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