Lying in a hospital bed in the landscape, to take the cure, breathing in the fresh, mountain air.
Sokolowsko is a small village in a mountain valley, close to the Czech border, that had many tuberculosis sanitoriums in the 19th century. One is still open but the others are closed now. The hillsides are steep and close, dense with trees, and occasional cut meadows. You hear water moving under your feet. There are streams coming down from the hills everywhere, through the village, running under the buildings, along the roads, through the grass and trees. I thought of the performance the first day as we were touring the town.
My performance:
I borrowed a hospital bed (circa 1960, though I was hoping for one from 1860) from the one hospital that is still open. The bed was being stored with others on an old wooden open porch. It is an old section of the hospital that is no longer used, but it was the kind of porch where patients spent the day wrapped up in bed, breathing in the fresh air from the mountain.
I put the bed outdoors on a small hill under a circle of trees. The hill was on the grounds of the old sanitorium, which could be seen nearby through the trees. There was a small stream meandering past the bed. Some old stone stairs came up to the bed from the road. Other performances were also taking place nearby.
The head of the bed was slightly raised, I lay in the bed for half a day, bundled in white blankets and my hair was loose across the pillow. The day started cold, overcast and drizzly. Eventually a breeze began to blow and the sun came out. My face was towards the wind.
My eyes were closed. When people came up to me, I held out my hand and if they took it, I gestured for them to bend close and whispered, “Will you talk to me about the future?” So I heard many different things that people imagined about the future; their own, mine, and the world’s…
During the morning people found me on their way to other performances, and stopped to talk. But at one point I could hear that many people were gathered around the bed, and some were crying, so I imagine that it also looked like a deathbed, rather than the cure of being in the landscape and breathing the fresh air… It is always both, I suppose.
