Dette sans raison is the river at your door

To be invited is to be (undeniably) overcome by the fact that one is not at home.^[1]

Dette sans raison is the river at your door is a bodily and discursive exploration of the relationships between the guest, the host, and a residential space. The work looks at the notion of belonging by attempting to analyze the converging forces of hospitality and performativity.

For this project, k.g. Guttman has conceived a performance for one person, alone in someone else’s residence. Adopting the role of an instigator, Guttman will, at a distance, accompany willing participants in a risk-taking action of occupying the position of a guest.

Each participant must arrange, through their own networks, to visit the home of a person they barely know, someone on the periphery of their social circle. They must be allowed in the home to spend one hour alone in the living room or kitchen, while the host is absent. Before the day of their visit, Guttman will send the guest an audio recording to listen to on headphones in the host’s home, plus a small bag containing material elements they can explore while listening to the recording. The audio directs the participant’s sensorial attention and probes the space’s visible, invisible, or inaccessible dimensions. Precise ways of looking, touching, holding, and imagining things in the room will be proposed. In this project, vision is considered always experimental, always incomplete.

To thank the hosts for having given over part of their homes for the performance, Guttman will offer each a culinary gift that is one part sweet and one part salty. At the end of the project, the participants will meet for dinner at the artist’s home, where they will share their experiences of their performative visit.

^[1] Derrida, J., Dufourmantelle, A. (1997). De l’hospitalité: Anne Dufourmantelle invite Jacques Derrida à répondre. France: Calmann-Levy.