People of varying ages reflect on their love lives without telling their stories–they simply recite the first names of those people they have loved. These sequences of names range from a single name to almost twenty, and there are pauses of varying length in which participants remember, consider and decide what was true love and what not quite.

The Names of Love
was only presented once: in what is now the Nordbühne of the Gessnerallee Theatre in Zurich, which was used as a storeroom at the time. The visitors moved through the space in semi-darkness, seeing the faces of those remembering on television screens placed at differing heights while through the loudspeakers they could hear a sound collage of different voices and names that filled the entire space. On each monitor one person could be seen remembering the names of the people they had loved and saying them out loud. But these were only intelligible by bending down very close to each screen so that the visitors and the faces remembering repeatedly formed different pairings.  

The Names of Love | Trailer

Press

“When you walk into the exhibition space at the Gessnerallee what you hear is a symphony of names; you see people on screens saying the names of people they’ve loved – and then you start to think about your own love life. Perhaps you will sigh inwardly a little while remembering all those who have passed by. But the whole time you can look at the faces of others who have loved too. And you will be surrounded by countless names, every one of which stands for a person who was loved at least once. Beautiful!”

Züritipp, 12. April 2012

“Short videos have been created, often no longer than a love song. And yet every series of names stands for a whole lifetime of love. You can sit down in front of some of the screens, whereas others are positioned so that you need to bend over a little to be able to make out the names on the audio tracks that are set quite low. This creates an intimate proximity while listening to the names of the people who were loved. Someone mentions a Ferdinand. Who might that have been? Their great love, a brief flirtation or just a disappointment? We will never know. Lots of secrets are kept by the woman who makes long pauses between each name, seemingly remembering people she does not tell us about. She has a right to do this as the voyeuristic detective game is only one level of Staub’s installation. A second can be found by standing next to the loudspeakers that are mounted on the beams in the gallery. From here it is possible to see all the screens and hear collages edited together from the individual series of names. You can start to play Memory. The Ken you just heard was loved by that young man back there. And Ferdinand belongs to the lady over there who only mentions the names of dead people. And then you start to remember all the people you’ve loved: the ones who drifted away, the ones who were over-rated, the ones you could never get through to, the ones who will never die. Oh…”
Tages-Anzeiger, 16. April 2012

Credits

Initiative, Concept, Direction: Mats Staub
Camera: Matthias Stickel
Scenography: Monika Schori
Sound: Andrea Brunner
Producer: zwischen_produktionen
Co-producer: Gessnerallee Zurich

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