Autoren Archiv

Artists

25. 9. 2011 // // Kategorie Randnotizen 2011

Artists should, by definition, have a more bohemian life in which they work less than other people. This is apparently not the case.

Club music

22. 9. 2011 // // Kategorie Randnotizen 2011

Club music. A beat that doesn’t change or that shifts constantly, relentlessly, when you least expect it or at regular intervals. Squelching noises. Very low sounds against very high frequencies. A part where it escalates, getting more and more intense, faster like a panic attack. On a crowded dance floor, sweating, you twirl and brush against another dancer, against naked flesh, and suddenly it’s the most sexual experience of your life, sudden shuddering orgasm, almost epileptic, you come and collapse, half-conscious, curled up in a ball in the middle of the dance floor, thrusting and kicking feel surround you. If dancing is sex than what is sex. Sex is like a map, a series of memories, a series of sketches of your most intense and emotionally complex experiences. Where are the songs that find ways to be completely honest and accurate about emotions, because that’s not what songs are for. Love songs are lies to get the ball rolling and the right kind of lie is completely delicious. A blog is a very dead thing in comparison. Artists who can’t find the sea.

Trondheim > Malmö

15. 9. 2011 // // Kategorie Randnotizen 2011

In Trondheim we had one day of sun followed by three days of rain. And, staring at the strange juxtaposition of dark clouds against blue sky, I think of them as a mirror. In my artistic practice perhaps one day of sun is always followed by three days of rain. We’ve had especially good shows in Mannheim, Olso and, last night, here as well. There is a moment when the work takes over and it is as if you are thinking alongside it. You are not in control, if you ever were, and decisions occur in the space between your intentions and what you have made (and what continues to remake itself every time you perform it.) I feel the paradoxes piling up all around me. I am an ideologue, fighting for a certain, fairly specific, way of thinking about and enacting performance, a way that I feel is severely under-represented within the contemporary performance landscape and that many believe is a bit amateur (while I feel they do not see the critical subtlety and complexity. The humanity that speaks louder than skill.) And yet I am an ideologue against ideology, fighting for something that is relaxed, warm, intimate, flexible, spontaneous and open. I am fighting for a way of thinking about performance that refuses to fight for itself and is easily destroyed in combat. What I love is fragile and crumples under the weight of my own critical scrutiny. And yet I don’t want it to crumple, I want it to prevail. I want to fight but believe if we fight too much we lose everything. And yet I don’t know what to do with my anger, which most of the time feels unreal. I’m not exactly sure but it often seems like audiences see almost none of this. The fight occurs behind the scenes, though I am certain they can feel it. The differences between what is seen and what is felt. In which case the spectator is also presented with a paradox: a warm, welcoming space that barely conceals a world of almost infinite confusion and conflict. A fragile oasis in the eye of a tornado. Tomorrow we head to Malmö.

It begins to feel normal.

29. 8. 2011 // // Kategorie Randnotizen 2011

It begins to feel normal. That one has no idea what to do with oneself. That everything feels tepid or worse. That life’s small pleasures feel misguided. That one fulfills one’s obligations to the best of one’s ability and with a great deal of uncertainty. That one feels ideas opposite to one’s own might well have merit but such merit doesn’t make them less inimical. I don’t want entertainment. I want to think about the world, about this situation of living in times with no feeling of future. I hope desperately it is still possible to think of it in new ways. I want to think about it slowly and without pretending that everything is all right. Think about moments of possibility in Iceland and Chile and wonder what might happen here, wherever I am at a given day or time. I am on a train. This morning I was in Groningen. Tonight I will be in Berlin. We showed a new performance in Groningen. I believe it divided the audience but I’m not sure. I used to love the idea of a divided audience, of inciting debate, of friends going out afterwards and arguing for or against, trying to define their positions, continue the never-ending process of figuring out what they think and why. I used to think the worst thing was for everyone to agree. And yet I don’t believe we incited debate. We divided the audience in milder ways, like all the mild divides that clutter our small conversations and sense of self. These small divides also resonate. I’m drifting into the world of small steps and minor epiphanies. It never ceases to amaze me how two people sitting beside one another can have such a different experience watching the exact same thing. How much of ourselves we throw into everything that is in front of us. When many like the work I almost dismiss them, their enthusiasm runs past me. When people are indifferent I use their indifference as a knife to stab myself. It’s sick how those who hate the show feel closest to my heart. Sometimes I think it is only a question of being too sensitive. It’s not that I don’t want to please, pleasure is as good in art as anything else. But why are so many artists trying to please so much? Why do I feel the market bearing down on me as I watch? Why does the person sitting beside me see and feel something completely different? And, if this is the case, where does the conversation start?