WEG
15th September 2015 to the end of August 2016

WEG
August 2016 to Winter 2018

 

At the end of August 2016, he set off again, with the aim of visiting two other places of pilgrimage central to Christianity – Jerusalem and Rome. His cooperation with Julian M. H. Schindele also dates back to time.

Gabriel had hoped to reach Jerusalem by way of North Africa; this plan failed at the border between Morocco and Algeria, however, due to his subsequent expulsion.

Touched by and identifying with the fate of the refugees risking everything, the series of performances to die for originated in 2017 and, as a continuation of this, the series rise in 2018.

WEG
Winter 2018 to August 2019

 

DIE MARIANISCHEN ANTIPHONEN

 

 

 

“I was playing with Jacinta and Franco high up on the slope of the Cova da Iria.
Suddenly we saw something like a flash of lightning. ‘We’d better go home.’I told my cousins.
‘That was a flash of lightning. A storm is probably approaching.’”

Lúcia dos Santos was one of the three shepherd children and a Portuguese nun.

 

 

Gabriel spent the winter of 2018/2019 in Fisterra in Galicia. There he dreamed about Maria and felt a calling to go to Fátima, the shrine of Mary, in Portugal.

He stopped in Coimbra's old university town, approximately 100 km north of Fátima. A serendipitous encounter led him to the theatre group CITAC and Mafalda Prata, a photographer. When they heard about his mission, they offered their assistance. This resulted in the prologue of the performance series Marianische Antiphonen in July 2019.

In August of the same year, the photographer Stefan Hähnel sought out Gabriel. Together with Gabriel’s four black dogs, Hähnel experienced Gabriel’s everyday life on the streets, in the villages and the wilderness around Fátima. At a holm oak, it was here that the Virgin Mary is supposed to have appeared several times to three shepherd children during the summer of 1917.

The Marianischen Antiphonen I – III, a narrative performance in three chapters, was thus created in and around Fátima. In these, Gabriel sets out in search of the female deity of Christianity and encounters the embodiment of a principle, as well as the descendant of the ancient mother deities.

 

Photographer
Mafalda Prata (Marianische Antiphonen Prolog)
Stefan Hähnel (Marianische Antiphonen I − III)

On the Plot of the Marianischen Antiphonen

In the prologue of the Marianischen Antiphonen, Gabriel finds himself in the desert. He uses the last of his strength to save a little tree. Whilst doing so, he dies, buries himself and crosses an intermediate realm, in which Mary appears to him. She accompanies him to the other side, where he finds a mirror. In front of this, he plants the uprooted tree back into the earth.

The Marianischen Antiphonen I occurs in the Templar castle Convento de Cristo in Tomar. Before he enters the complex's interior, there is a ritual cleansing in several acts. Inside the castle, he unveils the kitten NEO, new-born life, which embodies the Kommenden Gott [coming God]. A representative of the institution throws him out, so he returns to the place of the cleansing ritual. There Gabriel writes four letters to Mary and the shepherd chil­dren. He leaves Tomar with these and, in the Marianischen Antiphonen II, crosses the waste­land between Tomar and Fátima.

In the first part of the Marianischen Antiphonen III, Gabriel visits Aljustrel, the birthplace of the shepherd children. There he gathers flowers and berries, which he carries with him to Fátima as a gift and greeting. Gabriel visits the main shrine in Cova da Iria during the second part. Here he confronts the institution church, represented by four stone and bronze popes with NEO, the newborn.

After another cleansing, he reaches, on his knees and holding NEO protectively in his arms, where the holm oak once stood, and Maria appeared to the children. He hands over his presents and the four letters.

WEG
August 2019 bis Ende 2021

 

On 29th October 2019, Gabriel received notification of the death of an immediate family member. This message tore him out of his then-prevailing existence. He decided to put the four dogs in his canine family up for adoption, in order to go back and assist his human family.

“My pilgrimage has taken the form of looking after the children these days,” he writes. “À stroke of fate, death, returned me to my point of departure in the Netherlands. While I’m here, I’m getting ready for the WEG [way/walk/method] to Rome.”

–

On 13 June 2020, the first exhibition by Edwin William Moes and Julian M. H. Schindele opened at the Bublitz Thesaurós in Berlin. For the first time, and possibly for the last, Gabriel visited one of his exhibitions. The performance is therefore called: Der Besuch [The visit].

To the exhibition Marianische Antiphonen I

WEG
Beginning of 2022 to today

The focus of the Marian Antiphonian I - III exhibition, which opened on the 7th of April, 2022, is a performance cycle that took place in and around the Fátima pilgrimage in Portugal from the 5th of August to the 7th of August 2019. This was recorded by the photographer Stefan Hähnel. The photographs of the plot, which, like all the performances of Gabriel, took place in public space without notice, are combined and presented in the exhibition with poetic texts, fragments and conceptual work.

Gabriel & Schindele understand a place like Fátima as already conceptually charged. "Narratives of the place are mobilized by a ritual performance and something past is revived and gained for the present." In their work, they interfere with such different time levels, biographies, histories and fiction, as well as Christian, Greek and other mythological character worlds.

To the exhibition Marianische Antiphonen I – III