After the death of my grandmother* and after more than 20 years, I return to my grandparents’ house. The place becomes the tragicomic setting for my video performance Hip Hip Horee! The Witch Is Dead., which sheds new light on a very strained relationship that included a lot of silence, sexual violence and family secrets over decades. A tour through the empty space tells of my metamorphosis into different archetypal female roles or images of women* (mother*, grandmother*, girl*,…). The various female* characters are designed, created, acted out and temporarily merged with me through (in-) direct memories of my grandmother*, letters, images of older women*, fairy tales and myths, over-projections and the subconscious. The tableaux vivants feed on my grandmother’s direct legacy and at the same time formed the framework for the costumes, make-up and hair. The empty and bourgeois-conservative environment becomes on the one hand a fleeting stage for rehearsed, careful and always a little wobbly movements through the interior untouched by time and standing still, and on the other hand the stage for a wild breakout from the careful groping. The movements draw their elements from dance (folklore, gymnastics,…), fairy tale essays, fixed everyday processes, sequences and rehearsed rituals and are linked to the site- and space-specific conditions and the situation. The text is both the beginning and the farewell in the video loop.

The flow of thoughts revolves around personal and past experiences, relationships, borders, distances and incestuous motifs of the sexual taboo relationship between close relatives. In the constant alternation of approach and demarcation at the same time, a humorous repetition, appropriation and reinterpretation of the spaces,  experiences and gender becomes possible for the protagonist in the video performance. An obituary/indictment for the dead takes place in the personal and the collective.