024 (demo station no. 8) from his retrospective DAS GLÜCK IST NICHT IMMER LUSTIG, which invited artists and creators to present workshops and performances on the project’s wooden spiral structure.

Texts and performance by Maria Paula Maldonado and Denise Lee. • Special thanks to Alejandra Arévalo (photo documentation) and Juan Florez (video documentation).

Spiralling (Text by Maria Paula Maldonado Mendoza)

I walk slowly trying to sense time passing through me, from different directions; pushing, pulling, pressing and carrying my body towards a constant next moment. I think about standing still but then I remember that stillness is nothing more than an illusion. Even if I come to a halt everything continues in a non-stop movement: the blood circulating, leaves falling, the wind blowing, the universe expanding and my thoughts spiralling.

These days, I am living inside a fish bowl. I swim mostly in circles, in one direction or the other, and when I try a new trajectory, I am hit directly in my face by the invisible glass. I can see different paths through the crystal, yet I cannot reach them. I keep swimming; sometimes, I just float, wondering how to break through.

Estancarse – to be stuck –. Now and again the fish bowl shrinks. There is only space for me to spin, regardless of the direction, on my own axis. The narrowing space makes my body tight, and my mind does not necessarily expand. My thoughts spin like many socks during a speed cycle in a washing machine.

I am an asteroid like we all are. While following the natural orbit of our shared existence around the sun, I pass close by some masses; from others, I am always far away. My body is in relation and tension with every other body. Bodies at varying distances and with numerous velocities of approach. Sometimes following each other without contact. Sometimes nearby, listening to the sound of one another passing by. Sometimes colliding. Sometimes striking and sometimes being struck.

When the orbit of the ellipse distances itself from the center, the fish tank expands. I find myself moving forward, in wider circles, sooner or later returning to the starting point. I have feelings of newness and sameness simultaneously. The same lap repeats itself with small variations. I keep track of the shadows, moving daily from west to east. Windows of time in which things become clearer, in which the glass seems to disappear, for a short time.

In my fish bowl I talk to myself, my single yet many selves. Do this thing, don’t do that, go, come, come back, turn around, lay down, stand up, that’s better but that’s worse, hold it, yes, maybe, yes, no, yes again. The conversation starts all over again. I change the frequency. More voices, which I try to distract all at the same time, while I sing the chorus of this song in a loop. It works for a while.

I am in retrograde. Apparently moving backward given the relative position I have to myself. Although occasionally imperceptible, I continue to rotate in my own orbit, over which I am not necessarily in control. Sometimes I get dizzy not only from the movement but also from the changes in direction. I wonder if there is any intention behind these rotations.

At times I find myself comfortable in my fish bowl, partly created by myself. I blew the glass with my dreams and my fears. It is my tower. It is stable but shaky. It is my place of retreat and denial where I also hide my regrets. It is a matter of time before this tower gets struck by lightning. It will crack open and throw me straight down into the ground.

The lightning finally strikes. A lightning of unexpected and external circumstances, or a lightning from the hands of others, or a lightning of self-determination, or a merging of the three. It shatters my crystal vessel and I freefall. After a while, I land on my face, into a different kind of fish bowl. Instead of water, there is soil and humus and it is moist. Once a fish I now become a worm. I dive into the dark mud. I lay the eggs of my future selves. I crawl in circles around them. My creeping present takes its time to nurture the lives to come and embrace myself again.

Sometimes moving forward feels like going backward (Text by Denise Lee)

In the unstoppable forward march of time
we leave behind
guilt
grief
violence
peace
joy
relief
But that which we walk away from is also which we walk towards.
Sometimes different, often the same
the ubiquitous moth to a flame.
The inertia of the past overtakes us in an irrevocable riptide
we get lost in loops of time

The coils of time collide with each other
each coil struck by the reverbrations of those behind it
and for a moment your past becomes my present,
but I still get to choose if it’s regression or a memory
the memory only becomes real if I act on it
if I get lost in it
if I forget that there are no true scripts

The coils collide, struck by your past; my present
is it regression or a memory?
the past only becomes the future if I act on it

coils
struck by regression
become the future

How do I escape?

I imagine the long length of the past existing in its own moments - not gone, but not accessible from the present, stretching behind me, spiraling for millennia.
Each moment is a flat tile suspended in front of the next, dominoes in a dark void.
My mother opens her mouth and a gust of wind hits one tile and it collides with another, and then another, until it hits my present tile.
A memory that is not my own triggers emotion in the present;
My father closes his mouth, but the tiles still send me swaying with their compressed tension -
triggering an action in the present

I imagine the past
stretching, spiraling for millennia
Each moment a flat tile suspended in a dark void
My mother opens her mouth and one tile collides with another until I am hit.
Her mother tries to flee her own tile in the past, and the movement sends shudders into my present.
memories that are not mine trigger reactions in my present
My father closes his mouth, but the tiles shiver with compressed tension
his father’s silence echoes in the void
Blank tiles trembling in the dark

The past spirals in a void
My mother opens her mouth;
Her mother flees into my present
my father’s father’s silence trembles in the dark
The past triggers actions that are not mine

What am I running from?

The coil starts to resemble a helix, a bloodline spiraling through time
I dread the idea of destiny
What good is moving forward if it keeps leading to the same end?
There is no reversing of a pendulum
where backward may as well be forward
The corporeality of the past cannot change;
only what it means to me

The coil resembles a bloodline spiraling through time
The dreaded pendulum moves toward the same end as its beginning
What is left of the past is only what it means to me
There is no reversing of the past
yet it is rewritten with every imperfect retreading of a memory

A bloodline spirals through time
what is left is rewritten with every memory
I can change only what it means to me

Maybe I can stop running

In the unstoppable march
From joy to grief
violence to peace
guilt to relief
we walk away from what we walk towards.
we are lost and found in loops of time

Note: Thumbnail photo by Alejandra Arévalo