The Laundry Room - excerpts

- 58 images out of 113 located in the “relics no name” folder shows textiles or textile related objects and elements. Clothes, shoes, towels, lengths of fabrics, banners, bracelets, tapes, ribbons, ropes, strings, upholstery, fans, soft decorations, hair. 

- Many of those are stained and marked, while images of staining liquids and substances present themselves in the folder in considerable number - pigments, inks (or something similar), earth, food containers. 

- Implements that might be used to remove the stains and to generally care for textiles are present as well - washing tin basins, clothes and shoes brushes, laundry pegs, ironing board. 

- Why don’t we explore performances through the objects that facilitate them rather than through their “contents”? 

- Objects that are so mundane that we tend not to notice them, even though they are ubiquitous and without them we will not be able to perform - not just as “performance” artists, but as people. 

- Let’s curate the relics collection through the functionality and related cultural and metaphorical load of its textile linked components.

covering, wrapping, wiping, tying, netting, holding, revealing, binding, hanging, fixing, staining, brushing, tumbling, washing, marking, scenting, waving, mending, folding, stretching, ironing, bandaging, rubbing, spreading, drying, boiling, straightening, crumpling, soiling, combing, cutting, tearing, scrubbing, pressing, flapping, knotting, stitching, bleaching, swinging, releasing, rolling

- Each of those simple words is a gateway into human behavior and emotion, history, cultural commonality and specificity - undoubtedly reflected in the performances that have been facilitated by the use of those objects. 

- What could this be? 

A museum of archeology? The basketmaker's workshop? The laundry room? The familial armoire? A hospital? The undertaker’s parlor? A sailing ship? A sweatshop? A hotel room? A honeymoon? A troubled conciseness? A kitchen? A worn bridge? A lonely bed? A sweaty night? A dungeon? A circus? A cave? A tent? The landlady? A boutique? A brothel? A filthy couch? A psychoanalysis session? True love? Slavery? Devotion? Demonstration?  House cleaning? Escape? Birth? Attack? Capitulation? Victory? Myth? Tax? Moth? Moose? Leopard? Frustration? Tears? Ecstatic revelation? Mummy? Mattress? Mistress? Fist? Tryst? Feast? Barocco? Bruise? Muse? Maze? Music? Rustic charm? Rough night? Shower? Show? Shoe? Shit? Sheet? Sleeping beauty and

Katya Oicherman