To hear the knocking on the wood beam

In the first week of my stay at the apartment in Prague I heard the knocking on the wood. Leaning against the beam and briefly, my ear could hear that sound from the wooden object. Strange and smooth. The fantastic and pleasant… Where did that sound come from? What is its meaning? Knocking on wood is done to avoid bad omens and forebodings ... It was comforting. I knew from then on that everything was going to be okay. (notes on the writing of the action)

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To hear the knocking on the wood beam has its motive in a phenomenon originated in the artist's first week in the city of Prague. In a common space, where the performer resides, the figure proceeds to listen to a wooden beam in an attempt to recreate the event he witnessed in that space: to hear again the knocking on the wood. Nothing is known about this occurrence, only that it was heard on that beam by the author for a brief and fleeting moment. Associated with day-to-day superstitions, knocking on wood is a customary action to try to ward off bad omens, an apotropaic gesture. The gesture also plays with the use of the word, where this knocking is usually performed by the person who has just said their omen, as if it were an attempt to block their own words, a hope that they do not prophesise the future, building a barrier to the dictated evils, to avoid attemping fate. But the phenomenon is indicative of other issues than just the apotropaic function associated with the wood element. It is an object that is associated with these issues, but one cannot ignore the fact that it is a beam, a column: what generally has the function of support, foundation, something that reinforces the structure of the place, of the house and home. It is in fact symptomatic that the sound comes from the object that has the function of sustain and support the house, as if a space for the metaphor, the symbolic and the everyday was diluted. As if the house itself acquired a presence, a posture towards the unknown.