Performance Responses...

I have begun posting Performance Responses on my website to many of the performances I have been blogging about.

These are created direct responses to the artists but also as a kind of performance speak review/commentary to the shows.

Your can view the results here: http://erikandtheanimals.com/Pages/PortfolioPages/Responses.html

Here is a proper statement on the overall effort.

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Statement: Performed in Review

Performance art has become half a conversation, and so is losing its place in the broader art dialogues. The confrontational, present-tense, stubborn, anti-aesthetic qualities that are often associated with the genre, mixed alliances with visual art, theater, and dance audiences, regular incompatibility with documentation and resulting low presence in the media channels creates a niche medium that is inappropriately isolated, under-funded and too easily dismissed for an art practice that is so inclusive, significant and urgent. The increasing spectacle of the mass media is muting the traditional performance tactic of scandal-mongering as a way intervening in the social discourse.

I am interested in using tactical applications of consumer media to realigning the way critical response relates to presentations of performance work that is not traditional dance, theater, and so on. This is to create a creative, productive feedback loop among artists to create community, dialogue and the fundamental aesthetic infrastructure for sustainable artistic performance practice.

Taking the idea of the "creative response" from the working method of Goat Island Performance Group, I have begun to create performance responses to performance works in enclosed systems.

My first series were responses to some of the performances at the 2005 PAC/edge festival in Chicago, IL. I followed this quickly with a series of performance responses to the PSI #11 conference at Brown University, also in 2005.

I use a blog to present a fast, first response to what I experience at the shows and to create a place for further written responses by others in the form of visitor comments. I have then followed this by creating performed responses which are to ultimately to be delivered via my website www.ErikAndTheAnimals.com but also may be presented in a short face to face presentations to the artists. Email announcements are sent to the artists to make them aware of my response and to invite any comments or responses by them and then general announcements are sent out to announce the works to the public.

My performance responses tend to be short format works in live, video, sound and PowerPoint mediums that steal, rearrange and reverse engineer the subject works. The only guidepoint is that the responses must be in understood as incomplete. This incompleteness is so the responses can be easily given away and so they leave points of access for further responses - nodes for linking and expanding dialogue.

This idea is not at odds with any current forms of reviews or criticism but meant to shift the emphasis from consumer guides to one of dialogue and production. This emphasis is inclusive of the often anti-consumer aesthetic of performance work, and simply expands the field and creates further intellectual, aesthetic and marketing opportunities for those artists that are more open to the art market. Displaying these creative responses, which are normally part of the development phase of creation, is not meant to create a series of masterworks but to energize the subject communities and sustain the dialogue. I believe this is fundamental to creating a fertile landscape for the development of performance work in contemporary society.


Erik Fabian

The Hunchback Variations @ Links Hall

Theater Oobleck presented a performance of Mickle Maher’s, “The Hunchback Variations” for the last couple weekends at Links Hall in Chicago, featuring Jeffery Bivens as Ludwig Van Beethoven and Colm O’Reily as Quasimodo.

This script is hilarious and the performance is simple and clear. The premise is a supposed panel discussion between Beethoven and Quasimodo on the topics relating to an apparently failed collaboration to create the "impossible sound" described in the stage directions of the Chekhov play, “The Cherry Orchard”. “The Hunchback Variations” is structured in short, ten-minute or so, repeated variations…Beethoven repeatedly introduces the panel and then some kind of discussion about the collaboration takes place, the reasons and details of the failure are explored (and bemoaned by Quasimodo), and a kind of diligent chipping away at the impossible is presented.

The set is a long table, covered with a white cloth, with two mics and a pitcher of water. An abstract chiming soundtrack plays behind the performance, at times haunting the actors with a reminder of the sounds they (both being deaf) can no longer hear, of the sound their collaboration failed to evoke, and perhaps, for Quasimodo, the bells of Notre Dam left behind. Both characters comically acknowledge both the sounds and the audience at times with looks of pain, bewilderment, stoicism and indignation.

The romantic Quasimodo, long suffering, now living in a hut in a bog, was a constant bell tone throughout the play for me. He repeatedly made me laugh by lashing out at Beethoven or the audience from some new low of comic despicableness. He is costumed with a hump, ragged clothing and a mask. He opens the play by coming down the aisle and going to the table. He proceeds to remove a number of objects (sticks, jars, a pink toy guitar, etc) from a bag and place them on his side of the table. Colm performs this with excellent focus and interest and very confidently draws the attention of the audience to the stage and establishes a tone for the show.

Once Quasimodo finishes setting up, Beethoven enters briskly carrying a book. He is middle-aged, dressed in casual, contemporary dress and wearing glasses. Upon seeing the man enter from the audience’s right, I thought that I was about to listen to an NPR announcer give a talk. Beethoven takes the lead and opens the panel during most of the variations. In contrast to the Quasimodo masquerade, the Beethoven character lacks any theatrical or historical markers and is established simply by his repeated self-introductions. We are told that this is Beethoven, by Beethoven, and within the absurdity of the play, it is easy enough to accept.

I found Jeffery’s Beethoven less internally present than Colm’s Quasimodo though. Jeffery speaks very clearly and well and even while seated behind the table his body is activated and expressive; unfortunately I also found him fidgety at times. His hands where a big aspect of his performance to me and I began to think about how it seemed wrong to me that this was supposedly Beethoven, a master pianist, an athlete of the hands, and that, as he sat before us, his hands were flailing about the table and his person. It seemed that here was a character that should have been in his physical comfort zone at the edge of a table, a piano-like horizontal expanse, but was generally unsettled and fidgety. I enjoyed his calmer moments though and the more focused business he found fiddling with the microphone or the book.

I noticed that Jeffery wasn’t the person depicted in the program and later I learned that they had to bring him in to play Beethoven for these last two shows. I think the author Mickle Maher was the original actor, so perhaps Jeffery was just filling in on the spur of the moment.

Jeffery’s performance did leave me with a sense that this Beethoven is not used to failure and is, in fact, unable to accept or understand the event of failure. In that way his Beethoven seems almost innocent or naïve. He presents a good face as a panelist, routinely framing their predicament in an excusatory but poetic language only to be comically rebuked by Quasimodo’s romantic wallowing and stubbornness. Together they seemed like two aspects of the artistic temperament, the brilliant ego, and some trudging, self-doubting creature. Both reach for a kind of perfection, and are unwilling to give up romantic, if doomed, pursuits of impossible things. Both are self-involved, and achieve little…to the point of comedy.

This panel talk is initially presented in the play as a reconsideration of their failure but we quickly learn that their failure to find this “impossible sound” was never really accepted by either character. Beethoven, in his perfectionism, indulges his daydreams and never really contributes anything useful to the collaboration, avoiding failure by not trying, and Quasimodo is left with the work and the suffering of engaging in this doomed process. A repeated gag is when Quasimodo gathers together a few of the objects before him and triggers some pathetic little sound, and then Beethoven, called from some reverie, responds with a “No, that is not it.”

I suppose I don’t really care if they find the sound or not, their relationship and the proposed situation is amusingly described and basically satisfactory for me in itself. I struggle to find much more in this play than the results of an exercise that brings these figures together and self-reflexively considers the creative process. I suppose I feel like there is something in there about taking responsibility for ourselves, something about how we create romantic ideals and that those dreams can be more satisfying in themselves than other things, and something about the mystery of sound. I cannot coherently articulate what is being said about those things though, so I am left with the feeling that this piece is enjoyable but not so important.

Maybe I should see it again, I suggest anyone who has the chance to go. If I went back again, I imagine my questions for the play would be: What is really at stake here? What are the jokes hiding? Why am I keyed into a concern about the willingness and unwillingness to take responsibility in this play? And, why is Theater Oobleck presenting this play of responsibility and failure to me now, at this time?

e

Installation/Performances @ PAC/edge

Several installation/performances took place at the PAC/edge festival this year. I want to be done talking about this event but I felt like it was unfair to leave them out. The installation stuff mostly was ongoing throughout the festival but still seemed something of a ghetto at the festival. The audience came to see the ticketed shows and perhaps stopped for a look or not. These artists also existed in a different economy within the festival since they didn’t generate ticket revenue.

So quickly I wanted to mention a few of the pieces that stood out to me.

Anthony Cobb’s piece, I don’t remember the name, but he had situated himself in a stairwell with a small sign that invited you to switch shoes with him. You would dictate how many steps he should take in your shoes and you were welcome to where his while you waited. I never switched shoes unfortunately but imagined demanding a number in the thousands to see if he would follow through.

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Deva Eveland created an activity center by the door to the woman’s restroom for his piece “Scheduled Activity”. A kind of large doll house/mail box kinda thing to me. There was a small peephole to look through for a blurry image of a person inside and also a mail slot on the side that you could also look through. A message board on the roof of the structure announced each day’s activity.

I witnessed activities like balloons with sharpie-written word on them coming out of the mail slot like little Easter-egg poops. I saw some kind of digging through plastic bags through the peephole once. Once pencils held open the mail slot and a very sweaty Deva read some text and apparently was gasping for air.

Like much of Deva’s work, he artificially hampers and contains himself in ways that explore the grotesque. I found the sweaty, airless, early days a bit worrying. I appreciated what came out of the mail slot and any attempts at communication because I felt mostly shut out by the viewing options. I felt like there was more going on in there than I could know and the piece developed rather slowly over the weeks of the festival. I would check in every now and then but from talking to Deva and others, it seems I missed a great deal, and certainly wasn’t able to construct a narrative around it.

His placement near the woman’s restroom was provocative but seemed mostly under-utilized. In general, I had a hard time constructing much from the location of the activity center and felt like this was an experiment more for Deva than for me. Deva was probably the most at home in the PAC installation ghetto.

Apparently, Deva won an award from PAC for the piece, something like the "Most Unique Performance". Congratulations Deva.

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I participated in Matthew Wilson’s “Memory Engine” by sharing a memory with one of his young recording fellows. The final presentation was at the bar in the café area, which was nice because it activated that often dead zone in the Athenaeum Theater but really the volume was so low on the speakers I couldn’t really hear anything over the crowd. The bartenders were engaging.

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Oh and three things I strongly disliked was the text installation on the bulletin board going to the main stage area, the awful banners hung around the building and the silly interactive piece about work. I will leave it at that.

e