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Previously shown at Tate Modern and Grotto, Berlin, the performance received its Swiss premiere at Halmet.

A provisional stage that feels like a lived-in room or a temporary shelter. Props are arranged with deliberate casualness, suggesting spaces of transience and waiting. The furniture is sparse, lighting surgical, surfaces cold. The space feels almost institutional, although it’s meant to be an apartment.

The living situations described and performed by Daria Blum strip domestic space of any redemptive intimacy, mirroring the transience of a hostel or waiting room. A lamp doubles as a performative partner, everyday furniture can be activated or abandoned, and lighting shifts mood. A change in posture, a turn toward or away from a screen, is enough to signal a new voice entering the conversation. Furthermore, Blum’s use of remote-controlled lighting and screens means that the images she incorporates are actively shaped by the performance in real time.

In I’m So Disappointed In You, the city of Berlin presents itself through a string of encounters and relationships, set against the backdrops of hostel lobbies, clubs, waiting rooms, or in random apartments, all temporary interiors where people circulate, linger and collide. These are spaces where one might attempt to find belonging, unaware in that moment of their transitory nature. Interiors, where intimacy is improvised, spaces marked by youthful anxieties, which, in the context of Daria Blum’s work, are framed as states of heightened sensitivity, open to attachment, disappointment, and misrecognition. We meet people who speak too loudly, misread social cues, overshare, or collapse the expected scripts of interaction. [...]

Excerpt of a text by TA

Photos by Alice Speller
Flyer Photo by Moritz Tibes

With great support by Kanton Zürich Fachstelle Kultur, Stadt Zürich Kultur, Pro Helvetia Schweizer Kulturstiftung, Casimir Eigensatz Stiftung and Rentshop.ch.