The Last Supper – Performance in the air (2018)
In collaboration with Lukas Kesler and Lea Hopp
https://leahopp.com
https://lukaskesler.xyz
In addition to the performance „Tears – An Evening for Friends“, we were giving away 12 sightseeing flights over Brandenburg in a Cessna aircraft. During the flight, the 12 winners (representing the 12 disciples of Jesu) received the Lord’s Supper, consisting of bread and wine. For the tombola, we used the concrete mixing machine as a winning drum.
The philosopher Michel Serres describes in his book "The Legend of the Angels", the aircraft dinner wrapped in silver aluminum, which is taken daily millions of times invisible above our heads, as the "universal supper". For many people, not just those who, like me, associate "flying" with "dying", this "21st century communion" feels like the "last supper". Being between the time zones always represents a moment of farewell and a new beginning. In addition, people still associate the fact of being "in heaven" with proximity to "heaven" as it occurs in Christian terminology.
"How should you paint that, Leonardo? Who would have thought the banquet of the angels could be so miserable? " asks Michel Serres and describes the tiny looking meals as "dull“ and „tasteless". I can not agree with him - I rarely enjoy "Chicken or Pasta" more than in his aseptic version 10,000 km above the sea. But why is that so?
„Eating air plane food makes one look better“ – a friend of mine said to me recently.
I highly doubt that he is right with this assumption, but, his unproven sentence in mind, I started to pay attention to my own relationship with the small boxes filled with tiny meals. The first thing that I realized, was that I always experience a moment of relief when a flight attendant serves me one of them: Once in your life all that you have to decide yourself is „Chicken or Pasta“. And there is even an order in which you are expected to consume one or the other - suggested by the silvery cases themself.
Bringing an ocean between you and your home has a purifying effect - and the fact that I'm actually terrified of flying enhances the cathartic moment. Praying „our father who art in heaven“ with ice-cold hands for eight hours puts the "Welcome to America" of the border guards into an almost transcendent context - "Welcome to America," they are congratuating me, "despite the high probability of dying on your way, you have survived one more time!".
all photos by Lea Hopp
