Silvia Amancei și Bogdan Armanu, Mădălina Dan, Adriana Gheorghe, Mihai Iepure-Górski & Katia Pascariu with the participation of Andrei Dinu, Nicoleta Moise, Ioana Nemeș, Mircea Nicolae, Alina Popa, Koter Vilmos.
To live and die in a performance
Project set up by Mihai Iepure-Górski and Adrian Bojenoiu, featuring Adriana Gheorghe
Text: Mihai Iepure-GorskiVisual
Graphic design: Ioana Petcu
Program of live events:
Thursday, September 26
17:00 Mădălina Dan - "Cross species", performance
18:40 Alina Popa - "You are", performance-recording
19:30 Nicoleta Moise - "What I didn't tell her" performance-lecture
Friday, September 27
17:00 Adriana Gheorghe - Spoils, performance
18:40 Alina Popa "The Grounds are Gone and I am Hanging from this Sentence", video
19:30 Mihai Iepure-Górski and Katia Pascariu, "The rise of the spiritual police", performance
Sunday, September 29
17:00 Katia Pascariu and Mihai Iepure-Górski - "The rise of the spiritual police", performance
18:40 Alina Popa "The Grounds are Gone and I am Hanging from this Sentence", video
19:30 Adriana Gheorghe - "Spoils", performance
During the 4 days, the Omnia Hall in Bucharest, this floating space, adrift, underground or in the air - located at the intersection of two worlds or rather on the outskirts of both, neither present nor past, still clinging to a territory (time) that stubbornly insists, still, on being present - turned venue for a project that in its turn, as does Omnia, stubbornly insists on bringing things and works (absent) into a present territory (time). Below, replacing text, a confrontation with the medium (performance).
To live and die in a performance.
(Mis)informed argumentation for performance.
Exercises.
Taken as a space for the exercise or exertion of power, performative space is a territory to be owned, debated, occupied, negotiated, contested and liberated. In this space we find: sovereign(s), subordinates, disordered, submissive, unsubmissive, martyrs, torturers... it all starts with the liberation of the body, bodies, followed by the liberation and occupation of territory. The exercise of power is at stake. Performative space becomes a space for debate, with revelatory potential for life space. Like any conflict, although demarcated, barriers can be overcome. Like any conflict, it can be extended beyond limited space. Conflict can spill out and into the street. Which makes it highly dangerous.
Defining working time becomes essential here since that is what marks and activates it. With the performer absent, intention is absent. His presence is what starts the performance. If the performer lacks intention, performance level stays potential, latent. Performance is never unintentional. The performative space is regulated (delimited as such) but will remain dangerous.
Once activated it is to be contested, negotiated and liberated. The performer provides the language key. Although hierarchy exists, it is not compulsory. Exercises of power undermine, challenge authority, constantly. Performance is itself a way of defining performative space, constantly. Performers take turns drawing boundaries, erecting and tearing down limits, walls, opening and closing doors and so on.
Documenting performance has historical and educational value. It is not art as such, nor is it a substitute for it, but it has meaning itself. In an absolute sense, performance cannot be documented. It can only be experienced live.”The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised,
Will not be televised,
Will not be televised,
Will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run, brothers,
The revolution will be LIVE!”
(Gil Scott-Heron)The revolution will not be televised, no chance at all. Voices yell chants stuck on repeat, bodies march forward, the mounds of power are being taken by storm. The streets are the battleground. It all starts with the release of the body... one leg, a hand, your body takes pose, yeees! Next comes the voice, whimpers, phase one, moaning follows, and finally, howling. The words, later, draw pathways for the mob.
Societies.
Coexistence.
Performance is meant to be non-illustrative and non-demonstrative, non-spectacle. Spectacle has no place in performance. When spectacle arises, territory is nullified. The performer does not represent anything (illustration), he instead sets coordinates, maps out duration - within he possesses absolute power from the outset; he defines the terms, decrees.
Once performance starts, space is transformed. Audience turns participants. In performance there is no audience, by definition. Performer(s) and participants coexist in performative space. As this is a space of anarchy with intention, there is nothing compulsory and no punishment. When activity becomes unbearable, performance stops (pause).
Complicity - there is no audience in a performance, only participants. When you enter performative space, you turn into a participant. Once you enter, you get dirty. Once in, there is no way out. When the performance pauses (since it never stops), exit becomes possible. Still it closes at one end only. Once started, it goes on endlessly.Establishing communities in emptiness. Performer and participants working together, collaborating - forming and dismantling, growths and reductions. What opened here lasts, without interruption.
Art by presence, not product.
As art or the arts gradually exhaust their resources, they lose effectiveness in the context of their turn as highly collectibles, currency, decor, presence coupled with intention deciding the last frontier of expression. Artists, dispossessed of matter and incapacitated, removed from activity, no tools, left to activate his limbs in order to make (work).
Matter, object, images acquire meaning only and only as a tool for or as a residual product, a testimony, the result of effort, activity, not in itself. What we now call art is just a pretext for life, for being.Autonomy.
The body, or the autonomy of the body to be more precise, is an important stake, to be negotiated. The tool-body, decoy-body, trap-body, the false trail body, the empty body...What does a performer work with? How can he substitute himself, become his own medium while simultaneously maintaining the position (sovereignty) of the manipulator, how does he do this without betraying either? When does the puppet become the puppeteer and vice versa? When the mind stands still, what does the body do? When the puppet closes his hand, what does the body do?
Observation outside known space; the disappearance of reasonable structures and the erasing of appearance, the shell; insensitive knowledge applied sensorially.
Performance written, read? Is the writing of a performance concluded at the end of the lines, with the last full stop? Where words become form and sentences pass, grow in and out of meaning, while gestures and sounds, on the other hand, develop and, as performance evolves, take on meaning as fruitful or, at other times, useless language.I find myself absorbed, contradicted by the way Nemeș reverts to the self-interview format - what we have here is a transfer, impossible exchange between same sign poles. On closer inspection, dialog disappears and one finds themselves suspended, abandoned, in a space of non-existence.
To live and die in a performance.Is there any barrier between life and performance? There must be, maybe extremely subtle, but always there - and if indeed it’s there, and it clearly is - how does performance claim its place, justification, its raison d'être? What are its traces? I hereby declare that traces do not remain, everything being absorbed into itself.Durational, processes, reactions, punctual, precise, fixed? Where does it begin and what is the conclusion?
Alina Popa lives and dies in an unfinished, continuous performance.In my dream I am trying to stop a performance. The performance starts and ends with 5 people jumping off a balcony and crashing to pieces on the street pavement. As I run up to the respective balcony, I manage to stop 5 men from passing me, I block the intended spot. I enter what looks like an apartment satisfied with achieving my goal. As I do so, 5 women pass me and manage to quickly jump off, one after another. Desolated, I find myself outside in the street facing the aftermath, staring perplexed at the horrific scene, with a passer’s voice describing the event in detail to my ear. I wake up in agony and despair.Stillness is part of performance. With the body immobile, the shadow comes alive.
Acknowledgements:
Ioana Nemeș - The Wall Project self-interview, courtesy of Dragoș Olea
Alina Popa - You Are / The Grounds are Gone and I am Hanging from this Sentence / Drawings, courtesy of Florin Flueraș
Mircea Nicolae - 1, 2, 4, 6, courtesy of Larisa Sitar.
Cultural project co-financed by the Romanian National Cultural Fund Administration.
Partners: Centrul Național al Dansului, Institutul de Cercetare Multidisciplinară în Arte, UNAGE Iași, Revista ARTA,