Love-potion is a durational performance artwork in three phases that uses borage herbs, seeds, magic spells, aural-visual trance-narratives and DIY installations. It is particularly difficult to articulate its parameters as an artwork because it almost-always slips back into everyday life, yet threads of it remain sufficiently visible to be picked up by invisible networks of participants. There is no single focus to Love_potion rather it weaves several elements together that exist as different tempos and forms. Knowledge and memories of one element are transported across to another and back again.
love_potion uses only the most fragile protocols to draw attention to everyday performance spaces and situations.
The first phase of the performance takes place over six months and involves seeding, tending, harvesting and drying borage herbs. It was first carried out by the artists as an everyday activity and subsequently transformed through repetition and ritual into a form that can be shared with others.
The second phase involves preparing a magic potion from borage, an herb that reputedly drives away sorrow and melancholy, uplifts the spirits, and when shared with others nurtures compassion and peace. For Bracha L. Ettinger 'compassion [..] works its way, like art does, by fine attunements that evade the political systems'.
The third phase is where performers come together to co-create and co-tend an intimate place filled with aural-visual trans-narratives that can be downloaded here. By co-creating the intimate shared space and opening themselves to others, and to the potential of intrapsychic healing, a transformation sometimes co-emerges between participants. When they leave the co-created intimate space participants take with them borage flowers and seeds with the intention of making new intimate spaces with others. As more people take part, there is potential for an invisible network of love to co-emerge.
To enliven the sad with a joy of a joke,
Give the wine with some borage put in to soak.
(Old English Rhyme) |
