Moor Battery

Narkose

John Sturgeon -1992

Performance & documentation

 

Narkose was one of several works Sturgeon executed as part of Symposium Moor 1992, an international festival of performance & site specific work on the Wittemoor. The Wittemoor, Germany is part of a larger complex of moors (bogs) that stretch across northern Germany and The Netherlands. This month long festival gathered European and American artists, to live on, investigate and then respond to environmental issues evoked by the delicate ecology and unusual geographical-archaeological sites on the Wittemoor.

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NARKOSE (solo performance, with video in the Wittemoor) referenced the current global environmental predicament, using this ancient site as a metaphor, like an echo for present sociological and ecological conditions, primarily from the point of view of the collective psyche. Sturgeon excavated a body cavity in the side of an exposed cut in the moor (from a former commercial excavation) and buried himself horizontally at a geological depth of about 2,000 years. Buried along with his body, just above the head, was a small color monitor playing images he produced of current commercial destruction of moor sites that were edited together with documentary footage from the recent Gulf War*. The video images were seen through a circular, optical magnifying glass appearing like thought forms or dreams. Sturgeon's text, Narkose (English & German), emanating from the small, embedded speaker, evoked an eerie play of extremes - that which is and that which is not.

references: - The Gulf War – 1991 (television images - public domain).

Photo credit: b&w performance image - Insa Winkler © j.sturgeon 1992

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