SCREENTEST: R-R-RHINE PEACETIME 82

Performance etc. // ICA // 2010

On a sound stage, an actress is being filmed auditioning for a role in a fictitious film based on a strange, actual sequence of events that took place in West Germany in the hot summer of 1982. Over the course of 25 days in three unrelated, tragic incidents members of the US and UK peacetime army stole tanks and rampaged through various German towns and countryside leaving behind a trail of destruction, ultimately driving themselves over bridges and into trains to their deaths. The actress Maya Lubinsky is auditioning for the role of Katja Riemann, a young woman who gets run over by a tank driven by Private Charles S. Keefer, her boyfriend.

In this expanding screentest which occurs on a fractured timeline, the lives and fictions of Katja Riemann, Maya Lubinsky and Maya’s body double overflow and hemorrhage into each other creating a spiraling narrative told through film, heroines, anti-heroines, animated props, an overbearing narrator and a Neanderthal from a parallel universe.

The performance is accompanied by a live score by David J. Smith (Guapo, Stargazers Assistant and Amal Gamal Ensemble)