Dreams of a bowhead whale

In their reading performance, the art duo gecko art—Evelyn Blumenau and Walter Kreuz—orbit a creature called Kedube, a fictional subspecies of bowhead whale. Like other marine mammals, Kedube can drift through the water in a half-brain sleep and—as the story goes—create dream images. The performance is an invitation to dream along with an artistic-constructive future of the human species.

The images that appear to the whale in its sleep could be described somewhat prosaically as concepts for participatory art projects, from which modules of gecko art projects from the last thirty years have been used repeatedly and have often generated or intensified an artistic buzz among participants.

For this reason, the performative narrative begins and ends with a boundless creative boom as an offer to make use of one's own aesthetic perception and artistic reflection. This can be, for example, an introduction to the permanent description of the world (dream image one)—or a festival in which the human being is celebrated with all his weaknesses and an end is put to the 'beautiful world' (dream image two)—or 'How to live' as a question about the right (and not the good) life (dream image five).

The demand for sufficiency, for what is necessary, what is just enough, arises almost automatically. The text describes Kedube juggling the concepts of sufficiency and the future in a light-hearted way. For the gecko art team, the ultimate question is: What can art and literature achieve in an exhausted world?

Admittedly, a reading performance is hardly sufficient as an answer. This was already clear after the basic text was completed. The haptic element was missing. So the dream image text was written in ink on slightly curled paper, a project that resulted in 86 pages, which were sewn and bound together with illustrations to form a book. This unique piece, entitled Codex Kedube, accompanies the performance and invites you to leaf through and read it noisily (!).

Evelyn Blumenau, born in 1963, lives and works in Vienna. She is an actress, author, composer and vocalist, as well as co-founder of the art group gecko art. She works as an actor in and is author of plays and radio plays as part of numerous street art projects and audio exhibitions. She has released 11 albums with the music group NoviSad (including the double CD Rise on Extraplatte and the double LP Wunderschönes Tier/Best Of on Schallter / monkey). Concert tours have taken her to the USA, the United Kingdom and Georgia. She can be heard as a reading performer and speaker in art projects and audio features. Her literary pieces revolve around the curiosities of everyday life and many an in-between space of outer and inner perception.

Walter Kreuz, born in 1958, lives and works in Vienna. He is an actor and co-founder of the art group gecko art. He has acted in plays by Frisch, Dürrenmatt, and Shakespeare, among others. As an outdoor performer, he designed, built and moved giant puppets and listening objects through European cities. In his literary publications (including Karlas Lauf gegen die Raumzeit [Karla’s run against space-time], edition roesner 2008, Sekundenbruch auf Straße 4 [Fracture of a second on road 4], edition splitter 2018), he constantly explores interactions between language and time.

Evelyn Blumenau and Walter Kreuz have received numerous international awards for their gecko art audio projects and radio features.
https://www.geckoart.at/traumbilder-eines-groenlandwals/