Focusing and refocusing – density – archives

The Living Monument by Eszter Salamon made an impression. Grand, opulent, rich illusions often constructed from humble, homemade materials. In a critical Breakfast Club the following morning, many agreed it was like a painting you were forced to look at interminably. This reminded me of the protests unfolding now across the world, activists gluing themselves to Van Gogh to force focus on the fact that people are focusing on the wrong things (art, instead of climate change). In discussion, the word ‘monument’ directed our attention to political notions, to which we could attribute certain actions and costume choices, like covered faces. Yet The Living Monument did not feel explicitly political – most agreed on this. How do prior knowledge, artist notes and title, dictate our perception of a work? Can we override these to make authentic, uninfluenced responses? All the discussion on lack of explicit politics created an almost disappointed air – what would our overall feeling be if politics weren’t addressed? Would the piece be discussed to such extent if not for what it failed to express? Epic aesthetics alone wouldn’t inspire much debate.

The experience I felt watching this piece reminded me of a quote I heard recently: ‘the brain isn’t built to handle empty’. My eyes focused on the scene, but such little movement sent my mind astray: it felt impossible to stay focused on the slowness of these tiny ruptures. Eventually I would refocus, and find the dancers in a different place, their progression lost on my vision and memory. A greater rupture, it seemed, had taken place – but in reality I knew they hadn’t strayed from their excruciating pace. The pace of our life and thoughts, and the essence of productivity have disabled us from engaging in this slowness without some impatience and frustration. Such frustration feels quite similar to the type we project on ourselves when we haven’t achieved as much as we had liked. There was a thickness to it, time slowed so there was no high, no low – one constant stretch, a density that can be compared only in an opposite sense to the density of the Dramaturgy Seminars, where I also found myself focusing and refocusing, like a camera lens. My lens on The Living Monument felt like it was focusing on something too close, straining itself. In the seminars my lens was too far away to identify its subject – I felt at times alienated. 

For me, an accessible point of the seminar was Elin Amundsen Grinaker talking about inner archives: ‘Does this activate my inner archive? If yes, meaning is created.’ This didn’t help explain what a dramaturg does (which many of the speakers seemed to be both trying and not trying to do) beyond proving their role as a shapeshifter. But it does suggest how this particular dramaturg feels about her work. It reminded me of the ‘human’ behind a few very abstracting lectures, read from a screen (which many of us found difficult), at times laden with jargon or overly contextualised – one step removed from actual reality in which we practise (an inevitable consequence of ‘talking about talking’, to quote my colleague Beatrix Joyce). 

The question from Elin was one of the only things that grounded me in what a dramaturg is, yet it also felt applicable to almost everything we read and watch, to perceiving and engaging with art. Did The Living Monument activate my inner archive? No. Many of us disagreed with the division, discussed in Breakfast Club, of how this piece could only be one of two things: either alluring aesthetic or political statement. I do not blame the aesthetic for the lack of political statement I received from the piece. The covering and discovering of the bodies can be an aesthetic, political, choreographic and practical choice, all at once. 

Working slow – ableism 

Although ‘working slow’ seemed to mean different things to different people, with meanings often not referring to ‘speed’ itself, working slow as a festival theme did encapsulate many conditions that better support disabled artists. The biggest conflict of this theme, for non-disabled artists and practitioners too, is between working slow and the demands of the industry. Personally, it was great to hear disabled artists being discussed across several events and in conversation with other writers, including one who works with neurodivergent and dyslexic artists in funding applications. But there is tension between a desire to work slow (for disabled artists, this might mean being able to take the time they need) and the demands of funding, deadlines, identity and certainty of which route you are taking. 

Something my Springback colleague Gaia Clotilde Chernetich said struck me: having an identity is a privilege in some parts of the world – just as is it a privilege to attend performances without physical limitations, and to write fast, reactive reviews. It was suggested that dance writing is ableist. I don’t agree this is always the case, unless the industry only allows the short, fast deadlines and one format – the reactive review. Contemplative reviews change the practice in a way that increases accessibility, and are also less likely to do injustice to the artists. I felt amongst some in the audience after this working slow seminar, this conflict between notions of working slow / having space to experience unforced creativity / the joy of writing (often sapped by saturated viewing and reviewing) with funding systems, our resistance to rest and a simple need to survive. Many of us are privileged to be in a position to even desire slower working. We don’t necessarily need to adapt all ways of working into one, definite template, but the reminder to acknowledge our privilege felt valuable. To be made aware of it collectively is a step towards understanding it, and therefore making space for others. 

On review writing in general there remains ambivalence. Some prefer longer to reflect on the piece. Some still feel uncomfortable about the authority review writing seems to claim. Some feel the immediate review and saturated viewing can take the joy out of writing.

If changing the reviewing approach from reactive to contemplative produces a very different reflection on a piece, is the former less valuable? If reactive writing is more instinctual, is it not more honest? Can we rely on our memory not to distort what we have seen if give ourselves a week before reviewing something? Maybe these are just two types of creativity, both relevant and both valuable.

Caregiving

Daina Ashbee’s piece was hard to swallow. Earlier that day we had listened to the dramaturgs talking about caregiving, especially as a caregiver to audiences, or a caregiver to creative conditions. Such notions of care felt a world away when watching Ashbee’s J’ai pleuré avec les chiens (TIME, CREATION, DESTRUCTION). Something our colleague Plamen Harmandjiev said summed up our discomfort and frustration very well: they imposed their trauma on us. The square seating arrangement made me feel enclosed, even though it was the dancers supposedly trapped inside. The words vulgar, invasive and extreme came to mind. And I felt sad that this came under the category of ‘dance’. Post-show a few of us were quite baffled that the dancers clothed themselves for the bow, despite performing fully nude. This made the entire choice of nudity feel questionable, and even angering, considering the discomfort some of their actions caused for the audience. 

Similar extremities were discussed elsewhere:

• Anne Lise Le Gac: an extremity of surreal/psychedelic weirdness. It rendered the reality created quite indisputable, one could only surrender to it (the depth of weirdness was so extreme you couldn’t challenge it).
• Emerging artist, Carol Stampone: her ‘feminist’ message was extreme in its assumption that all mothers sacrifice all desires for their children, they give until they die, and even then, they die in service.
• Monica Calle: extreme repetition. Eszter Salamon: extreme slowness. For some, both caused extreme boredom.

Harald Beharie’s Batty Bwoy deliberately repulsed audiences at its beginning and end (saliva and twerking respectively), and Ashbee’s piece also created some kind of repulsion, yet the former received high praise, and the latter left people cowering under coats. With whatever Beharie did between beginning and end of his piece, he somehow humbled himself, and compelled us. 

Is it the choreographer’s responsibility to make the audience feel safe? The notion of working slow feels like an act of care, but despite that, we are never completely safe from the intentions of the choreographer, who can conjure a very uncaring environment within the generous space of an audience offering their attention.