Axé i ô
A white cloth spread out in front of the University in the Dechanatstrasse represents the setting.
Spotlights illuminate the field in the dark. It`s drizzling.
Eduardo Raccah enters, wearing only a white loincloth. Going down on his knees,
he crushes
seeds into scents for a purification ritual. He offers the scents and the aromatic oils to the
spectators to smell, to behold and to touch. Like an animal, he kneels down, lets out screams, pours red color over himself for which he'll use later to paint the cloth. Then, he puts on a robe.
Awakening!
"I - Eduardo Raccah, 1,80 m, 75 kg, white - will dress as Filho de Gandi, the sons of Gandhi.
They belong to the Candomblé religion, a group of the Afro-Brazilian culture. They stand for the
spiritual and mental purity and possess the power of the spiritual purification. I`ll cart a wheel-barrow
from the University to the Dome of Bremen - the distance representing my way of purification.
This "purified power" is intended to spread into the city and the environment. The wheel-barrow is
equipped with two speakers (which play Ijexá rhythms), a broom, and multiple vases with purified
water. Ijexá is the rhythm of the Candomblé and is played by three instruments
(agogô, atabaqui, and xequerê). The purified water is a mixture of herbs,
water and lavender oil" (concept of Eduardo Raccah).
With his own ritual requisites, printed robe and sneakers, Eduardo Raccah wanders through the city,
in the midst of advertisements, billboards and store fronts, with the spectators to the Dome. Here he
cleans the steps, sprays scented oils and blesses the visitors.
For an entire year, Bremen will be
protected from "evil". With great expression, concentrated presentation and a degree of humor and irony,
Eduardo Raccah combines cultic, profane, popular and religious objects from different cultures into an
ecclectic ensemble, thereby developing an artistic creation of its own. The custom of Bremen
(which is always connected with alcohol-drinking) to sentence unwed thirty year-old men to
clean the steps of the Dome is only one of the contextual points of reference of the performance.
Dr. Sabine Maria Schmidt