date. 2017

city. Weimar

 

Documentation of literature performance

Goethe-Nationalmuseum, Klassik Stiftung Weimar

2017

Literature performance activated installation Faust of Goethe-Nationalmuseum der Klassik Stiftung Weimar  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 Polish 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 (Goethe. Works in Natural Science), the texts of Prokhasko from the collection of his essays Lexikon des geheimen Wissens (Lexicon of secret knowledge) (translation into German – Mariya Pavlenko with help of David Dstroy).

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Mariya Pavlenko, idea and realization
Vincent Brière, light, video and sound

Prof. Dr. Jörg Paulus, theoretic supervision

Anki Hannemann, artistic supervision

David Dstroy, assistance in translation

Alan Feng, photo documentation 

Realized with the friendly support of Klassik Stiftung Weimar and MFA Public Art and New Artistic Strategies of Bauhaus-University Weimar

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