4-DAY PERFORMANCE “ORDER / DISORDER”

AT THE FASHION POSITIONS ART FAIR BERLIN

In her four-day performance ORDER / DISORDER at the Positions Art Fair Berlin 2025, Esther Perbandt herself became part of her installation of 500 black cotton strips, each 5 meters long. For four days – without breaks, without food, without leaving the installation – she combed, sorted, and disentangled the knotted fabric mass: a physical as well as meditative confrontation with structure, discipline, and the loss of control.

A dense, black stream of 500 cotton strips pours into the space like a fluid texture, flowing from a precisely fixed point of origin. Each strip, 5 meters long and 5 centimeters wide, originates from a rigorously woven order: a square textile surface in classic plain weave, framed within a 20 x 20 cm black wooden frame.

Yet what appears almost meticulously structured at that point tips into disorder just a few centimeters beyond. The strips twist, knot, and coil into one another – seemingly chaotic, anarchic, defiant. The textile sculpture resembles an oversized ball of yarn, or hair wildly tousled after a long, unrestrained motorcycle ride – a formal metaphor for a creative mind. In the four-day performance ORDER / DISORDER, Esther Perbandt herself became part of this fabric. Dressed in a chameleon-like full-body suit made from the same black cotton strips, she visually merged with the work. As a living element of chaos, she spent four days inside the sculpture – combing, sorting, disentangling. A physical as well as meditative confrontation with structure and the loss of control.

What does it mean to bring order into a system that resists uniformity?
What does it take – in terms of time, patience, discipline, and devotion – to penetrate an apparent mess?

In this performative gesture, textile art, fashion design, and conceptual body practice intersect. Visitors were invited to return to the work at different moments during the performance – to witness an open-ended process whose outcome remained uncertain.

Would it be possible to tame the chaos?
Or would disorder reveal another form of beauty?