movie still of Xanadu: The Bastards Dream, scene The Goddess of Death (Mannee performing at the Indian Ocean shores, Reunion Island, 2015, Winter=silence. European sleeping acres, 2018
INTRO - THE HOMAGE
The transmedia art performance-installation THE LAST SUPPER is creating a collective and individual “space out of space” in the public sphere for the homage to the deceased person, a family member, friend, lover, by voluntary participants using the enlarged perception of an interactive transmedia art installation to foster a wider awareness and comprehension of Life
after Death, entertain, enjoy the interplay in close relationship with the depar ted person, offering an unusual homage. The performance-installation is accessible to the general public for their personal wayof observation. As such, the art installation is an evolutive and performative-installative artwork that grows with each participant, carrying and existentially manifesting in itself “Wandel”, transposition and transformation.
The performance-installation The Last Supper develops from my artstic research and general artistic formulation inbetween media fusion, based on my art-theoretical concept of Interactive Matter uniting Split Authority and Temporary Autonome Zone.
The Last Supper interrogates the passage from Life to Death and formulates seven stages oF this existential experience in the artistic formulations of tastes, present in cakes, ediable sculptures, presented in the installation and being a central element of the performance-installation.
The participating performer-guests, honoring a loved-one, are invited to take place at a white long table and pose a framed photograph of the person to be rendered homage to, on the table. There are white plates and glasses. The table is lit up by a tryptich video projection from above.
The performing participants are being served small pieces of the 7 cakes and invited to choose between water, milk, red wine or rhum as drinks. The serving performers are performing choreographed movements interacting with space and participants.
The encompassing space is being filled with an evolving sound cloud, contemporary music composition created for each performance and either live performed or preproduced.
THE INSTALLATION
The site-specific performance-installation adapts to the specific conditions of the exhibition venue.
A long wooden table of 12 meters length, 1.25 m wide, rectangular, accompanied by wooden benches without lean along the whole length, offering places to sit on small white cushions for the voluntary and invitesd participants, seated about 90cm apart. The furniture is all painted in white.
The middle of the table, along its whole length, forming a corridor of 20 to 25cm wide, presents a random assemblage of hundreds of every possible little figurines, of any origins, religious figurines, society figurines, etc. an assemblage of small objects of memories, hope, dream which are mixed up to white shuttle-cocks and little black square stone plates carrying imprints of Navel=paintings.. They form like a corridor of energy along the middle of the table. Objects linked by assemblage, create an associative, progressive, and uncertain current, in the constantly changing light of the video projections installed from obove the tables.
Along both long sides of the tables two linings of dishes are set up, empty white plates and their assortments, wine glasses and of small white napkins.
3 video projectors, framed to the length and width of the tables, are suspended above the white table situation and project their looped images in HDD (format approx. 1.2 x 4.0m). The movies are created by Nikunja for the project. The video-projections are the only light source for the tables and form three light showers from high above. One of the projections is a Real- Time-Projection of the situation and the participants in action, transmitted from a camera installed overhead the table-installation.
THE VIDEO-MOVIE
The video-images relate to the awareness of death as a process through fluid 7 stages of the soul's disconnection from body, vital, mind planes , its associations, its representations in various cultures, practices, rituals, embedded and superposed into the landscapes and performances composed. Nikunja collaborates with Mauritian performer Mannee (former collaborations for Venise Biennale 2015: Xanadu The Bastard’s Dream and performance piece: The Genesis according to Lilith 2013).
The projections are composing a visual dialogue between themselves and the participants, creating a sensation of „passage“ , corridor, across time levels, a passage along the table, and the passage of participants, the passage of deceased persons.
The installation concept refers to the triptych of threefold holy representations of various beliefs, the trinity uniting all of them.
Adjunct to the described core installation are a second table of about 2 m length installed at the head side of the main table in T- form and a painting installation above it, a work by Nikunja in regards to Hans Holbeins Christ in the Tomb. This table will present 7 large sculptural cakes created by Natalia Krevskaya formulating a travel through 7 after=life spiritual existential stages
THE CAKES
  
The especially composed cakes, created by international chief patissier Natalia Krevskaya
formulate the artistic composition of tastes for the 7 stages after death. Natalia also created a theme-related form and materiality underlining the content, developing a sculptural and performative expression to each of the proposed fluid stages of conscious and experience.
The food aspect here does not refer to physical nourishment. The creation of the 7 tastes has a poetic dimension and carries an artistic content to the senses of the tongue as does sound to the senses of the ear and image=light to the senses of the eyes: They refer to the 7 subjective stages of the passage to the bodyless reality of death as they may be experienced on an undefined timeline dominated by one's own soul-spirit.
(These stages are also the basis for the performance creations for the video images in the projections)
These stages are not happening on a defined time-line, but are perceived in a common space of perception and may appear in different constellations: Thus the order by which the participant tastes the taste-creations is not important and is free of choice; it is the constellation of the 7 tastes to each other, which is the content of the culinary experience. Natalia underlines the importance of the cutting, the opening of the body of the cake, as well as the way the servings are being served to the performer-guests. The performative ritual aspect of the whole performance should therefore never be lost. The subtlety of the tastes will thus be able to expand through and transcend the body aspect like the liberated spirit transcend the physical realms.
The laminal states of loosing the contours of body, time and space as we learned to perceive during our life-time are reflected in the transmedia installation and the sound cloud.
THE LAST SUPPER PARTITION ( 7 stages)
Resistance-Surrender-Release( life pictures-memory-moments as energy)
Expanding Peace-Descending Light ( the expanding colour-light tunnel towards outer-body reality)
Coming Home ( a non-location you have known all along but forgotten, loss of time and binding condition)
Comprehend Life as a whole – clear perception of the soul promise (original will and motivation to enter incarnation)
Manifestating Attachments – Detachment – Release ( detachment of conditions, pleasures, physicality, space-time conditions)
LoveLight ( Heart-Anahata) as unbound reality (becoming Yourself as existential conscious)
Soul's Light – Abode – (transcendental) Stillness of the Non-Manifest (suspension between the stillness, limits and transcendental will of the soul, her limits want her to be reborn again to be able to transcend her limits of being, but this only after a good rest)
THE PAINTING-S
“Jesus in the Tomb” by Hans Holbein the Younger, created in 1521/22, exposed in the Basel Kunstmuseum.
Nikunja creates a special painting behind the head table which will be created on loose canvas stretched on wood and holding a middle piece of metal plate.
The artist is in contact with the Kunstmuseum Basel, so that a real-time digital movie- projection of Hans Holbein's painting “Christ in his Tomb” would be projected onto the artists painting creating a 500 year time-space arch through time and physical as well as virtual space between the physical spaces of the painting and the installation-site. The projection, transforming the painting into light, will only be visible during the performance Alternatively a preproduced movie=video looped could be projected onto Nikunjas painting,
.
French cinematograph and DoP Jean Marc Selva is invited to compose the 24h treal-time transmission by specific light and camera formulations.
*(Nikunja realised several painting works which dialogue with video-projection as light-source since 2004, like Bagdad Sunset exposed Rotterdam, 2004 and more)
THE PERFORMANCE
During a 24 hour period from noon to noon, the general public and special guests are invited to participate and to bring along the framed photograph of a close deceased friend or relative, s/he would like to honor and render homage to. The person may have been deceased the days, weeks, months or years prior to the event, but the performance-installation The Last Supper
offers a specific opportunity to honor him or her in the frame of this art-event exploring and interrogating human spirit.
Each participant sitting at the table would install the photograph on the table and would then be served by a server-performer,clothed in a simple costume, 7 pieces of cakes. The sculptural cakes are being exposed on a table aligning the main table on the head-side.
The participants are invited to choose from water, milk, red wine or rhum as drinks. The performer-participants then would take their desired time to taste cakes, drinks, sounds and images and meditate on their memories and life-experiences.
There are no rules. The participant may also drip drinks or foods on the white surface of the table cloth and the figurines, as an offer.
The performer-participants are invited to stay silent and not to enter conversations during the performance.
Otherwise no rests of food or beverage would stay on the table. The four serving performers would offer to the participants a plate with the 7 taste-object-cakes, and take those away, once the participant has finished his/her meditation. The performers serve the beverages according to the choices of the participant.
The participants may stay at the table as long as they wish to do so. They may leave the photograph of the honoured close friend or relative on the table for the duration of the exhibition, for ever, or take it home again. They may leave a flower beside the photo, or whatever they feel adequate. During their observations the participant should remain silent. Even in groups, it is better to stay silent. The sound compositions are an integral part of the installation as are the video creations and paintings , all interacting fusing parts of the transmedia installation.
THE EXHIBITION PLACE
The performance-installation is accessible during the fixed hours of the exhibition place as an art installation that communicates by the traces of it, left by the participants and through its constant presence the content of the artwork. It may be exposed/performed during a specific art event or at an exhibition venue. There should be one or several 24h cycles , noon to noon. THE LAST SUPPER can be displayed - performed as part of an event as «The Nights of Art», an art-festival or as standing alone in an exhibition hall of an institution, where the complex overall context can better be questioned. The juxtaposition / dialogue of an installation space and of a performance space opens a dimension of additional perception, between Presence andAbsence (of the performers as well as of the dead): a moment of existential truth.
The installation / performance will evolve with every place of exhibition: In addition to the pictures of participants, Nikunja is going to create video-performances in landscapes, cities and with local characters of the place of exhibition; this reflects on art, culture and habit of the place of exhibition in touch with the perception of death. The video-pictures of these
performances will enter the edit of videos cast in the installation; so the places of exhibition influence form and content of the installation and constantly expand the installation as interface between performers/participants, place, culture, spiritual space, weaving between presence and absence; thus the installation develops a model space as relates the cultural space as such to the web of the creative traces of the living and the dead, never separated. It will create an intercommunicative arch between cultures and persons of all origins. Nikunja wants to promote with Last Supper a new and social link between Living beings and
the transcendent world of the Dead, and to offer a presence of public memory for deceased persons, who all had contributed to the social and cultural reality of the present society, such as it is of today, here, at this specific place and at this specific moment of history. Thus The Last Supper manifests itself a link between intimate conscience of the individual and
social conscience in the public. Above all a conscience enlarged by genuine spirituality crystallises; in touch with the experience of death, every Wo-Man faces evenly the common mystery: for as every Wo- Man was born, every Wo-Man will die
NATALIA KREVSKAYA
Natalia Krevskaya is belarusian-russian cake artist with experience as a mixologist, Chef, Pastry Chef.
In the process of creating desserts she uses techniques of haute cuisine, knowledge of chemistry, botany, perfumery
and sculpturing, which allows her to create authentic and unique art-works of Haute Cuisine.
Endorphin cakes https://www.instagram.com/endorphin_cakes/
SOUND CLOUD BY UNCOPPEN SAW
MANNEE (MAU), ALAIN PERRET ( CH),
MATHIEU SYLVESTRE (F), NIKUNJA (CH/F)
https://uncoppensaw.bandcamp.com/
DIGITAL MOVIE REAL TIME TRANSMISSION
JEAN MARC SELVA (F)
https://www.jeanmarcselva.com/
NIKUNJA
http://nikunja.net/
THE PUBLICATIONS
We will create documentation materials as photos and videos of the different places of
exhibitions by including
texts / interviews by the curators, the artists and other personalities, who will open new aspects
and understanding of the
project, based on the real experience of the installation-performance of this progressive project.
Nikunja, 2016/2025 c/ adapg, Paris 2016/2025
P A R T I C I P A T I O N F O R M
CLICK HERE
INTERACTIVE MATTER
VIDEO=FOLIO
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