maandag 4 oktober 2010
zondag 16 mei 2010
What got documented from 'WEAREPERFORMING'
These are pictures taken during a tech-run where we only focused on getting nice pictures. Not a good representative of the work visually, but this intention maybe reveils something of the work..I dont know, in the end it are just some pictures
All pictures taken by NELLIE DE BOER.
All pictures taken by NELLIE DE BOER.
What I write about 'WEAREPERFORMING'
WEAREPERFORMING
As a child I had a game that I would play with myself, before to fall a sleep. I would lie in bed and think about something simple, like a pen. I would think about the whole idea of a pen, everything that a ‘pen’ contains. This thought would be floating as an image above my head, until I would sum up all that I knew a pen contains, and then I would feel I could grasp the though of a pen. I would move on to a thought harder to grasp, like a plain, I would think about a plain, that it flies super high and that there will be all these people in this little box up in the air, that a plain is really heavy but still stays up, and I would think about all the information I have about how a plain works etc. until I would again come to this moment where I felt I could grasp the idea of a ‘plain’ I would move on and on to more harder subjects to understand. Like oceans, or death, and eventually THE UNIVERSE. That in it’s infinity still always stays ungraspable to me. I feel like I reach both my hands above my head trying to join them around this thought, this concept, this idea, this picture of the ‘universe’. But I cannot, because it is too many things at the same time, because the idea is too big because it is never ending and that concept alone is something I cannot wrap my brain around. And this excites me. It excites me to a level that nothing else can excite me, it is not good, it is not bad, it is so many things at the same time, it makes me think, I feel like there is more oxygen in my brain, I feel cells snap and scatter all over the place, changing my ways of perceiving.
I once read that of all the things in the world we know approximately 10 percent. (I know what the capital of Holland is for instance) Then there are another 20 percent of all the things that we know, we don’t know (I know that rockets exist but I also know that I don’t know how to build one). This leaves 70 percent. 70 percent of things that we don’t even know that we don’t know them (I couldn’t tell you what since I don’t know). Again this is exciting, taking this in consideration I can never assume I know anything because there is always a larger amount of things I don’t know, so whenever I look at something I think I know, this 70 percent makes it worth to rethink that. (also meaning that I can again doubt if I really can grasp the idea a ‘pen’)
It is the most generous thing a person can do for me, to make me not understand, to make me not grasp, to make my doubt and revisit the things I thought I knew, because of course from day to day life I cannot find this constant excitement generated by a this way of thinking. In order to exist I have to take things for granted, I have to generalize and assume. I am conditioned to look for reason and to conclude, to read situations and position myself towards them, this is how I function. Again, the excitement kicks in, not when I think I understand, but when I know I don’t.
Having shared this little corner of my fascination I come to the work I did and I write about in this paper ‘WEAREPERFORMING’. My motivation for this piece came from the lack of motivation I had to see performances (to see, not to perform I have to emphasise). A performance space, the act of performance, me being an audience within that, amongst others, seemed more and more a situation that became ‘understandable’. Where I (as an audience) got conditioned with needs of clarity, extremity, the sense of a point or a direction. I got conditioned in these terms because I got used to talking about performance in this way, it was an eye that I got familiar with and somehow I looked for it to be satisfied, funny enough I stopped (or never did) caring about this satisfaction. Since in life this is not my fascination (as I explained before) and I don’t perceive any linearity in that sense, there is never one thing going on, we are never just one thing, references are not singular or filtered, and there is no conclusion or clear direction, in that sense there is no clarity. (though as said before I constantly construct all of this in order to function).
I propose here that reality is as real as fiction as we construct both and the idea of a self is not a ‘unique’ ‘steady’ thing but again a construction in constant dialogue with its environment. Where I am as much what I am as what I am not. PERFORMING TO BE YOURSELF
Where there is more emphasise on the being then a self (as I said before the question of a self is not being raised) and where I feel the word performing gives me the freedom to escape something like sincerity that I try to keep in my ‘day to day’ decision making.
I have a dilemma at this point, I do not want to dissect this work through the same conditioned eyes that made me loose my interest to come and watch performances. I ask myself now, how to write more concretely about something that I would like to invite questions instead of answers (noting that I feel that very sentence can already be to intruding). Every form of constructed freedom is a new regime I could say. What I invite you to do, from here on, is to move over to related writings, for they can are more coherent with the conditions that this work exists within
-the first text I wrote to my performers concerning WEAREPERFORMING
-a text PAZ ROJO wrote as a reaction to being my ‘advisor’ within this work
-parts of my email correspondence with NORA HEILMAN regarding this process
(not necessarily in this order but it could make sense)
VINCENT RIEBEEK
As a child I had a game that I would play with myself, before to fall a sleep. I would lie in bed and think about something simple, like a pen. I would think about the whole idea of a pen, everything that a ‘pen’ contains. This thought would be floating as an image above my head, until I would sum up all that I knew a pen contains, and then I would feel I could grasp the though of a pen. I would move on to a thought harder to grasp, like a plain, I would think about a plain, that it flies super high and that there will be all these people in this little box up in the air, that a plain is really heavy but still stays up, and I would think about all the information I have about how a plain works etc. until I would again come to this moment where I felt I could grasp the idea of a ‘plain’ I would move on and on to more harder subjects to understand. Like oceans, or death, and eventually THE UNIVERSE. That in it’s infinity still always stays ungraspable to me. I feel like I reach both my hands above my head trying to join them around this thought, this concept, this idea, this picture of the ‘universe’. But I cannot, because it is too many things at the same time, because the idea is too big because it is never ending and that concept alone is something I cannot wrap my brain around. And this excites me. It excites me to a level that nothing else can excite me, it is not good, it is not bad, it is so many things at the same time, it makes me think, I feel like there is more oxygen in my brain, I feel cells snap and scatter all over the place, changing my ways of perceiving.
I once read that of all the things in the world we know approximately 10 percent. (I know what the capital of Holland is for instance) Then there are another 20 percent of all the things that we know, we don’t know (I know that rockets exist but I also know that I don’t know how to build one). This leaves 70 percent. 70 percent of things that we don’t even know that we don’t know them (I couldn’t tell you what since I don’t know). Again this is exciting, taking this in consideration I can never assume I know anything because there is always a larger amount of things I don’t know, so whenever I look at something I think I know, this 70 percent makes it worth to rethink that. (also meaning that I can again doubt if I really can grasp the idea a ‘pen’)
It is the most generous thing a person can do for me, to make me not understand, to make me not grasp, to make my doubt and revisit the things I thought I knew, because of course from day to day life I cannot find this constant excitement generated by a this way of thinking. In order to exist I have to take things for granted, I have to generalize and assume. I am conditioned to look for reason and to conclude, to read situations and position myself towards them, this is how I function. Again, the excitement kicks in, not when I think I understand, but when I know I don’t.
Having shared this little corner of my fascination I come to the work I did and I write about in this paper ‘WEAREPERFORMING’. My motivation for this piece came from the lack of motivation I had to see performances (to see, not to perform I have to emphasise). A performance space, the act of performance, me being an audience within that, amongst others, seemed more and more a situation that became ‘understandable’. Where I (as an audience) got conditioned with needs of clarity, extremity, the sense of a point or a direction. I got conditioned in these terms because I got used to talking about performance in this way, it was an eye that I got familiar with and somehow I looked for it to be satisfied, funny enough I stopped (or never did) caring about this satisfaction. Since in life this is not my fascination (as I explained before) and I don’t perceive any linearity in that sense, there is never one thing going on, we are never just one thing, references are not singular or filtered, and there is no conclusion or clear direction, in that sense there is no clarity. (though as said before I constantly construct all of this in order to function).
I propose here that reality is as real as fiction as we construct both and the idea of a self is not a ‘unique’ ‘steady’ thing but again a construction in constant dialogue with its environment. Where I am as much what I am as what I am not. PERFORMING TO BE YOURSELF
Where there is more emphasise on the being then a self (as I said before the question of a self is not being raised) and where I feel the word performing gives me the freedom to escape something like sincerity that I try to keep in my ‘day to day’ decision making.
I have a dilemma at this point, I do not want to dissect this work through the same conditioned eyes that made me loose my interest to come and watch performances. I ask myself now, how to write more concretely about something that I would like to invite questions instead of answers (noting that I feel that very sentence can already be to intruding). Every form of constructed freedom is a new regime I could say. What I invite you to do, from here on, is to move over to related writings, for they can are more coherent with the conditions that this work exists within
-the first text I wrote to my performers concerning WEAREPERFORMING
-a text PAZ ROJO wrote as a reaction to being my ‘advisor’ within this work
-parts of my email correspondence with NORA HEILMAN regarding this process
(not necessarily in this order but it could make sense)
VINCENT RIEBEEK
what PAZ ROJO writes about 'WEAREPERFORMING'
This is a text written by PAZ ROJO after being involved as my 'advisor' for my latest work WEAREPERFORMING:
(...I ask: Who is WE and, what is performing...? ...or rather: what is WE and who is performing?) I. Perhaps this is the question mark that the work of Vincent (although I think more than work...I shall call it ‘practice’) bears in mind: WE ARE when holding together -they and us/ you and I-...in a common space with two apparent different territories that WE share. WE is PUBLIC - to say -SHARING and SHARED- then, we cannot easily assume what/who WE IS...indeed, we are performed and performing...deforming...unforming... there is nothing to give INFORMATION about, no expression, even communication...this WE is already bearing in mind that its very Being Together is already dividing (sharing) us. By performing WE, we can take on different possibilities. Which is the identitarian regime that defines WE for instance in sndo’s -602 studio room- when WE attend to a performance in which the only information delivered in the hand-program about itself is ‘WE ARE PERFORMING’ and that paradoxically and funny enough seems, at the end of the program like a comment on the whole evening program? By performing the way we take part in this situation, we are giving chances to our presence and participation, we can liberate things from themselves, we can make chances for what? -you may say now- well, perhaps to experience lively our presence. To stop assuming what needs to be said thought felt; to even have the chance to lie about ourselves; to even profanate our own identity or what we think we are doing there or should be doing... II. Perhaps working with Vincent as an adviser in the frame of what he intends to provoke with his practice has being one of the most challenging things I have done lately. Soon in our first meeting I felt I couldn’t be an adviser and he the student. I rather felt trilled and inspired, complicit of his desires and questions. I could not take him as any other, but as a colleague. Vicent’s ideas regarding performativity, art and publicness relates to issues such sociality, performativity, self, other, pop culture, branding. It is absolutely contemporary. Vincent questions holds in mind something fundamental: what about creating, being with different modes of existence that go away from dominant regimes of representations, conventions, protocols and I would even say...verbal, affective language. How we can do that yet without putting on top, on the name of this quest, another language that would inevitably fall into an identitarian regime or could be prone to be captured immediately? The answer or the way to go about these issues is by the hand of another set of concepts (words Vincent keeps on repeating) such ambivalence, contradiction, ambiguity, ungraspable...So far his work deals with these concepts by holding a double movement: the life of performance/ the performance of life. I cite here some of his questions in our mail correspondance: - the question about when is one III. performing and also to make it questionable if the performers are actually making an effort to make this a 'good performance'. It was hard because I felt when people spoke about it they go into this trained way of watching, we are such an educated audience in the school, wanting such specific things, so them talking about this piece where I could finally see things that I feel connected to felt like such a violation. I just have a lot of questions now about the way we talk about art in this environment how we treat our presence and the one of the ones that are watching, best explained I feel I had a really good friend and we played with barbies, and one day we are playing and I realise I can not get into that mind set anymore that its reality, I have to face the fact that it is fixation and we are playing with barbies. But everybody still wants to agree that the Barbies are real and I am not allowed to say, but come on we are just playing. -. I wrote to him: Let’s pay attention to the sentences: 'perform TO BE yourself'...instead of just 'perform yourself'. The first one indicates that in order to be yourself, you must BE, and as long as you are, you are everything, but yourself...or yourself Being continuously, exiting its very self; instead, 'perform yourself' supposes that there is such a thing as YOU and that YOU is in possession of a unique, single, fixed, stable SELF. In the first one, ‘self’ is not a property but A THING that is when related to other things; on the second one the self is a 'property', assumed and fixed. His relation to this, comes across very clearly - How to feel ‘performative’? How to come to that slight difference of performing to be yourself and being yourself? (...) as long as you know you choose to abandon, and probably replace. Most importantly Never to read what you are doing, never to identify with any ‘character’ never to ‘do’ anything. How not to fall in the trap to be performing (witch includes a lot of this reading what you are doing) you are not proposing anything, no clarity no substance or subject there is no point (high or low) you are you (and that contains a million things including what you are not). The hardest work is not to be captured, not to be framed boxed or identified. Therefore it is also very important to always and completely acknowledge the current situation you find yourself in without defining and without naming what you yourself are doing (we do not refer to what we are doing, as soon as we name it we kill it) we can thrive on confusion and mystery, again this not being a ‘topic’ we remain intention less. Don’t take responsibility for what you might be referring to, what you might be insinuating, don’t even read, look at the room from your eyes, your point of view and meet the rest of the room. - Funny...don’t you think this could be addressed to any one in the audience? IV. Vincent told me once that with his work ‘he doesn’t want to be loved’. Affirmation that I can translate also as saying ‘I don’t want my work to become a satisfying product for a satisfied consumer’. What does this says about an artist that lives in a capitalistic society and that is in an art educational frame? The economy in, which Vincent’s practice takes place, is what is called ‘postfordist economy’’ or ‘cognitive capitalism’. Opposed to a Fordist regime which was the name given for industrialized societies, in which production was serialised, and instrumentalized with the specific goal to be commercialized and sell/able. We live today in an economy whose production value is immaterial, cognitive (knowledge) and affective. It is an economy that is productive not in fabrics and with uniformed workers, but at home and with life itself. In this economy ‘our life is what is working’ because its production is based on subjective ideas and affects exchanged constantly with others. The French philosopher Michael Foucault told us –ok, now, you take care of yourself- Now you are a subject subjected to your own life and the way you relate it to others and the materiality of life. Now you are responsible of your self. You are the government of your body. You govern your life. Now, what happens today is that we have found many ways (and visual media gives good examples of that as well as social networks like facebook for instance) to capitalized the way we self represent and promote, to network continuously, so to say, to commercialised with the communicability of our-selves. What is valued is the ‘differential value’ of our brand; we can profit if we commercialised with something authentic, specific. The contemporary products that Capitalism commercialises with says...- don’t be too weird...yet be different-. And here I add...it also says – be different but accessible, so I can capture you for my own profiting purposes-. In this context, we are all capitalistic of course. As this regime makes us live in apparent freedom with apparent multitude of choices and in consequence, in a constant process of subjectivization. Capitalism is like a lover we have, that we idealised first because it is so good and perfect because it makes us feel good and loved, but it is also the same lover that one day decides (because there are many other choices he can choose and why he should stay with the same one) to start to not recognise us; then if you are clever enough, you’d read the signs and think -what is best for me? Instead of fulfilling the desire of someone who doesn’t recognise you, that submits you to a relation that is only when being just for him, his own eyes, his language, opinions, satisfaction...etc. Vincent’s work operates antagonistically in this -capitalistic loving affair sphere-. Probably his work makes us feel alone, not loved at all, and worst, with no chances to love him ‘because apparently, he an the human capital that he offers, it gives nothing to us for which we cannot love them in return’. His work are ‘pure appearances’ that flirts and seduces us: the human capital that his work sells and shows seem so beautiful, cool, pop and young, but on the contrary (and I admit perversely) it omits the product of this all. WE ARE PERFORMING seems to deliver nothing, and at the end of the day, we are left with the sensation that under the façade of glamour, fashion and pop music, there is nothing but a BLANK PAGE, which we need to fulfil ourselves, invent, create, write, and imagine...But WE ARE PERFORMING is also a promising and seductive ‘work-shop window dispositif’ that doesn’t ask for our love and admiration (the audience) but paradoxically IS WITH us all the time, it needs us. The content of his work is inversed into an un-productive force. It is purely speculative. Expectant (as to say as well...spectator...) that mirrors at the other spectator, who expects as well. And, ultimately what is visibilized (because of course it produces something at the end of the day...just that it forces us to find a language or to invent a language in regard to our experience, what we see, what it makes us feel; otherwise we can only judge it or have an opinion of it, which is also due to the circumstances, pretty unsatisfactory and- let’s face it- we don’t want to be unsatisfied by our lover right?); is the reality of that very iconography of the theatre. At the end of the night, instead of a consenssuated experience, what we have on our hands is just stimulation, incitation of something we have no idea how to relate with. I can finally say, that whether we like it or not, of how disturbed or irritated makes us feel; what we relate with is the ‘antagonistic practice’ of an artist that uses -capitalism without its product- that’s why it is antagonistic. It also departs from a certain precariousness and crisis full of potential and possibles (I have nothing to tell myself because there is no such an ‘I’ -so I can only but perform to be ‘it’ (though, not exactly one-of-you) produce it, fictionalized it, speculate on it- so he delivers the conditions (and there is where his work puts us as ‘audience’) for us to live out the encounter, the way we exist in that very conviviality which is the theatre situation. ‘WE ARE PERFORMING’ is just a living production and as such, we cannot grasp it really. Undoubtedly, that makes people very nervous... V. To finish I’d like to speak about how all this is related to the educational context in which I view WE ARE PERFORMING, to say the SNDO. I only got the chance to see two of the three presentation evenings of the show. Nevertheless to me both nights were very symptomatic of how in an institution such SNDO we can also read signs in tune with the economy I’ve just described. The first night WE ARE PERFORMING became a social event, or a party if you want. I can tell that they were some audience members very irritated and nervous. It seemed that there was a shared code and a very assumed idea of what WE WERE; which is the same as saying that there was a shared code of WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING THERE AND HOW. Some of the spectators didn’t do their job (to expect) but push their situation upfront with a whole bunch of preconceived ideas of what that was and where should it lead. I think from the part of some of the audience members, they underestimated the event making of their ‘opinionated’ position the least eventful. I was pretty irritated about how these the people who judged, criticised, intervened became the instigators of a -I can even dare to say- totalitarian dynamic: -‘... again nothing, again they do ‘whatever’ and so I do ‘whatever as well’ because we are here and we can do it. And this is SNDO. Oh yeah...SNDO...Welcome to the SNDO! This is the kind of crazy things we do here...! – And I add what I thought there was under the exclamations of these people’s reactions: We are here to exploit our talent, and ideas and, at the end of our stay here, to come with a ‘product we can sell’ in tune with the market economy you know, and be successful with. Yes! An artistic signature, a language, and a vocabulary we ‘make’ to serialize and brand (in the most conventional way possible) the production, be loved and make money! I guess that the ambivalent and speculative economy of Vincent’s work, is something we can take as an example to question certain dominant regimes and reactionary behaviours (ways of speaking, of sharing and producing knowledge) in an contemporary dance educational context. Oppose to the opportunity of being successfully visible and talked about as means to ensure what we ‘think’ we represent, are and how, so we can promote it by selling it to others; Vincent’s practice is not as opportunistic as to fully accept that his production is instrumental for particular tasks and for others to be filled and satisfied by them. Perhaps is not exactly ‘useful’ knowledge or experience (or useful language and artistic signature) what he provides the audience with, as that would mean that the spectator would be like a consumer becoming satisfying producer of the product’s ideology they see, based on what this one promises as form of representation. The knowledge production he proposes is linked with presence...with how ‘he present him-self’ (whether performer or audience)...fact that, I believe, for him (and for me as well) can only be meaningful when it is ‘to put at risk’: what-who represents such a meaning and such knowledge? Perhaps this is a very good example to question how in an institution like SNDO, which supports the subjective process of its students in a plural and always changing and open context, there are preconceived ways, modes of presence production and languages in use when giving feedbacks and talking about the work of the students for instance. Education as well as spectatorship sometimes falls into the trap of a regime of visibility –a market economy- that at the end of the day, may make us feel like a weirdo, if we decide to engage to it antagonistically. In regard to this, what Vincent’s work confronts us with, are questions in regard to those very dynamics that conssensualizes the ways we may perceive, relate, exist, talk about; the ways we give feedbacks, and are fixed by an specific language or challenged by the invention of a different one. I’m talking about an economy of knowledge, whose end (of course, we know the game) is to be consumed, commercialised, talked about and loved...but that’s not the only choice right?; Or the only way?; The only language to apply, right? In our first conversation the first thing Vincent told me, was that he was kind of irritated with the fact that sometimes at SNDO you are recognised or ensured in a certain economy of success/recognition if ‘you are political’, which he understood as making manifestos or statements. Well, I think his work is absolutely political –as we talked later on that day- ‘political’ because it questions and it let’s itself to be questioned in return. His work, I think, makes apparent not only the way his presence behaves and signifies, but also the new or different ways we may want to search for in order to talk about it, to relate to it. I sometimes think that Vincent is something like some kind of ‘evil’. His practice seduces us, by asking from us the same DIS/ENGAGEMENT with all I’m telling here (himself as image, presence or ‘I’ figure, student, listener, audience...etc)...that’s why is so powerful and intriguing. His work promises nothing...but, it does so...with such a passion...! paz rojo
If you are interested in getting to know more about PAZ ROJO check out:
What I wrote about 'WEAREPERFORMING' to my PERFORMERS
We are performing to be ourselves.
Noting the contradict, we are doing nothing, but being ourselves at the same time, the act of performing gives us the possibility to be insincere, to be anything, to keep all the possibilities open, to not obey, to fuck with the social codes.
How to feel ‘performative’? How to come to that slight difference of performing to be yourself and being yourself? I suggest to give little physical tasks, things to pay attention to etc. but you never have to stay with any of this, as long as you know you choose to abandon, and probably replace. Most importantly Never to read what you are doing, never to identify with any ‘character’ never to ‘do’ anything.
In juxtapose to this, how not to fall in the trap to be performing (witch includes a lot of this reading what you are doing) you are not proposing anything, no clarity no substance or subject there is no point (high or low) you are you (and that contains a million things including what you are not)
The hardest work is not to be captured, not to be framed boxed or identified. It is a constant fight, with yourself and your surroundings. Therefore it is also very important to always and completely acknowledge the current situation you find yourself in without defining and without naming what you yourself are doing (we do not refer to what we are doing, as soon as we name it we kill it) we can thrive on confusion and mystery, again this not being a ‘topic’ we remain intentionles. Don’t take responsibility for what you might be referring to, what you might be insinuating, don’t even read, look at the room from your eyes, your point of view and meet the rest of the room.
- You are a housecat, you are very important and you have almost nothing to do
In the line of not being captured (not meaning having to be lost). Another thing that I propose is having ‘tricks’. Thinking of old time geisha’s (knowing that the very word geisha means artist and a geisha is perceived as a walking piece of art) we can bring and prepare ‘tricks’ in the largest sense of that word. A prepared song to sing or to play, a text, a dance, something to show (pictures) topics to talk about, agreements amongst each other etc. Most important is to fight the perception, of our selves and of our audience that this is the show, that this is the moment of performance. Again a geisha doesn’t start performing when she plays her instrument, she is performing constantly, no switch on or switch off. Not meaning you can not put importance or value into what you are doing, but you can poor a cup of tea with as much importance as you play Chopin on the piano and visa versa. In addition to that, not to plan or put pressure to use the tricks, they are not more valuable then simply being present, they are not the cherries, they are just tricks to rely on in moments where you feel you might be captured (in doing nothing, in not performing or whatever else)
Let yourself be confused. We are in a performance space, this space will be held like this by our audience, they are there in the role of an audience. You are there in the role of performer, but you are performing to be yourself, you that made an appointment to be there 1,2,3 of April at 19:00 for instance. You will transform this performance space into your living room, your bedroom a bar, a social gathering. You are not offering anything (naked ambition, you want the attention but you don’t want to work for it, even better you have no talent to support your ambition) Enjoy this confusion, you are performing to be yourself, you offer the audience nothing you invite them to take the power to not stay in their role of an audience and approach you as ‘the social’ instead of ‘the performer’ same time, you want to have the attention. Everything that is going on when you have lunch at the 4th floor is going on, everybody you know, you know everything that happens happens, but there is a difference, people offered us, you the leadership over this moment and make it clear, coherent, coming to a point etc, (as life is not) we choose to live in front of them. What if we drop all the rehearsed crap and just deal with each other (like Madonna says) still we have our tricks, we can do some rehearsed crap (we can bring our underwear to have something to talk about) It is the ultimate moment contradict and somehow this so restraining highly judgemental environment could supply the biggest freedom. As you could say, why are you looking at this moment like this, why do you insist that this is a performance you can say, why do you take this so personal this is just a performance.
Noting the contradict, we are doing nothing, but being ourselves at the same time, the act of performing gives us the possibility to be insincere, to be anything, to keep all the possibilities open, to not obey, to fuck with the social codes.
How to feel ‘performative’? How to come to that slight difference of performing to be yourself and being yourself? I suggest to give little physical tasks, things to pay attention to etc. but you never have to stay with any of this, as long as you know you choose to abandon, and probably replace. Most importantly Never to read what you are doing, never to identify with any ‘character’ never to ‘do’ anything.
In juxtapose to this, how not to fall in the trap to be performing (witch includes a lot of this reading what you are doing) you are not proposing anything, no clarity no substance or subject there is no point (high or low) you are you (and that contains a million things including what you are not)
The hardest work is not to be captured, not to be framed boxed or identified. It is a constant fight, with yourself and your surroundings. Therefore it is also very important to always and completely acknowledge the current situation you find yourself in without defining and without naming what you yourself are doing (we do not refer to what we are doing, as soon as we name it we kill it) we can thrive on confusion and mystery, again this not being a ‘topic’ we remain intentionles. Don’t take responsibility for what you might be referring to, what you might be insinuating, don’t even read, look at the room from your eyes, your point of view and meet the rest of the room.
- You are a housecat, you are very important and you have almost nothing to do
In the line of not being captured (not meaning having to be lost). Another thing that I propose is having ‘tricks’. Thinking of old time geisha’s (knowing that the very word geisha means artist and a geisha is perceived as a walking piece of art) we can bring and prepare ‘tricks’ in the largest sense of that word. A prepared song to sing or to play, a text, a dance, something to show (pictures) topics to talk about, agreements amongst each other etc. Most important is to fight the perception, of our selves and of our audience that this is the show, that this is the moment of performance. Again a geisha doesn’t start performing when she plays her instrument, she is performing constantly, no switch on or switch off. Not meaning you can not put importance or value into what you are doing, but you can poor a cup of tea with as much importance as you play Chopin on the piano and visa versa. In addition to that, not to plan or put pressure to use the tricks, they are not more valuable then simply being present, they are not the cherries, they are just tricks to rely on in moments where you feel you might be captured (in doing nothing, in not performing or whatever else)
Let yourself be confused. We are in a performance space, this space will be held like this by our audience, they are there in the role of an audience. You are there in the role of performer, but you are performing to be yourself, you that made an appointment to be there 1,2,3 of April at 19:00 for instance. You will transform this performance space into your living room, your bedroom a bar, a social gathering. You are not offering anything (naked ambition, you want the attention but you don’t want to work for it, even better you have no talent to support your ambition) Enjoy this confusion, you are performing to be yourself, you offer the audience nothing you invite them to take the power to not stay in their role of an audience and approach you as ‘the social’ instead of ‘the performer’ same time, you want to have the attention. Everything that is going on when you have lunch at the 4th floor is going on, everybody you know, you know everything that happens happens, but there is a difference, people offered us, you the leadership over this moment and make it clear, coherent, coming to a point etc, (as life is not) we choose to live in front of them. What if we drop all the rehearsed crap and just deal with each other (like Madonna says) still we have our tricks, we can do some rehearsed crap (we can bring our underwear to have something to talk about) It is the ultimate moment contradict and somehow this so restraining highly judgemental environment could supply the biggest freedom. As you could say, why are you looking at this moment like this, why do you insist that this is a performance you can say, why do you take this so personal this is just a performance.
Abonneren op:
Posts (Atom)