Cold brown coffee (Kalter brauner Kaffee), 2009

Cold brown coffee - text in English

"when they go, a still life is left behind. a still life on the table. two cups, a sugar bowl, some cream, a compressed package of cigarettes. skillfully compressed, compressed with just one hand, some ash on the tablecloth. the chair is slightly pushed back. different each time, other relationships between the objects, depending on the day different drinks, depending on the duration more or less full. depending on the intensity more fucking aura. the actors are gone. an empty stage remains. the cleaning lady considers this in silence. breathes deeply once again to touch the track of what happened. the cleaning lady is also the protagonist. and yet they are two people. it is perceived that the actor has been gone already for months. it is inconceivable how live and die of moments and relationships can be so close together within a couple of days. now they are all gone, all players who had their duets. (...)  

one of the ”hes” forgot his sunglasses here. the 8months-he. it interferes. it says nothing. it nonverbally prattles all the time. the nazi has steel blue eyes. we have fucked. months ago, she wrote in her notebook: about the difficulties of fucking a nazi. now we finished fucking. she couldn‘t stand his sunglasses on the dessert anymore. now it rests on the wardrobe and prattles, but she cannot hear it so well there. he says: have you talked with your friends about my attitude? she says: I have also other topics that interest me. he thinks: she has no backbone. she thinks: I’ve got no backbone. she is co-nazi. it is this evening. they sit at schottentor and miss  tram 43. they smoke to miss the Forty-three. he says: i have to tell you something. he says: i am married and have two children. she says: let‘s go for a drink. he says: have you got beer at home? she says: either you stay the whole night, or you’re leaving. he says: I cannot bear being close anymore. she has multiple heartbreaks. the table is almost neutral. there is still the coffee pot. a jug with a residue of cold coffee. he says: there is a lot of anti-semitism. she says: strategically, it was good that austria presented itself as a victim. he longs for the great german empire, after the annexation of south tyrol, for freedom of expression. she says: freedom of expression is a big error under any regime. He shows: this is a talisman. many of us carry it. he says: as a muslim, a divorce is unthinkable. he says: I will lose everything. he says: she didn‘t let me go. he says: I cheated on my wife for twenty-one years. he wants to see her no more. he says: imagine, you do not even know this woman and then you have to show that she’s a virgin. she says: you know, it is something like eating spaghetti bolognese every day. he says: yes, then you dare for a schnitzel. she says: you are my schnitzel. he says: yes but only of pork."

Prospekthof, Wien. The former ”Prospekthof,” a storage space for prospectuses of the Vienna Opera.

The performer stands on a parapet–having an intimate conversation while she looks in the water that is not there. A huge space, the audience far away, like an inner monologue, with warm monotone voice, no change of tenses–she moves through the story: A setting that feels like the beginning of a play in which the space and its atmosphere will be clarified. A vanitas still life. The audience is quiet–no one dares to disturb such an intimate atmosphere. Melancholy. The actors get voices (”he says, she says”), but remain stands of the story, fragmentary. You never know in which story you are, somewhere between the beginning and end, at the farewell.

A political love story that dares to cross the borders only in secret.