Paths Crossed: Eva Meyer-Keller
The Berlin-based performance artist turns the page on what it means to be a woman in her fifties as she delves into her latest show.
I love Eva Meyer-Keller’s brain. Some people just alight your creative mind, and every time I catch up with Eva and find out what her latest artistic project has her thinking on and researching, I leave the conversation more expansive. A prolific artist who works at the intersection of performance and visual art, Eva resides in the heart of my Berlin community, one that at this point has shaped a significant portion of my adult life.
Keeping track of where I live aside—I'm currently composing this introduction from the cafe l've made my local when in Los Angeles—it is in my Berlin kiez, or neighborhood, that a cafe called Halifor became my living room more than a decade ago. There I first met Eva and her husband Rico, a singer, guitarist, and equally good friend. Throughout the years, I’ve admired Eva’s identity as a mother and artist, traveling around the world for residencies, workshops, teachings, and the like, while Rico took his turn at playing music and being a dad. Right before my eyes, the artistic couple’s kids became young adults, who now make cameos alongside their parents, whether onstage in one of Eva’s pieces or singing the blues next to their dad at a jazz club (mouth agape, I felt like a proud auntie this past summer as I heard their daughter Kajsa’s voice at said club).
At 52-years-old, Eva is now contending with the space between motherhood and menopause, reclaiming her identity—or perhaps imagining a new one. When I sat down with her a couple months back on a bench in a bucolic Berlin schoolyard, our conversation on creativity took on a life of its own, unfolding in all the alchemic and synchronous ways I should have suspected it might.
It’s so nice to finally sit and have this chat in Berlin. How are you feeling right now?
Good. A bit tired. I went to the chiropractic practitioner earlier. My neck and shoulders have been hurting and I realized that I've been holding a lot of tension in these places. I think it's exhausting, all of this holding.
Completely. That’s where I hold my tension too. I recently found a note I made when doing that Berlin movement workshop where I wrote, “Drop your shoulders and everything along with it.”
Yes, the last decades have been extremely exhausting. With working and kids and all sorts of different kinds of crises that happen in the world and privately. But now this moment has suddenly opened up, with Kajsa and Otis [Eva’s kids, now 18 and 16] being older, where I feel like, Ah, okay, I can let go. But I am also realizing how difficult it is to let go.
So damn hard. Lifelong daily practice.
Exactly. All these patterns. They were useful at some point. It’s a bit of a reinvestment, or readjustment, that has to take place now. And you need to really choose to go there.
This is so true. Awareness is everything but then comes the harder work of committing to new ways of being. To actively choose to go left where you always go right. It’s hard for me, but I trust it’ll incrementally add up. I think people often shy away from the work the moment that resistance comes up. It’s easier to stick with what we know than to sit with it all and feel it.
And it's also that sometimes we don't have capacity. It's not only one decision, but it's a journey. Actually, the new performance piece that I'm working on involves all of this. At the moment it’s called “Turn the P/age.” So it’s about aging. I look at how women are treated when they're getting older, and menopause and the medical system. I think perimenopause is a time where there’s an opportunity, where in some ways, we don't have much of a choice. You have to let things go. And the more you resist letting things go, the more you will suffer.
This is all so synchronous to the things I’m working through. I can stay trapped in my own familiar suffering—suffering our own minds are then pattered to recognize as safety—or I can release everything that no longer supports growth.
It also feels like losing things. In German, loss is Verlust. So it doesn't always feel good. There's a lot of grief involved.
Yes! Growth can feel like a setback because it’s very painful.
I realized I was tricking myself and thinking about this new performance project all wrong. I realized only last week that I was trying to start at the end, as if I had made the journey already. I realized I actually haven't done the journey yet. I'm in the middle of it, and I can't yet have the overview and the distance to identify and distinguish and categorize and order and make sense of it all. So that also made it really difficult to make choices in the new project. I felt really stuck for a time, but now I’m feeling better.
The messy middle. Do you feel better because you know it's okay to not yet know?
Yes, absolutely. But I also figured out I was really trying to start at the end, as if I was already the wise old woman. I talked to someone older and wiser, and she said, You know, before you can become the wise woman, you have to become the verrückt woman, the crazy one.
I love this.
In German this word translates to “crazy,” but if you break down the word, rücken means “to move.” So verrücken means to shift, like to move things out of place. Which I absolutely love because your whole life, you categorize things into: Do I need this? Do I want this? This is meaningful. This is not. These people I have meaningful relationships with. These people maybe not really. So you sort out your whole life and as you're changing and reordering things, you're verrücken them. And from the outside that might make you appear crazy because you're suddenly not doing the same things as you used to do.
So it looks like chaos.
Yes, and I have to admit that I am a bit afraid of the crazy woman inside me, but I also really can't wait. I have to go through that phase. And I want to go through that phase.
Don't you think if we’re lucky there are many times in our lives where these shifts and evolutions happen?
Yes, but I think that this one during perimenopause and into menopause is also a physical change that men don't go through it that way. Because with the hormones it's a cliff, actually. It falls down, first the progesterone, and then estrogen. It's a significant change. And I believe that this is a pivotal moment in a life, because the way you treat this phase and the way you treat this challenge will determine how you will be when you're old, or how you grow old at least. I think the choices I am making/will make in the next years are very important, and that's also why it's maybe not so easy to make some of those choices.
I can’t believe we’ve know each other for 12 years of life now. You have a few years on me but even in my 40s, it’s feeling like a now or never moment in creating new pathways and patterns and thoughts and attitudes. If I don't choose to step into my own wisdom now, into the chaos and grief and loss that allows in new and beautiful things, then when?
Exactly.
So how is this manifesting as you are developing “Turn the P/age”?
Everybody is turning to me for more direction. Some choices need to be made of where we take this next. And that puts me under total pressure. Which makes me realize, Fuck, I'm not clear. I think vagueness in itself is also a moment that involves loss in some way. Because as long as you're vague, you have several options open. And as you clearly choose one way, the others close. Sometimes I like to remain in the vague.
That’s an interesting take on vagueness. But also, as an artist, doesn’t an idea need time to mature? Isn’t it actually part of the creative process, sitting in the vagueness as it unfolds? But I also wonder if there’s a lack of self-trust in this.
Someone else, when I told her about my challenges, mentioned self-doubt as a well-known companion. And yes, in every new artistic project I make, I don't know where it's going to go, and I don't know what creative turns it's going to take. I’m never repeating a next version of the same project, so each project has its own quest. There is a moment where I really don't know. I’ve been doing this for 25 years and each time it’s super scary. I can't believe it every time it happens again, because I'm thinking, Come on, I've been here before. But it’s a different kind of not knowing again. There are so many not knowings to discover.
I love that and it echoes many things other artist friends have shared across their careers and with each new show. Can you see a pattern in your process as each show comes to life?
I just need time to process. With the show I’m working on about aging and menopause and all of those things, I realized it was too broad; the project went into all sorts of directions, into evolution theories, into zoology, into old age, like very old age, into death. And now I’m at the point where I need to find more of a narrow choice. And from there go deeper. Old age I will leave out of this project this time. The medical history I'm also really interested in. I got really interested in the uterus as an organ, and how it's been treated for 2,000 years since Hippocrates. It's an organ with the most laws put upon it, and everybody's got an opinion about what that organ should do. It's an organ to be controlled. And it's an amazing organ.
What amazing things did you find out about it?
For one thing, it can create another organ, the placenta. But also, there are stem cells in menstrual blood. Did you know that?
Shit, no, I don’t think I knew that.
It’s been known for a long time, yet we think of menstrual blood as dirty or unhygienic—which scientifically is total nonsense. These sought after stem cells that are in bone marrow, in roots of teeth, and in the navel cord, you also have them in menstrual blood, which you could just collect in a cup without doing anything invasive. In the 2010s, there were about 400 scientific papers on menstrual fluids compared to about 15,000 on sperm.
The patriarchy.
It's really astounding. So there’s a whole lot to discover. In China, more studies are done … China does more studies on the stem cells from menstrual blood than in Europe.
I’ll have to dig into America, but we sure know the horrific nature of where we are at in the U.S. with the uterus, as our election looms.
The more I learn about the systemic injustice, the more angry I am. Also in medicine, it's outrageous. Even the simplest medicine hasn't been tested on female bodies in clinical trials until more recently.
It’s hard to stomach.
Yes. So I think post-menopause, a woman becomes more free. Because there are these assigned societal roles—the young girl, the mature woman, the virgin, the mother—and once she's past that, there's no more program that she needs to follow really. Okay, maybe get invisible, but hey.
I was just going to say, for some that might head into the depressive messaging of marginalization. But I view you and so many around me who embody any age with enthusiasm, open to life and wonder. There’s so much we’re only just getting started with.
There's not really such an assigned pathway after let's say 40 or 45. From then on, I see a total playground and the liberty to invent ways of being and in society. But yeah, it's not very easy to see that because the narrative we're exposed to is not at all that. We need to not only get rid of that shit, but we also need to put something—not fantasies, but actual real stuff—in its place. But we need imagination for it. Because we need to make a story that makes sense and that is actually true.
So is your art the vehicle? To look at archetypes, develop new ones?
The art gives me time to dive into these topics and to learn and to talk to people. And so I talked to gynecologists and I read books. I'm not a scientist, or a medical doctor, or a journalist. But I’m using the medium of performance to spread some of this knowledge because we just don't get enough of that information.
You’re a pollinator. The storytelling, being an artist, these mediums have emotional resonance. Delivering data this way often sticks. Will you be on stage for “Turn the P/age,” or just directing?
We will be four women on stage. There's Lisa Densem, who's 60, and she's a dancer. Claudia Splitt is a performer, who is about 54 or 55. And I’m 52. And then there’s Rhyannon Styles. She's the youngest. She's 42, but she's had several big transformations in her life. She's a performer, a trans woman, and she’s written 2 books. One about her transition and one about her addictions. I find her really inspiring, because she must have been in some very overwhelming situations. And now she's this beautiful woman who is so clear. I'm inspired by her because she needed to use some imagination to envision which woman she wants to become. And in my case, it's more like you stumble through life, and you're kind of whatever you are; I could spend my life not really ever thinking about it because I was born a woman.
So she's a catalyst to think about becoming whatever you want to be.
Yeah, it makes me realize I can grow into something with my imagination. And so I will take a role that is not a female role—letting go of the caregiving, of all of the inherent responsibilities and stresses, and I will see what happens. And for me, this is new. It’s a choice. Even if I would have the impulse to keep on going as I have, I can instead just let it all fall apart. See what happens.
That's beautiful.
Just to add, it's not about fantasies. I think it is also important to know who you are, how you've been conditioned, and so to get the grounding. And then go from there. You have to start from where you're at, and then transform. You can't start out over there. That's not possible.
I’ve often thought of my past few years in relation to tilling a field. That’s just what has come to mind. And from there new things can spout up. Speaking of where to start, our conversation took on a beautiful life of its own. But if it’s not too late, I wanted to ask you how you found your way into this career and how you define it.
I make performances. In Berlin you can call it die freie Szene, the free scene of dance and performance. I studied choreography and dance and visual arts and photography. And so my practice has always been interdisciplinary in some ways, but the dance education I ended up in by accident, when I followed a friend to Amsterdam because I'd never been. She went to audition for the School for New Dance Development, and I joined the audition last minute. At the time I was there in the 90s, they made an experiment. To not take people with too much dance experience because then these people wouldn't need to emancipate themselves from the movement patterns they already had inscribed into their bodies. So I’m lucky, that’s why they took me.
And what do people go on to do from this school?
There are people in the program who want to be dancers, and go on to audition for companies. Then there was improvisation as performance. And then there were some people who were really into composition and making pieces. And this was definitely me. In the course of the four years, you were supposed to make three pieces, and I made ten. I was unstoppable. I was just loving it. I always wanted to become a visual artist. But this was better because it was more social. It was still making stuff, but with movement and in relation to other people.
What was one of your early pieces?
I made this performance called “Death Is Certain,” where I reenact murders with everyday objects. I made this in 2002 and have performed it many times around the world since. I knew I wanted to do something where the spectator had to be participating with their imagination. So if they couldn't project anything onto what I was doing, it wouldn't work. I tried all sorts of things, and then realized either sex or violence work really well. This is a piece that has been important for me because it was so simple, where I work with everyday objects, stuff that lives around us. And then layer ideas or concepts that are very hard to grasp.
It seems you’ve retained this thread throughout many pieces, of the everyday and the complex?
Yes, in that case, it was murder and violence, and later it was catastrophes. And then in the last pieces, it's quantum physics or cell biology, because you can't touch these things. I think it's very important for me these days to engage with complex, layered knowledge that people don't dare to touch because they think, Oh, I don't understand it anyway. But in the society we live in today, we need to get involved in complex things; simple ideas just don't work.
The ills of our binary, black-and-white thinking. By the way, I definitely look at fruit differently after seeing one of your performances. It was so many years ago, but it stuck with me. You were magnifying a maracuja fruit but it visually looked like I was watching a surgery. What performance was that?
Yes, exactly, we have the mirror looking into maracuja. You saw “Things on the Table.” I developed this one in collaboration with Uta Eisenreich. This was the only piece where we actually used a preexisting text by Gertrude Stein. She wrote a play called “Objects Lie on a Table,” where she describes still life. And there’s also the play on lying and lying, you know, not telling the truth. So what do objects tell you? Collage and still life are composed ways of presenting stories about everyday life. This text goes in loops and loops and talks about that.
I love your brain and have always enjoyed learning new things from you over the years, hearing about the rabbit holes you enter as you develop a show. How did quantum physics play into a show?
I worked with these concepts in “Some Significance,” the piece I made in 2017. I became very interested in how physics constructs and develops models to depict things we cannot see. But models are models. They're not real. Or right or wrong. They're just helpful for us to imagine something. I was very bad in physics in school. We don't get taught physics in a broader way. So then I kept thinking I might as well engage, because I build models too.
People can check out your website to read more about your prolific output. I made so many notes here about poetic turns of phrases in the overviews. How about picking just one more piece to tell me about?
How about “Scores of Matters.” It’s an artistic archive that goes through most of my pieces. I chose 100 everyday objects that I've used frequently. So there are things like a scissor, a glass, tape, balloons, an apple. And I've photographed them in two different ways. That’s also something I was quite obsessed about at some point: the two dimensional/three dimensional. So we have all of these objects that are three-dimensional, but when I photograph them as a shadow, you get only one perspective, one side of it. I photograph the objects from below, for example, bottles and glasses. So it's just circles. You can't distinguish what it is. And then I photograph each in a recognizable way, an apple, for instance.
See. There's always another perspective. You can’t ever assume you know it all. At least that's what I'm projecting onto it.
Yes. And with this I collected stories, either quotes from a piece or notes from my journals or quotes from other people, and they became a collage. And what I also do a lot in my work is I categorize things, and I order things. But these categorizations are often impossible. So it's also a creative act of showing how ridiculous it is to categorize things. You somehow think, god, this is so irritating.
But you follow through with categorizing, even when it’s irritating?
Yes. We ordered the objects in four different ways. The first way is in which room you would find it; so there's a kitchen and bedroom and bathroom and storage. And then by color, by weight, and by form.
Context. It makes me think of how subjective our experience is depending on our terms and definitions.
Yeah, so the apple, for example, has a different story in color, and a different story in form, and a different story in weight.
Was this a performance?
No, this is its own website, and then we gave some lectures. So with 100 objects, there’s 400 stories because of the categorization. And you can lose yourself on the site. There are words that are hyperlinked but I had the designer set it up so you can’t go back at all.
Wow, I can’t wait to check this out. I’m curious, is there a feeling that you recognize when you’re in flow?
You lose track of time. You know it when you’re in it. The decisions don’t feel like you’re actually doing them, they are just happening.
And what are you most proud of right now?
I don’t know if I can be proud about this, but when I see my kids it just makes me really happy. Of course it’s not something I have done, they have lived that life. But I just find them really inspiring.