Six visitors (V) and a scribe (S)
V1: I
found the performance amazing, in fact. I think she did
something which is very rare; she arranged a state of being, a
state of mind, and she did it by... enfin, I use the
words of
Tarkowsky, by sculpting time, by working with time, with space and
by... not acting
but going into a play and going out again,
being herself, questioning, etc; she took me somewhere, with
her performance. And the light, and how she treated all these elements.
When I then read her texts, I can see that she
intermingles daily life with research. Then I think the
performance she did mirrors very well what she is researching or
searching for. At the
beginning of the performance, I was thinking this might be going [to
be] irritating. But it was not; because when it risked to
become boring, in my opinion, then she could come again with something
else, and surprise again and she also went just to that point that
dared to the end, otherwise it would
have become... I would have felt like a hostage in her
confrontation with otherness.
S: Maybe on the level of research? What did
you get about the research?
V2: How will this go further? Ça
c’est le point d’intérrogation
maintenant.
V3: Will it become a system? Will it become a style? Or a short
circuit?
V2: But I agree it is
definitely the sort of performance that people talk
about.
V4: Against or for. That’s true!
V5: You mean “that people talk about”, that makes
people talk?
V3: That makes people talk, yes.
I don’t think you come out of it and think
‘moah!’
It provokes, one way or the other, it provokes strong opinions, strong
feelings, strong discussions.
V2: Yeah, I have the impression... It is difficult for me to talk about her work. I will explain why:
because I am very close to a certain kind of French literature, called autofiction,
okay, that around here there’s not so much. Gay writers who
are
really making something out of their lives, okay, mixing political
statements, artistic statements, daily life, love affairs, and how
their life accelerates, slow down, their sex life; and all these mix
gives a mosaic, like a beautiful landscape in fact, of the world, the
society, how the artist works nowadays, I don’t know; but
very
interesting, very human and very also philosophically interesting. So I
saw this performance and I said, wow she’s got something! And
it's even more difficult for me to speak about because - you saw one of
my work and you can see some links - you know this way of composing
which is not really a composition, I fake that I do whatever but in
fact it’s super musical, she takes everybody, you know,
she...
this kind of... et
puis, au debut elle parle et puis elle a des trous, holes
in the narration, holes in the time, like there were some gaps, some
blanks, some.. ça
c’est très interessant, très joli,
très musical, très controllé, quoi!
But my question is, how it is controlled? And how she could
work!? Because I feel that she reacts instead of acting; she
build
up this, and in reaction against the others, the teachers - I
mean the leaders of the workshop, the organization... et ça c’est
dommage! Ça c’est dommage...
c’est très dommage ça.
And also, you don’t write it, but she’s a pain in
the as. Really, oh!
S: That
we know, ah ha ha ... The research value of the
work? Please, stick
to the plan.
V5: I think she was walking, she is always walking on a very very fine
thread; and this is shaking sometimes in a way, or
she’s stepping beside of it sometimes, where this kind of...
I call it permeability,
what she’s proposing, what she’s offering, her
personal permeability, and I appreciate that a lot, in a way that I
sometimes have problems with reading her texts.
V1:
That’s something I have appreciated a lot. I find it
remarkable
that when she performs, or in the approach of performance, I
don’t know where... but the personal permeability, she is
aware of it and she considers it as a vehicle, a tool to
work with.
S: As a what ?!?
V1: A vehicle: une
vehicule..., een voertuig... And not as result at the end,
because then it would risk to become genant.
That’s the risk, for the moment, I think.
V3: If she manages to transpose that hyper personal thing onto something
broader, something political, something - whatever - then it
could get real value. But as long as she doesn’t do that,
I’m afraid she’s stuck in idioscsc... ??
S: Idiosyncrasy,
yes...
V2:
And I could say, also the performance, as
material, as a perfomer-material, ready to be organized by a
dramaturge, and director - very good material and so, you understand,
so she can miss also authorship. Son
écriture... mais je ne pense pas, parce-que j'ai reflechi.
Je
pense que quand même c’était
écrit, quoi. Il y avais un controle de
l’écriture qui était là
quoi, mais...
V1: Moi je crois que ça va être très
dangereux si elle travaille avec un dramaturge, ou
régisseur, parce que les valeurs personelles...
V6: We don’t speak French...
V2: The
cynicism!
V1: Non, je
m’en doute.
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