just this...? (a short thought on the ephemeral)

After one week of a lot of work, our performance "happened" yesterday and now nothing left of it.. Only memory...
I always found strange and sad this ephemeral "truth" of theatre and performance. But this is also what makes it magical. It makes it immortal, because time cannot touch it.
Being an architect, I have the experience of building something that lasts... (it actually lasts "forever" for the period of my life). And I have always been attracted by ruins: buildings but also objects that time has passed over them, leaving its trace on them. I like seeing the layers of time on the walls and on every material. This is the fate of the material world.
This doesn't exist in a performance. A performance is always young. It happens and it disappears. And this is what makes it unique amongst other arts.
Because this is the truth of life as well: Nothing lasts forever...

theatre - cinema

“Throughout the twentieth century, not only did live performance integrate film into production, but both mainstream and experimental theater also competed with cinema in terms of its own sense of spectacle, and theater became more cinematic in conception, particularly in the latter half of the century. Playwriting saw increasing use of short scenes, cross-cut parallel action, and the use of flashbacks and dramatic time shifts, while theater staging drew inspiration from the cinema, increasingly employing neocinematic devices such as the introduction of incidental music and the use of lighting to create sharp montage or gentle dissolve effects. This aimed to intensify the theatrical experience, and to approximate cinema’s absolute control of space and time, and the flow and location of the audience’s attention.”
Steve Dixon, “Digital Performance”

dream_1

Last First Friday that we had to present work, I continued with the idea of projecting on the water and this time I made a short video.
I was reading a short story of Edgar Alan Poe “The fall of the house of Usher” and I thought in doing something with a scary atmosphere. So the video is like a dream where a woman appears and disappears like a shadow, on the surface of the water. I wanted to play with the objects and their shadows, meaning with what is real and what is not real. What exists in reality and what in our imagination. A ghost story is a good example to play with this.
In the installation, the shadow (projection) could be the shadow of the puppet-woman but it is not. The tree could be the reflection of the real branches. Objects and projections of other similar objects can create an interesting illusion. And the element of the water connects everything as it is reflective and it is something between material and non-material. It is nor a concrete object, neither an abstract one.
I need to think and experiment more on these ideas. This is a beginning that I hope to drive me somewhere...

"keep dancing" by Wendy Houston

About one month ago I went to see a performance called “Keep Dancing” by Wendy Houston at Battersea Art Center.

At the time I saw it I found that it wasn’t even worthy to speak about it. After our last seminars with Douglas, where we spoke a lot about the relation with the audience, the role of it and its expectations that are being fullfiled or not…I thought I could refer to it.We are speaking a lot lately about the spectators leaving the space of the performance, being irritated or bored or seeing something without a clue…
“Keep dancing” was playing a lot with the expectations of the audience but (according to my opinion) …it disappointed it in the end. The performer was speaking to us in a way like…”Now you are probably thinking that I came to see one of these performances that nothing happens” for example. Anyway….there was some action…some videos… a voice from a computer… and in the end what we were watching was her dancing in a silly way for about half an hour, singing the words “keep dancing, keep dancing”. She stopped and started again!Everybody was waiting for something to happen, something to change… or at least to stop. So she stopped. And we clapped. And we left.

In my opinion she shouldn’t have stopped. It should have been the audience to give the end to the performance by leaving the room. Like this we could challenge the limits of our patience and of her physical strength. By finishing the performance like this I think it was unfinished. I couldn’t see the point.Anyway, I am not sure if making some people leave from your performance is a success, unless you have made some others love it.

It is interesting to play with the expectations of the audience but it is really difficult because you can never predict the response of it. And it is really easy to fall in the trap of doing something just to shock or provoke the audience, without any meaning.

"time-piece"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT2fQOhwJr8

Yesterday we presented our short performances for the workshop of Dave Gale.
Each of us had to write a beginning, a middle and an end of 3 different stories and then we became groups of three and put our beginning, middle and end together!

In my group with Milka and Ilka I put the beginning, that was a dream, or to be more precise: a nightmare. My idea was based on the dream in the beginning scene of "Wild strawberries" of Bergman. I find this image of the clock without arrows very powerfull! You can create a whole story around it.

It was amazing that our three stories matched together really naturally!

The short performance was supported by a video that was playing

behind the performers and presented the whole story.

water projection testing

This video on the water is what I was going to show in the presentation on Friday, that was cancelled because of.... "organization problems".

(All this story made me think that sometimes being "extremely organised" -(health and safety, booking spaces in advance, papers, forms, requests, confirmations etc. etc.) in the end is exactly the same with being unorganised, like in Greece for example. You end up without a space to present your work. The difference is that at least in my country you know it from the beginning and you are trying to resolve things in your way.)

Anyway, as I wrote in my previous post, I wanted to experiment with projection on the water.
I didnt have the time to make a video especially for this occasion, so I edited some footages I allready had. The objective was to see how the projection works on the water, and not what is projected on it. After a morning, working in the wood workshop with the precious help of Julian, I made a structure supporting a mirror, in order to project on the water that was on the floor.

I was not extremely happy for the result. I need to think more on how to use the water and in what sense, but it was a first attempt to create something, that gave me a push, so this was very positive. It was interesting for sure to see how the light and the reflections work on the water, and how this can change by moving the water (creating waves).

water

Last night, after seeing a performance at Tate Modern,that I don't feel it is worthy to talk about, at least for now, I had an idea. I was standing there, in front of Tate, contemplating the lighted city. But my look was directed towards the river and the water.
So many colours and reflections and a soft movement, giving liveness to it.
Water is amazing. I think it is one of the four elements that is more near to Time. It can be the symbol of Life and eternity because of its movement and continuous change (sea), or it could even symbolize death, when we refer to stopped and dirty water.

I will post again a favourite sequence of a movie. "Stalker" by Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky is using water very much in his films.

A layer of water is covering old objects, items important or not, litter, objects from everyday life or symbols. A thick layer of time is covering every single thing. Everything looks like old memories, conserved by the water. And the whole image that is being scanned by the camera looks like a big abstract painting, full of textures.

Water can be used as a layer covering things or as a surface to be "covered" with lights or projections. Its movement could give another dimension to the projection. This is what I want to try to experiment on Friday. How projection on the water could work. What kind of textures it creates? And how it could be combined with the body of the performer.

How to start?

I am lost, for one more time. Always when I start with a new project, my head is full of a lot of different ideas and subjects that I want to put together. And I love each one of them, so I cannot put them aside easily. “You never go as far as when you don’t know where you are going”, James Therree is quoting Christopher Columbus. I found this sentence very “convenient” for me, because I really don’t know where I am going to. But it’s always like this. In the end I will arrive somewhere.
How to start? I was thinking which is my subject? I need a story. I started writing down some words. Considering that I want to “play” with a fragmented narrative, with the deconstruction of narrative and time, I thought on the following: [memory and dream], [coincidence and fate], [fear(s)]. They are subjects that can create different space-times (chronotopes according to Bachtin) inside the one space of the stage. These should interact one with another.
If I try to imagine a picture now it would be an image like this…

Complexity: an interplay of spaces, times and bodies. Could the body of the spectator enter as well in the “installation” and experience the narrative, or (even) create his own narrative (?)

“Is it by accident or by design?”

Some things are happening lately that made me thinking about coincidences. And Fate, as well. How can a moment change our life? How can a moment of somebody else’s change our life? I was thinking on this sequence of “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”. Dance was her life. What if one of those small stories was a bit different? The future would be different? Or this was her fate? Life is made of stories. Our stories and the others’. They are interacting all the time, even if we cannot see it. In this short video there are five different stories of people and the Story of Daisy. A chain of insignificant events that could have started anywhere in the past is changing Her life. If this was a live performance… I could see Daisy, live in front of me, and all the events, passing in different screens… Or the opposite… Daisy recorded and the stories live in front of the audience. The possibilities are more, as we can play with “live” time as well. And it is “live” time that is changing in the end. It is the present moment that is directed towards infinitive possibilities.

“Raoul” @ Barbican Center, by James Thiérrée, 17-10-09 and some thoughts..

Last Saturday I went to see James Thiérrée. I didn’t know him before but it appeared to be an interesting show. I cannot easily say in which “kind” of performance it belongs. It is something between dance, circus, pantomime and theatre with a very impressing scenography, costumes and props.
“Raoul” is a surreal story of a man looking for his identity. He is living in a house that is being deconstructed slowly during the performance to disappear in the end, when he will just fly away. The scenography is a fundamental element of the show as it interacts constantly with the body of the performer. Thiérrée’s body is like immaterial. His movements flow and its possibilities look unfinished.
The stage design, the lights, the movements of “Raoul” and the music are all creating the poetic language of Thiérrée. We are watching a series of surreal images. A house constructed by metal bars and animals made of clothes and sheetings. It is like a dream world is unfolding in front of us.
The show was a good food for thought as it put me thinking in the interrelation of cinema and theatre and their crossing paths.
Even if there are no digital media to this performance, the influence of cinema can be seen on the movements of the performer. For example: in this amazing sequence of a slow motion imaginary fight he is presenting in the end. Slow motion is something borrowed from the art of cinema. The birth of cinema gave us the chance to experience this kind of images. It is through filming that we can divide our time into "frames" and then "play" with their connections or their velocity.
I am referring to this fact, because the obvious is that the art of cinema has borrowed a lot of things from theatre but we barely speak about what theatre has borrowed from cinema.

“The author” @ Royal Court Theatre, by Tim Crouch, 2-10-2009

Every time I go to a performance, I am full of expectations, curiosity and excitement. You can never know what is expecting you. The moment that the lights are turned off and the journey begins, anything could happen…
The other Friday 2/10, when I stepped into the theatre-space and saw the… stage, I got really curious to see the performance. The stage was … “us”. There was an audience watching an audience. The space was arranged in such a way as half of the audience was facing the other half, with just a small corridor in between. Which are the possibilities of this space, I wondered.
And the performance started… (at this time, without the lights being turned off). The performers are amongst us, revealing themselves one after the other. They interact with the audience or they act. Informal discussions, personal narratives, opinions and “real” acting is taking place during this intense hour. Sometimes we are watching a monologue, then we participate in a discussion or we are watching an act of a play. The four performers are creating a space around them, with us inside it, that is provoking a series of questions and thoughts.
What is the relation of the audience and the actors?
Is this defined by the positions of the bodies and the arrangement of the architectural space?
Or is it only a question of the relation that is being created between them?
What if the expectations of the audience don’t find an answer?
Should a performance entertain the audience?

For me the truth lies on the transmission of feelings, sentiments and energies that is taking place during the real time of the performance. With its gradual escalation of tension, “The Author” managed to make some of us cry, laugh, get angry, happy, or… leave.
So, what I have to say is that… it worked.

How can we start a blog...?

Maybe with a favourite quote..

“Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.”

T.S.Eliot

"Stalker", Tarkovsky

Tarkovsky is one of my favourite film makers. I am always impressed by his imagery.
Light, material textures, natural elements and ruins are creating his poetic images.
He has a unique way of using time. He believes that cinema is about sculpting time and time is a fundamental element in his work. He is using time like duration, working with long takes that can transcribe time in its integrity. His spaces reveal duration of time because they are "lived". Used objects and spaces are giving evidence of human presence.