Delight
For ”Between sky and sea” Herdla 08
I`m struck by the delicacy of performance art, the bonne bouche of
authentic delivery and humility. I measure performance in terms of
delight, delight in watching how another body meets familiar objects,
situations or circumstances and in how the activity confirms or challenges
my own perspective. All art should do what Horace thought poetry should,
delight and instruct, and with the didactic nature of physical activity,
perhaps performance art has the power to delight and instruct more
than other genre.
Fourteen artists from eleven countries, performing in one day for
two bus- loads of observers, who need to eat lunch and attend toilet
queues, is an action-packed event. Herdla was a fort under German
occupation during the 2nd world war and on route to the first performance
of ”Between sky and sea” 08, I thought about action. In
the modern sense we think melodrama; fast cars, guns, helicopters
and people hanging out of 52nd floor windows waving guns to suitable
music. However Aristotle thought action one story, something complete,
and looked upon participants` value-laden human action as lesser than
the action itself. Participants were elements driving the action,
important, but only as parts of the whole. As attitudes changed action
underwent examination until eventually the whole took on lesser significance
than the parts, as with Happenings.
The artists of ”Between sky and sea” 08 participate in
other international performance festivals and events, together with
artists from all over the world. I wonder though, if even such a keen
sense of being part of something larger will ever triumph over the
human tendency to meet parts as wholes. Especially at Herdla where
the focus was on artists exploring the complex area of affinity with
both nature and urban.
Monica worked the space between the trees. At moments she held her
moves in a classical tableaux. Have a body... be a body. Watch a body.
A mild hypnosis held me but an intimacy implicated me. I watched a
clothed body enjoy a natural environment and yet, I felt opportunist,
privy to something. On hindsight I realised it was the dress. I`m
an urban person who explores people in their cities. Aside from a
need of the sea, which is totally satisfied by a horizon and waves
lapping a wall by the side of a road, I have no bond to nature at
all. Sometimes, while watching performance, I forget I`m looking at
art. In these moments the performer becomes someone I`ve come across
in the course of things and, in my urban condition, I saw a woman
in a synthetic dress enjoying some kind of personal euphoria. If Monica
had been naked or dressed in some kind of a robe, I`d have watched
her as a classical tableaux and forgotten myself instead of art.
Deep down in the centre it can be hard to keep the whole in mind.
My actions are large for me but it`s hard to see beyond the immediate.
The concept of individual activity as an integral part of a whole
is my modern identity as a global citizen and participator, yet I`m
only either here or there and there`s always something temporarily
out of use.
Roi carried a pristine white load to another place. He switched on
sound and tied knots in a wire line stretched between two high wooden
branches he`d cellotaped to unstable, rusty drums. His hands found
large stones. High up on a branch he`d looped a mobile telefon and
on cardboard he wrote, call bird 00358443301115. He put on rubber
gloves and dyed his white load red, then hung it on his line to dry.
When he removed his blindfold the sun hurt his eyes. While Esther
unravelled a long string of white feathers to weave them through decades
of barbed wire, Roddy`s finger clicked the on/off button on a lamp
shining out to sea, signalling his location to no one in particular,
perhaps no one at all. Agnes and Raquel, larger-than-life dishevelled
sirens, fiddled with seaweed in their hair and clothing and shouted,
to each other, to the public. Raquel raised her middle finger to the
sky where my gaze was arrested by a sticky-plaster. I wondered if
I ought to call bird.
Our actions are believed to spill over and beyond, to affect others
spatially and temporally. I imagine an awareness of this must come
and go with proximity.
Everything stopped with Monica and Boris who occupied a clearing.
At first glance they looked still and peaceful. Monica`s arms hung
by her sides and Boris was lying on the ground. But a rising tension
in Monica`s gaze to the left was reflected in the space between Boris`head
and the tree it was tied to on the right. They were two stabs in a
canvas. I relived the desperate click, click, click of Roddy`s lamp,
the tightening of Roi`s knots and the stiffness of Raquel`s middle
finger, the tempo had increased but there was dead silence.
It seems like an exercise in stepping back and forth or up and down.
I do it here then watch it there and if I stand back far enough, I
might see it all at once. The priority seems to be presence, to immediately
feel, regardless of reason and for the sake of the action. Later is
the best time for reason.
On the way to flat land Boris rolled on the ground clutching a large,
smooth stone to his chest. Every revolution must have laboured his
breathing but his hands held tight to the stone which was as smooth
as his head. I passed Boris for the whiteness of Pedro`s rocket and
all its babies but got distracted by Robert`s house all alone in the
field. I approached but it got up and pursued two observers and anyway
I noticed an extravagant arrangement on the beach. Bits of wood, ropes,
tools and portable spades lay around dead bits of trees pushed upright
into the sand, there was an old sack and a saw, 2 boards, a bucket
and what might have been an old inner tube, all waiting for their
live aiPuto components. Far away stood Roddy, still, with his arms
stretched wide.
It`s believed to have a rhythm.
Stepping over a baby rocket, I set off after Robert and found Kurt
motionless on the beach under a shiny white table, next to a shiny
white chair. The table top was a drawing he`d made with small pebbles,
a few strands of hair and the sun. Robert stopped to interact with
a sceptical dog. With arms pushed through holes in his house he seemed
to appeal to the dog`s reason, but the dog was not convinced so he
approached a boy carrying a blanket. The boy accompanied Robert to
where a smaller version of his house lay by the sea. Together they
took it to another place and built a wall to protect it from the waves.
And that the rhythm itself is powerful.
On the grass in the distance a blue bed with white sheets staged a
slow ballet with two dead fish. Melati Suryodarmo rolled over boundaries,
perhaps between between life and death, perhaps between passion and
reason. Now and then her spell was broken by a synchronised dive from
two facing rocks by Skylla & Charybdis. In the distance I saw
that Roddy still hadn`t moved but I found a huge web in a cluster
of trees occupied by Raquel Nicoletti, a bright orange work suit and
a wellington boot. Agnes Nedregaard bared her teeth from where she
crouched in an adjacent tree. I called bird but he was out. Robert`s
house stood still on the field, it looked like there was nobody in
but then an arm extended to greet a girl. Roddy moved. He took a white
paper plane from his shoulder bag and caressed it long and slow. For
some minutes his fingers stroked and stroked again on a wing and then
a slow stiffening of his body launched the plane away. Where it fell
I saw there were some thirty or forty paper planes. At that moment
I saw Robert house with one of Roddy`s planes which was launched as
it ran roof down at a wall. The house ripped at impact but he retreated
to run and crash again and again, then he walked to the sea, placed
his miniature house on a rock and kissed it.
Yet, like the whole and everything else, the rhythm fades in the face
of delight.
And then Kurt walked into the sea. The scene worked as a suspence,
it seemed everything stopped to watch him enter and keep going till
his head was a far out dot on the surface. So far out that now and
then I lost sight of it in the waves.
Later I passed a roll of duck-tape on the path and then Robert`s house
interacting with cows.
home
