Eat me.

I will dance and sweat. And we are young and hot and know it. And we sweat. I need to move.

That's what I normally do at art events or parties. Out of sheer helplessness. They make me nervous.

And I'm not as flexible as one might assume, considering that I swim like you in this slick but

surprisingly sticky neoliberal swamp. So, I dance. It still seems wrong to me to work at parties. And

I apologize. I am quite a boring performance artist. I am mainly fucking with redundancy. Actually,

I am not a performance artist. I do pictures. Mostly photographs. I'm quite impatient. And I write

texts which are often only notes to myself. I still try to understand how my work functions. I write

but I am not very good at talking, especially not at exhibition openings or parties. Which is, as we

know, a real disadvantage these days and tonight. I mostly feel funny and produce

misunderstandings, or talk too loud about my private life, or what I don't like. I get cheesy, even.

And nobody is interested by that. So I dance. This is no mistake, but access, maybe, I am not sure. I

dance. Less to celebrate rather to be, and maybe feel myself a little more. To think. I am nervous.

Maybe that's good though. Did we have breakfast? My performances are rather redundant. Usually I

only do performances during openings of my shows. But I am not sure whether performance is even

the right term for my redundant fumblings. I sometimes prepare food which you see already in the

pictures on view. Or food which resembles or translates what you see in the pictures. Shrimp

chips resemble honey-pig's ears quite a bit, for example. And I am happy when I manage to

repeatedly mumble a few prepared lines at the same time. Even if nobody gets them. Today I dance.

Which is kind of redundant too. Eat me. The cooking of things already in the pictures on view,

produces some time warp, and plays with a literal instability or, if you will, timely elasticity, image

permeability. But it still makes for a redundant performance, of course. I choose food maybe also

because I'd like to get softer, gentler. Not as effervescent, more zen, more productively aggressive,

and more vulnerable. Put the body on the table. Appetite always has something to do with

destruction. As food does desire. Is it hot? Do you sweat? I need a second gallery. My pictures

sweat all the time. Delicate drops of sweat which again you will not be able to remove. Smooth-On

Crystal Clear 202 Water Clear Urethane Casting Resin made specifically for applications that

require clarity. Or they cry. And you? Sometimes they also puke. All is leaky and leaks through.

Okokokok, fuck. Eat me. I am fascinated by the shapes of Morris Louis Veils. At the moment I'm

working on pictures of puréed lentils inspired by his 1950s series. Something between shit and

concrete in the shapes of Morris Louis Veils. (Apparently Louis was a loner, they say he had few

friends and rarely discussed his art with anyone, not even with his wife.) This process, sounds and

all, of cooking and puréeing, spreading and smearing and photographing these carefully overcooked

lumpy lentils evoking shit and concrete is very satisfying. And I'm about to try the same with sticky

sweet white icing. Now I dance. How ridiculous. To be there, here and withdraw in one single

move. I will not drown. Not in this swamp. I never wanted an assistant. I like to laugh about my

own jokes. How regressive is concrete and shit? How regressive do I need it to be? What makes up

a picture? Morris Louis Veils are great also because of their colours: Instead, the surface exudes

glorious greens, blues, and violets, whose coolness is heightened by the contrasting tongues of

yellow and orange that protrude across the top edge. Protruding tongues of yellow and orange,

drenched in blood and cut out. I currently tend to remove the colours. Some like to watch me dance.

Next time I'm born in 1981. 2015 was heavy. Although I fell in love. A year never tired me like this

one. December was hard. And it was too warm, at least in Berlin. All the year’s news seemed to

have accumulated and lumped into a dead and desperate, and quite wearing weight on my little

shoulders. A weight that could not be danced away, I tried. (You watched me dance.) Or maybe I

just get old. And everything’s ensnarled and lumps and thus is relentlessly hopeless, hopeless

rather than romantic. Fuck Young-Girls. Or weak? Now I feel numbed. Touched not by news or

any of this. And I cannot cry offhand. Does this make any difference? Everybody seems to get

wasted all the time. Am I lazy? I don't know what's more wrong. Do I understand? Did I listen? Am

I here? What is the common ground? We want a pony plan. Puréed lentils, concrete and shit or

sweet and sticky icing veils. I sweat. I am pale. Someone is playing with my hair. I have less time. I

don't want the problems to pile up like fucking pancakes. In the end you'll eat me. No. Eat me.

Lisa Holzer, June 2016