Frank WeigandPortrait: Eva Meyer-Keller2010

Children are not just naive, cute and quintessentially good. Their curiosity and unbridled radicalism can also make them profoundly cruel. Eva Meyer-Keller views the world through the eyes of a joyfully experimenting child, and also makes our perspective on her experiments part of her performance. With the simplest of means and seemingly innocent craftwork, reminiscent of the sticky-backed plastic of children’s TV and hobby chemistry sets, she produces images of natural disaster and sadistic executions methods, which we – placed in the role of expectant children – marvel at like enthralled voyeurs. The minute detail of the production process carried out before us gives rise to all manner of menacing associations. And when real children take over the witches’ kitchen instead of Meyer-Keller, and break mashed potato dams to drown masses of toffees, it becomes obvious that this „game“ cannot be reconciled with expectations of political correctness. In a conspiracy based on curiosity, we take the world apart in order to see what really holds it together inside. In that moment, we all – performers as well as the fascinated onlookers – become a little bit guilty. Eva Meyer-Keller’s work sets objects, processes and, above all, ideas in motion. For this reason, they are more choreography than many an uncritical technique-glorifying dance piece.