In order to move forward and through this piece, Steven Cohen literally puts his heart under his feet in what makes for an extraordinary show.
The artist took time to develop this incredible ritual. He asked his 96-year-old “nanny” and adoptive mother how to continue living after the disappearance of Elu (the well-named). She replied, “Put your heart under your feet… and walk” and he followed her advice in the strictest sense of the words.
It is a simple confession of absolute love to the man he lost and who was his life: “I will always love you Chosen One, you are buried in me, I am your grave”, said the one for whom the words of his play become deeds. The viewer is subjected to the sometimes unbearable funeral ceremony in memory of his fellow South African dancer and shareholder who died after twenty years of living with him.
No doubt there is a strong purifying will, but it becomes a ” show ” of love and life. The couple danced for 20 years in a racist, homophobic South Africa and had found in art a way to fight against social marginalization.
The couple dares here to put on a total show. Steven Cohen moves forward on a stage full of objects that were once the couple’s own. He’s wearing coffin heels like a white elf. He indulges in a total and multi-media performance with sometimes unbearable episodes (in the video for example where he bathes in the blood of “fresh” oxen killed in a slaughterhouse) and up to the final performance which obliges the artist to a measured number of performances.
Everything becomes as wild as it is poetic and cannot leave one indifferent. Either the viewer is almost unwillingly driven out of his seat, or he/she attends a performance that can only leave imprints or even “embodied” wounds.
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