Carsten Saeger, Acheloos‘ Dream, 2022
“The video [Acheloos’ Dream] and performance are not documentary works about drag queens in Rome, nor a personal journey through ten months at the Villa Massimo. They are the attempt to translate the theme of memory into an aesthetic space and to allow it to be experienced on another level. At the end of his residency, Carsten will have woven nature and culture, water and dance, rehearsal, performance and video, as well as the cities of Rome and Dresden, into a new, large-scale work. The Rome Prize winners of the past two years are currently exhibiting at the Japanisches Palais, situated directly on the banks of the Elbe in Dresden. Carsten Saeger will be presenting his finished video installation and linking it performatively back to Germany: in July, three of the dancers from Rome will give a further performance at the Neptune Fountain bearing a relief of Romulus and Remus in the gardens of a hospital. It is his first work in the public space that confronts people with their present relationship to the past – a relationship that is not purely intellectual, but always physical, too.”
Text by Sarah Alberti (Monopol, 23.06.2022)