Sadly, I could only attend on Saturday until 7.30. The performance "Magnolia", that by "Broken Record", and the one called "At the Table" stood out as powerful.

"Magnolia" started with the audience entering the room in darkness and sitting down. The voices of Marlena and Emiko began softly calling to each other in their respective languages. Across the darkness of the room, the volume, terror and confusion of the voices increased. It was an incredibly powerful start. Emiko's frantic Japanese voice shot me into visions of the current horrors in Japan. It brought me to tears. The performance continued with a mirroring and interactive dance between the two women. I would love to see the performance again as it felt full of depth that I can hardly fathom now.

Next, I was one of two audience members who entered a room in darkness for "At the table". We were directed to sit down. When the lights turned on, we were on either end of a dining table with 4 performers facing each other between us. 2 of the performers were musicians who played glass harmonica with the wine glasses, the other performers (Verena van den Berg and ...?) performed acts of mental confusion. There were long moments of eye contact between the performers, and between the performers and the audience. Music by wine glass was the inspiration for the performance. I felt the depth of the middle class soul reaching almost blindly for connection through its preferred social route. It is a route that is not one I even consider fruitful for myself, but it is one many people rely on for human interaction. I felt the strength and integrity of this fact was respected and by the performers, and I was moved.

"Broken Record" started with a short film with voice over speech. The text was quite interesting: with philosophical and spiritual content. I'd need a transcript to comment, as I can't remember the good bits. It was accompanied by visuals of a young woman in the back seat of a static car crashing her body up against the doors and windows and performing odd positions and shapes with her body. The words and the visuals were jarring. The film stopped and 2 dancers on the stage, static until now, were spot lit and started moving. They began dancing to something like Beyonce - loud and pulsing. Again, I was deeply moved. The dancers seemed so earnest, especially because of (or simply _because of_) the depth of the message we had just heard in the film. I really felt the life affirming positivity of their efforts. As with the dinner party performance, here was an artistic realisation of people using their own culture to manifest some intensity for themselves, to reach out and touch the world, and to plug themselves in in the best way they knew how. In this case, by way of "Youth Culture". It really meant something. No one should ever dismiss others' open-hearted attempts at plugging into their culture.

I noticed a few people laughed in "Broken Record"'s performance, but I didn't find it funny. I am driven not to dismiss things as ironic, as to me, this often misses the point.

Judgmentality was a significant part of what I was brought up to. There were some positive elements in this: I learned to exercise my critical faculties quite tightly - but the danger is to slip into crass and easy prejudices, and form a generally dismissive mindset. It can be a defence mechanism in overdrive. My family scorned popular culture, Americanisation, TV, the newspapers, politics etc almost indiscriminately. I can just hear my step-father's sneering laugh. One misses possibilities this way. It is better to start from the heart rather than from judgment about the apparent "content", especially when this is with prejudiced eyes. Even so, there is no room for critical judgment in creative culture. What will be missed is: 1) the attempt by the creative artist to express their "something" and to offer it to the world and 2) the question of whether the "something" works and how it can be plugged in and used. I like Deleuze and Guattari's interest in real potentiality: "We will ask what it functions with, in connection with what other things it does or does not transmit intensities, in which other multiplicities its own are inserted and metamorphosed, and with what bodies without organs it makes its own converge." (A Thousand Plateaus)

COMMENTS

Great interpretation... it was only when i was analysing the piece for myself for the essay that i got to the theme of connection and struggling for connection but i hadnt linked it to formalized social rituals...i enjoyed reading your eloquent response to the piece.
Verena

Self portrait, 2005, Oil on canvas paper

Space Rocket, 2009, Acrylic on paper

Banana Crushed and Left to Perish, 2008, Oil pastel on canvas paper

Life model, 2007, Oil pastel on paper

Life model 2, 2007, Colour pencil on paper

A picture of love

This exhibition looks like it will be amazing.... If I can manage to get up to London for it...