working method - Faust:

Preface - How Goethe’s dramatic work Faust is perceived, is the starting point for our work process. The Faust is a classic that is often seen as the literary projection of german speaking culture. Over decades, the work and notion of Faust has given rise to the most fantastic and patriarchic reverberations which have spread across territorial borders. Goethe and Faust came to be connected with an image of a divine artist and their names stand for great charisma – presuppositions for our work and exceptions that we want to search for. This experiment will ramble in a faustian landscape rather than making the content of Faust as such its intentional focus.

This project uses “Faust-containers”, i.e. faust inspired objects, memories, images, sounds, etc. to explore aspects of collective memory. Faust-containers are different, Faust-containers are similar but Faust-containers are always open-minded. What cracks Faust?

Swarming - At the beginning of February the different persons were swarming out and ending up at different places in Europe, some of them stay in Giessen. Therefore everyone had prepared a Faust Package with an object which is given to someone else.

The work Faust - Our approach to the Goethian work Faust aims not to explore its content but its exterior dimensions and manifestations concerning reception, history and temporality. This also includes the plurality of myths grown out of and surrounding Faust. For this work, we use documentary instruments, place frames and physical structures for the “Faust-containers”. The play Faust is present in its absence within our project.

The Faust-containers - There are uncountable potential Faust-containers, we are using five of them for our project. A Faust-container does not exist automatically but has to be created by its exterior. The boundaries, shape and size of a Faust-container is constituted by setting the “collected volume” of Faust into a special frame. Since each owner of a Faust-container can only deal with a certain and limited aspect of the faustian exterior, the content and conditions of all the Faust-containers are interdependent. However, a Faust-container does not have a maximum capacity, yet, they are the smallest units of our project. A Faust-container is composed of discursive and material elements. It is the connection between its owner and the overall project.

Machine, mechanical - In our project we want to juxtapose the genius and divine artist with an opposite pole, a mechanical process. We want to be human machines that find new accesses to the work Faust. Instead of acting as artists we want to become machines. What kind of machine are we supposed to become for the purpose of this project?

A machine like a camera without becoming this specific object. That means: an apparatus which questions the usual understanding of art concerning its frames, contexts, affects and effects. Machines which play.

Phases - The process of this project is structured by two phases. Phase I and II differ in the quality of exchange between the Faust-containers. In phase II this exchange is going to be intensified due to the spatial closeness.

Phase I - After Swarming the owners of the Faust-containers are at different places. The exchange and a possible mutual inspiration of the autonomously operating Faust-containers occurs by regular contact of the five participants: Once in a month we talk to each other by phone or internet. Everyone celebrates the traditional Walpurgis Night (see Faust I and II), the 30th of April 12 p.m. Therefore everyone found his own “Brocken”. Letters and the packages given at the Swarming can always been send to another participant. 

Infection- The six participants try to infect. Infection means for us the establishing of mechanically faustian circles of production. The aim is to gather other possible participants that are not involved yet and make them directly or indirectly a part of Faust.

Phase II - In phase II the Faust-Containers are going to be stimulated mechanically. The autonomy of the containers will be heavily reduced. In phase II we want to create an closer structure which can involve external influences. This structure is supposed to offer a mutual correlation of influences between the Faust-containers, their owners, participants of the phases I and II and the audience. This should happen by the playful aspect who let the audience become machines playing with Faust-containers. The outside and inside of the individual Faust-container start to oscillate. The contours elapse. The mutual infection generates mechanical production and reproduction.

Structure, structured - The structure qualifies a heterogeneous production process which does not define how the result will be, but arranges the process. Phase I is research, individual approach and finding linking points. Phase II - concretize phase I. Phase II is constituted by the conception of individuals and the collective memory of the work that we call Faust. This means, that also during the performance it has to be possible to affect and to build a resistance to the structure of the performance.