Iris ter Schiphorst
Undine geht! (2021)
to the WP Salzburg 2021
Ingeborg Bachmann's 1961 story 'Undine geht' was considered an 'objection' to the traditional Undine tales at the time. For the first time, Undine had her own voice here, her view of love, of the 'order between people' was placed at the centre...
Exactly 50 years have passed since then. Accordingly, my Undine, like my Hans, is getting on in years. But'the world is stilldark' and'no clearing' is in sight.
And so Undine once again has a dialogue with the people, reviews the utopias she conjured up 50 years ago, becomes entangled in contradictions, continues to be combative - and also repeatedly indulges in her own delusions of grandeur...
And Hans, is he nothing more than her projection screenin this kind of monodrama?
And who or what is this being with the gender-neutral name 'Camille' (not to be confused with Camilla, the prostitute from Max Frisch's 'Mein Name sei Gantenbein')? A metamorphosis of the old Undine or her 'alter ego'?
Is it a coincidence that the main character in Donna Haraway's book 'Unruhig bleiben' also bears this name, there a symbiont, a mixture of human and rare butterfly?
At one point, Camille quotes a short passage from Björk: "The past is on loop. Turn it off." But can - and do! - Undine and Hans hear it at all? When the water keeps rising?
copryright (2021) Iris ter Schiphorst