The impression one received from the noisiness was different from that of Paris or New York or Tokyo. Perhaps the city seemed all the more noisy because of the vividness of the contrast. Or perhaps it was because the west had caused such a dreary image of the east to be proliferated. Whichever it was, the clamor seemed for all the world like some uproarious festivity before the final plunge into death.

After reserving accommodations at an information center in front of the station, I walked down a long straight road until I stood before the Brandenburg gates. The golden figure of a goddess faces west. The wall stretching away from the archway on both sides was plain, grey concrete with only a few scribbles compared to the profusion of spray painted graffiti in later years (although now the wall itself is completely gone).

From an observation tower on the other side, you could see a gun. Walking along the wall to my right from the gates, I noticed tracks appear from the edge of the wall, almost level with the surface of the road. Visible for only a short distance, they disappeared into the asphalt of West Berlin. This impressed upon me all the more strongly that the wall was an artificial construction, erected there by force.

There was also a tower built of wood. It was built so that people could look over the wall at East Berlin, but it was the Americans and Japanese who went up.

I regard history as a narrative, a reference to history. It was at that moment that the thought crossed my mind, that performance was like a short I-novel, made up of a combination of quotations and references, symbols and metaphors, and numerous allegories.

How many threads of historical context and how many popular interpretations could be found for one phenomenon or even one everyday occurrence? It was this question that was pulling my physical being along, prodding it into action until the activity took on a form. In time, this form would become an object, then a voice.

I found a small piece of black cloth near the wall. Tearing it into two, I blindfolded myself with it. Leaving my shoes near the disappearing tracks, I became barefoot. I then took off the army-style raincoat I had purchased in London and stood in my white shirt sleeves. (It wasn't until much, much later that I thought of this, but I really should have become naked. If I had had an audience, I might have. To become naked would have been just the strategy for a passing-through-the-wall act. Indeed, to be completely defenseless is the only antithesis to reality.)

The wall had looked like a colossal sculpture. Blindfolded, my hands could feel more acutely than when my eyes were open. It was almost as if sense resided in the hands. I put my hands to the wall from where I stood and began walking, feeling my way cautiously with the soles of my bare feet.

In the absence of light, one also loses a sense of time. And isolation appears as your companion. I began to hear distinctly even my breath and the sound of my heart. My hands distinguished minutely the various conditions of the wall. More than when I could see it, the wall was communicating words through my hands.

Although this was clearly discernible at first, my hands grew hot after a while. As my hands became hotter, the senses dulled until I could only just feel the blood running through my veins and the pain.

How far had I walked? I did not go back to actually measure the distance, but the pain in my hands and feet recall the distance for me now. You might say that time has been recorded in the form of pain.

Whether this could be called a performance, I still do not know, but I always place it at the top of my list when I write a brief outline of my performances.

I probably include it because it came out of the undefined impulses and the nostalgia regarding travel that were driving me at the time in 1972. This behavior or exploit also embodies meanings for which innumerable reasons and interpretations could easily be found if one tried. It is also included as an expression of my sense of embarrassment or even shame regarding "art" as well as being a confession to the same.

Not having a concrete program for working towards more lucid expression, how inviting the existence of this wall had appeared to me. Analyzing my somewhat exhibitionist consciousness at that time, the above is the explanation I would have to give for my pseudo-performance.

Yet, this is the performance I like best, even now. In my long performance history following this event, and whenever I encounter the confusion that accompanies performance or situations analogous to the psychological dissection that takes place in the theater of the absurd, I find that its obscurity gives me sustenance like nothing else.

I later gave this performance the title "Beautiful Losers." Needless to say, the lamentation is directed at myself. "Catherine , who are you. You? You are . . ."