Barbara Kowa – I Count On You

The short, intense collaboration with Ely Daou embodies the merging of two people on a mental, physical and spiritual level, while simultaneously revealing its impossibility. I met Ely during my six-week gallery performance in Berlin at which only numbers were spoken, two long performances in Paris and Riga originated, addressing this encounter in the matrix, and a love that is already a memory once it has been recognised. Both of us agreed that we should not speak, at least until after the performance. This was wonderful, especially because Ely explained to me, that writing or reciting numbers is a way to express feelings and thoughts that are beyond words. This performance and especially the preparation for it, writing the numbers on each others bodies without speaking was strange and magical.

Following the performance we tried to speak and I doubt that this was a good idea. We had been communicating intensely on different levels: body, mind and soul and the temptation to nail and clarify what can never be said or explained with verbal expression made it very difficult to communicate at all.

I suspect that this drive to clarify anything is misleading us in every way: in art , in science, in love. The truth is: there is never any solution or clarification, the opposite is the case: the more we discover and put down, the more questions arise. And it is quite important to understand this “where the secret is missing , the witness is missing” (Boris Nieslony).

The performance was a meditation about the differences between connection and attachment. This culminated in a moment where we stood facing each other, all covered with numbers. I saw nothing but Ely’s eyes within numbers. Moving numbers. Glowing numbers. Three-dimensional spaces of numbers. All attachment was gone in this moment, as myself was not there anymore.

Find Barbara here: barbarakowa.de