1998
Der Sekundentraum was first performed in 1998 in Hanover, Germany. Conceived during the artist’s early years of migration, the work emerged from her experience of cultural displacement and the ongoing search for identity. It reflects the uncertainties, ambiguities, and continual acts of adaptation that accompany the encounter with an unfamiliar environment.
The performance uses hundreds of garments that the artist personally collected during her first years of living in Germany. These articles of clothing become traces of memory, accumulated experiences, and shifting identities.
Throughout the performance, she carefully folds and stacks the clothes into orderly piles, only to scatter them again. She then removes the clothes she is wearing and begins dressing herself with the garments from the floor, layer upon layer, until her body becomes immobilized beneath their weight. The repeated actions speak of the ways social systems shape behavior and identity, while migration demands the difficult process of relinquishing established patterns and beginning anew. As the layers accumulate, the work evokes the sedimentation of memories, experiences, and social expectations—structures that both sustain and ultimately constrain the individual.
First performed at Finally – 24 Hours, Kunstverein Hannover, Hanover, Germany, 1998.
Photo: Reinhard Lutz
Performance Description
Hundreds of garments in various colours are scattered across the floor. I fold and stack the clothes into neat piles before deliberately disrupting the order and scattering them once more. I remove the clothes I am wearing and begin putting on the garments from the floor, one layer after another, until my body becomes enlarged, heavy, and unable to move.
