It's morning at Faki
on Day 3, and the festival settles into a familiar rhythm: healthy vegetarian
lunches, random happenings and events, somehow a lot of pressure, and at the
same time, none. Violence hangs in the air as a kind of general idea along with
the sounds of punk metal until 5am, ever-present, acknowledged, discussed - and
importantly, never, ever acted upon.
Day 2’s performances
were characterised by a more direct contact with contemporary politics and propaganda, as opposed to the shock of yesterday.
The neo-Marxist Sketches of Freedom kicked
things off, complete with unscheduled stage intruder, followed by Dutch/Malaysian
collaboration Can’t See Through Your Eyes
and the intriguing The More You Dance the More You Get, a metaphor for people trafficking. Norwegian
Terrorist/Capitalist/Christian cult music theatre project U-DUB was the entry for oddest but potentially most avant-garde work of the festival, whilst Japanese dancer Kazuyo Shionoiri’s meditation on death was an intensely personal
communion.
Today’s casualties in terms of criticism are both performers of Emptiness/Fullness and Can’t See Through Your Eyes - being dance performances which I read as not engage a discourse outside of their own logic - not the fault of the works by any stretch, but I am just lacking the tools to dissect such work in a useful way.
Today’s casualties in terms of criticism are both performers of Emptiness/Fullness and Can’t See Through Your Eyes - being dance performances which I read as not engage a discourse outside of their own logic - not the fault of the works by any stretch, but I am just lacking the tools to dissect such work in a useful way.
I am
holding up ok, by the way. I think we all are.
Sketches of Freedom
The term ‘Creative
Class’ is used to describe the demographic of young people who are
characterised by a particular type of exploitation. Working mostly in culture
and tech (or combinations thereof), they spend their time floating from unpaid
internship to short-term freelance gig, never enjoying fundamental rights or
government support, appropriating/hijacking infrastructure where they can, and scavenging
from the edges of societies. A particular type of oppressed, they will never
enjoy wealth, and conversely, are powerful influences in symbolically shaping
cultures and politics (referred to as ‘change makers’).
The neo-Marxist dance work Sketches of Freedom asks the principle question of whether it is actually possible to create anything from such a class position – in their terms: “Are we really free to create in Europe today?”. It is question many will be familiar with – the act of creation, after all, requires a certain type of freedom, even extremely limited, as a prerequisite, and if you’re chasing money all the time you are, in some terms, precisely not creating. The economic conditions for artists is therefore important, as it creates the frame from which any kind of self-expression might potentially be reached, and the ‘baseline’ standard – eroded by the poverty of the creative class – is the principle factor of determining this freedom for work whose cultural outcome is not determined by a cost/benefit analysis. Without boring those already familiar, but because it’s important to remind ourselves: the material reality will define the culture produced. If you remove the economic safety net, as is happening under neo-liberalism in many economies, you get a particular type of cultural nightmare - music theatre from corporations, pop-stars playing arena gigs, Cats on repeat. Forever.
Sketches of Freedom borrows heavily from the playbook of
soviet-era performance. The beginning sees one performer, Tommaso Monza (also
choreographer), introduce the others via
loudspeaker, and announce the structure of the show (first part choreography,
second part improvisation). Workmanlike formation dance follows in front of a
projection of neo-Buddhist Capitalist slogans, occasionally drifting into
parody: “Yes We Can!” “Not in my Name!” “Je suis Catherine Deneuve”. The
accompanying movement evokes worker movements updated for the creative class – a perfect formation,
punctuated by an occasional deviation from an individual, who is then
disciplined by the others and by themselves. The slogans gradually transfer
into cynical reversals: “No, We Can’t!” “BUT, The show must go on!” and
references to the ‘Grand Tour of Culture’ and the structure of creative capital
and city-building. As this self and group discipline continues, the slogans
slowly transfer into fusions with dance – “no innovation without improvisation”
and some more optimistic – if futile – statements: “Every small dance is a
small act of resistance”.
The second
act, the improvisation, is announced by Tommaso, who also employs a volunteer
to time the 20 minute improvisation. What followed was complete collapse –
dancers wandering around, aimlessly, generating the nothing from which to
rebuild. A rebuilding begins, and at this point, the performance was unfortunately
interrupted by a stage intruder – taking the concept of improvisation a little
too seriously – who proceeds to be adopted reluctantly into the improvisation. As
inspired as she may have been, it was clearly a bad idea to intrude in what is probably
the performance’s most fragile point. Despite their best efforts, the performers
never really recovered, bringing an unfortunate end to an argument half-made.
Still –
perhaps the metaphor becomes something else: it’s not capitalism that is the
barrier per se, but our lack of understanding. It is, in other words, each
other, and our communication breaking down. From such a space, it is indeed,
impossible to create (among other things).
The More You Dance, the More You Get
The More You Dance the More You Get begins with a dancer (also
choreographer, Evie Demetriou) with her face covered by a purple wig (think of a purple Chewbacca head on a female body). She starts to move, hitting herself in various parts of the body, in
movements which reminded me of the Maori Haka,
evolving this into grabbing different parts of her body as if referring to some
kind of lack or disgust. Suddenly she moves her wig up, and looks at us, as
though for the first time. “30 Euros”, she says, grabbing her breast. “40 Euros”.
And so it continues, becoming an inevitable rhythm coupled with a mantra: “The
more I dance, the more I get”. She distributes pamphlets. The performance ends.
The
pamphlets describe statistics of human trafficking of women and children (see below), and indeed, this
is the surprise target of the performance. According to the program, the
character is “a nobody who is
forced to expose, sell and resell a body again and again”. As the pamphlet
states, human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the
world, with approximately 20-30 million victims globally (though estimates I
think vary, given the obvious problems with documentation). There are various
structures supporting this trade, not all of them the obvious (brothels etc),
and human trafficking is basically an embedded part of the capitalist system –
one of its more problematic elements, of course, because it absolutely destroys
lives.
The More You Dance the More You Get benefits exceptionally from the
specific nature of its target, and the simple generalisations which can be made
from it. The huge problem of human trafficking for sex highlights the issue whilst suggesting a way to access
the objectification of women in performance, and particularly dance, in as much
as it is a display of the body (not the first performance in Faki to engage
this). It’s not a huge leap to extend this into the society itself, with the treatment
of women coming directly from their disempowerment within modes of looking and
to be looked at (see aforementioned feminist discourse).
The More You Dance the More You Get is a great work about a critical, often misunderstood, issue, acting as a metaphor for the imprisonment of women in its various global forms.
The information leaflet for The More You Dance, the More You Get was intended to be about Croatia, but for a last minute mishap. The artist has generously supplied this, and I have published the full text below the reviews.
The More You Dance the More You Get is a great work about a critical, often misunderstood, issue, acting as a metaphor for the imprisonment of women in its various global forms.
The information leaflet for The More You Dance, the More You Get was intended to be about Croatia, but for a last minute mishap. The artist has generously supplied this, and I have published the full text below the reviews.
U-DUB
UPDATE: I'm reliably told that the phone call made to the Norwegian authorities regarding the hijacking of a plane was not staged, i.e it is a real recording of a prank call made by the artists, in which they pretend that a plane has been hijacked and are eventually referred to Norway's Ministry of Defense.
I was more
than a little unsettled walking into U-DUB.
Maybe it was the candles, maybe it was the small figurines of Jesus Christ,
maybe it was the small, human-shaped, raised platform in the centre behaving like a kind of sarcophagus, maybe it was the
slowly rotating models of city structures, maybe it was the general feeling of ‘cult’
in the air. Take you pick, I guess.
As the projections began the show in earnest, I didn't get any less nervous. A highly stylised
magnifying-glass animation zooms around a damaged scripture of the Gospel of
Judas – famous for its claim that Jesus initiated his own betrayal by Judas -
finally resting on a section explaining the difficulties of ‘civilisation by
proxy’ and dwelling on ethical responsibility. Some eerily reverent live-musical
interludes and interventions follow, and a central counter-narrative emerges –
performed by two children, it is essentially a gonzo investigation into why
people will kill rats with rat poison but not face-to-face. Street interviews,
presumably on the streets of Bergen, are spliced with a Flight Simulator journey
from Bergen to Molde which is hijacked by (presumably) terrorists, and a –
continuously re-directed - conversation with the Ministry of Defense about what
should be done (eventually it’s shot down).
U-DUB is part of a larger, 6-part work called DUB-Leviathan, and as a stand-alone
piece I got the feeling it didn’t get a chance to explain itself fully. The
performance occupies a singular space in its discourse: the dangerous cocktail
of Christianity, capitalism, and terrorism creating ethical distance for
citizens precisely so that people can defer any sense of personal responsibility.
The engagement feels very much post-Breivik, with his contradictions – a Norwegian-bred
terrorist championing Christian imperialism - throwing up immeasurable
challenges for the famously inclusive Norwegian society, and for the ethics of
global capitalism. The symbolism of the child-actors investigating the ethics
of the system, given that 69 children died in the tragedy, is unmissable and
important. The subject of ethical deference built into ‘Christian Capitalism’ is
a difficult, important subject that few address (but which loomed large during
Breivik’s case), as it is the principle determinant of the global system and
its most powerful ideological contributor. This makes it difficult material,
because what it is trying to discuss is so embedded in the western world as to
be invisible.
The ethical
target, this “civilisation-by-proxy”, is in ethical terms the key issue facing
western democracies today, and U-DUB
provides an interesting and rare attempt to deal with this on a theological and
ethical level. I needed it to be said more explicitly – but perhaps this task is
for the full version. The incorporation of child actors is a problematic but
key element post-Breivik, raising the key question of what legacy the
developments in this Judeo-Christian Capitalist global system will leave for future
generations, and how they might negotiate the tragic outcome.
---
Sketches of Freedom (ITA)
Choreography by Tommaso Monza
with Tommaso Monza, Andrea Baldassarri and Lucia Pennacchia.
The More You Dance the More You Get (CYP)
Devised and Performed by Evie Demetriou
U-DUB (NOR)
Directed by Tore Vagn Lid
Transiteatret
FACTS
Sketches of Freedom (ITA)
Choreography by Tommaso Monza
with Tommaso Monza, Andrea Baldassarri and Lucia Pennacchia.
The More You Dance the More You Get (CYP)
Devised and Performed by Evie Demetriou
U-DUB (NOR)
Directed by Tore Vagn Lid
Transiteatret
FACTS
THE MORE YOU DANCE THE MORE YOU GET (EVIE DEMITRIOU)
Trafficking women and children for
sexual exploitation is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world.
Human Trafficking is a global issue with approximately 20 to
30 Million victims worldwide.
Approximately
80% of trafficking involves sexual exploitation.
Women
and girls make up 98% of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation.
Croatia is a destination, source, and transit
country for women and children subjected to sex trafficking.
During 2014 in Croatia, police and NGOs identified 31 victims of
sex trafficking. Six additional persons
were victims of forced labour. 22 of the
37 identified victims were minors. Nearly 90 percent of the identified victims
were Croatian.
More
Information:
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