Nicole Beutler's new performance premiered yesterday during Julidans. In addition to the usual team of Gary Shepherd (sound) and Minna Tiikkainen (lighting), 7: Triple Moon also involved video artists Helena Muskens and Quirine Racké. Moreover, Triple Moon is the last part of a triptych in which Beutler works from primary geometric shapes, and uses them mainly as a model for symbolic ordering. After the circle and the square, it is now the turn of the triangle to close the gate. Beutler wants to replace the patriarchally arranged trinity of Christianity with a pagan trinity of girl, woman and old mother.
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The enormous amount of text on tape […] seems to suggest that we are out of time in Triple Moon and that the three female roles of Hlíf Svavarsdottír, Marjolein Vogels and Madelyn Bullard are stages in a universal development. Where writers such as Virginia Woolf or Marguerite Yourcenar redefined the relationship to patriarchy on the basis of fictitious histories of historical figures, Beutler seeks it in a supposedly timeless prehistoric pantheism. You could therefore better describe the performance as a ritual installation, in which the same stages are passed through time and time again.
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Bauhaus, of course, has remained a hit long after the revolutionary times of the Interbellum, due to its formidable aesthetics. But in the beginning it was also intended as a movement that would improve the world through beautiful and functional utensils. Perhaps Beutler wants to compete with fantasy and sci-fi with Triple Moon, where our children have to find their heroines.