On Thursday May 30, Iris Brosch presented “Desponsamus te, mare” at the 2013 Venice Biennale. The live performance, whose title translates as “I marry thee, Sea,” was a tribute to women and nature as well as a presentation of a new way of celebrating feminism through ecology. History behind the title of Brosch’s performance goes back to the year 1000 and the marriage of the city of Venice. On the Feast of the Ascension, the doge (translated to ‘duke’ or ‘leader’) throws a gold ring into the Adriatic Sea saying “Desponsamus te, mare.”
Today, Brosch comments on responsibilities, the crumbling structure of patriarchy and the chaos of the “Old Order.”
Woman is Nature, surprising, marvellous, implacable, full of colour.
Woman is tremendous like her essence of her being.
She incarnates Earth and Sea.
Woman is primordial.
She embodies the vitality of plants, algae, shells, animals,
clouds, sun, stars, sea and sky.
As she is the soul of the earth and of life itself – she is all-powerful
like thunder, lightning, or the waves of the ocean.
She is a force of pure energy, neither good nor evil.
She exists beyond human moral judgment.
