No Beach Just Sand

The graphic "mask" overlaying the scenario is reminiscent of a computer game. It is black and initially abstracts what is happening underneath it. Only very gradually is the viewer able to see through a slit as it moves over the image and a bright spot offering a glimpse of three performers. Their appearance is impressive: They are wearing black, full-face helmets while their bodies closely modelled with tightly wound black tape reveal their "nakedness".

Sabine Marte has repeatedly pushed to dismantle the traditional aestheticizing of the female body along such lines. However, here this is not the thematic focus of the work but rather its axiomatic background. This is indicated among other things by the empty picture frames that provide the setting for the poetically and equally politically loaded video performance of No Beach Just Sand: "The loss of Utopia means nothing other than most of the future is already behind us," as made clear at one point when the exhausted bodies become counter-participants in an experimental inventory of neoliberal conditions. There is a big huffing and puffing going on despite the fact that everybody is just laying around exhausted, with their heads in the sand, waiting, or collectively isolated as they sit at a kitchen table.
Sabine Marte excerpts a selection of quotes taken from the book yesterday tomorrow by political author Bini Adamczak to combine in grand sound experiments for the audio track. Additionally, her own texts and single words flow into these aural collages. These include the worn out "Carry on!" of contemporary capitalism, here also countered by Melville´s Bartleby and Scarlett O´Hara´s lesson that, "Tomorrow is another day".
Meanwhile, on the visual level the performers test the functional efficiency of their bodies: Does an arm still have enough strength, can one foot be made to follow the other, can one still find one´s footing when further proceeding into the story?
As befits the disillusioned title, there is no resolution and movements remain precarious, even if in the end a collective dance momentarily breaks through the prevailing dystopic mood. (Christa Benzer)

Translation: Eve Heller