Often I ask myself when is it a performance, and when is it not... Any tendency towards the theatrical, be it a personal trait or an affectation has the potential of being 'put off' as 'just a performance' and as such not to be taken as seriously as 'real' emotions'...
Fair enough, and in general the way things are perceived... Though I have always known people who had more than a fair share of the theatrical without actually being aware of it / and or accepting it as being their natural manner... Which I must admit, is not always accepted by the social surroundings... Or may I say used to be, since in recent years tolerance has become commonplace among certain sections of society, whereas other sections have hardened in their retrograde beliefs...
So this experiment ( what I call it for myself) is interesting to find out for myself whether my own "theatrics" may be included in this notion... Never having been inclined to stand on stage I nevertheless always have been interested in the periphery of it... From stagecraft to organisation of venues... Platforms for all manner of manifestation... And, looking back, have found myself more and more active in this amalgam called live art performance... So, this is an opportunity to investigate the own attitude rather than that reflected by a public... Hopefully.
In this case the public is integrated... Which perhaps complicates matters, since implicated without being addressed... Not sure if it's quite what I need, thinking more of a pure solo action as I did with the A to B series... Which I still have not done anything with.. Here a hint, perhaps, to link ( or re-link) them by train... (so much for a preamble)
A to U...
Ok the operation itself: train to Utrecht. Strikes had been announced in Belgium, s decided to try to get on a train before they shut the system down... Arriving at Utrecht about an hour early I had a Walkabout and bought some supplies before heading to the meeting point. Sure enough, they were all there, the unnoticed performers, obviously geared towards a camping trip... A message got through to inform us that the minivans coming to pick us up were stuck in traffic and if would take an hour or so... Ended up being quite a bit longer, but we sat outside on a monumental staircase overlooking a building site... The sun was warm and with some imagination you might consider us being a public observing life's theatre in a colosseum of sorts, with the ruins of past civilisations at our feet...
Small talk and getting to know each other a bit, describing projects and situations, hanging about.... Was sort of thinking this might already be included in a sub-section of my intended work... And a short study in group dynamics, since one had a mix of people who had either similar experience, background, studies, interests forming small subgroups... But more on that later... The minivans arrived and after a short refresher the drivers took us down into the colosseum where we negotiated the building site with our caravan to arrive on he lot where the vans were parked, loaded up and headed towards... Well, we still weren't being told, and went guessing along until only Nijmegen and Arnhem became viable options... Unless they were transporting us to Germany!
It was Nijmegen, or rather a camping site out in the surrounding hills, past Berg en Dal, in a field with lots of horses... Very agreeable surroundings and the weather was holding... Deciding to pitch the tents while the going was good, since the expectation was that there would be rain at some point... But up to then it went quite well. We were treated to a tasty borsht and salad and the program...
I had originally been given my own group based on my original proposal... Which in turn was based on the supposition there would only be one group as such... So I needed to rethink... And joined a group as an "associate" member, enabling me to participate and still giving me the option of breaking away and executing my disappearance.
Here I might refer quickly to my initial project, based on a general interest in the 'submerged' and nearly invisible, but mainly on a practical guide i picked up during a show at my local museum...
(fn. MuHKA, meeting points 7 published by Kayfa.) "How to disappear" by Haytham El-Wardany (Egyptian media-artist based in Berlin)
With 'preliminary exercises' how to disappear, how to reappear, and, for my project also 'how to join a group / how to break with a group' ...
absentee Mikio Saiko next to Thomas Tajo
There was also another ‘absentee presence’ in the form of Mikio Saiko (or at least his image pasted on board...) but a bit different from my do not-/meet/me...)
But given the fact we were already in groups and individuals doing things on their own, an application of these exercises would be... Well, entirely unnoticed. Trick is to be sufficiently unnoticed...
Considered to disappear right off the bat: head into town with the group and make myself scarce, double back to pick up my gear and head home... (or not even, leaving the gear behind, or hanging about as an observer only, not participating and therefore not part of the proceedings. Then there was the identity option... I had from the outset debunked the fiction of Heinrich Obst so as to begin with the dual identity question: at which moment was Heinrich present or not... he had gotten us into this mess, he should get us out. Switching between Heinrich the (official, outsider) participant and myself, mere passer-by as it were, I could turn on and off my 'presence' at will, much like the Cheshire Cat and his smile... ( apt due to the fact there was another festival in the area: ."down the rabbit-hole"... Was even considering at one stage to get on that bus and disappear into those crowds)
After a restless sleep (haven't been camping for ages...) and breakfast, we got on the first van out and found ourselves at the Kronenburgerpark in Nijmegen, waiting for the next contingent... We split into groups and reconnoitered the area, I went up the hill on my own, yelled at by the jackdaws (see on site report for more) and by the time the others had arrived we had done our framework planning.
First up was a proposal by Isaac Chong, a running race in which all participant reach the finish line together... though divided into groups, well all participated, running various times at various speeds to get as close to an communal finish as possible... I feigned a heart condition an played referee/umpire observer and handbag-watcher, since this exercise would get me into such a sweat as to have to forego any other participation... in the meantime I scribbled in my little black book.
After this initial combined effort each group went it’s separate way, and I trundled off after my adopted group coordinated by Malou Van Doormaal, a smaller group with a different composition than originally listed... anyway, we proceeded up the hill and along the way Iris van Wijk and myself, being members of a select subgroup- put sand into our pockets as execution of t proposal by Royce Allen Hobbes – 200 million years ago - in which 10 participant would carry soil in their pocket during the day... sand is perhaps only a component of soil, but an essential/basic one found in all soils, and here it was dry enough to use, whereas everywhere else it was wet & soggy.
(by the end of the day this would not make much difference)
First group effort would be the Tap Dining piece by Janette Joy Harris, whereby the group feigns nervous movements while waiting for their orders, more or less synchronically, counted, choreographed, timed... we opted for a dispersed set-up, sitting solo or two’s at a table of the large terrace of the Café de Buren, but it didn’t take long for a lady sitting with her husband not far from where I was to notice: she mentioned to her husband that those people over there were seemingly doing the same movements... and then, yes... over there too... look! After a bit of giggling and amusement she began to query the situation, and, after noticing that I too was doing similar things, couldn’t contain her self and came over to ask what was going on....
We had been noticed...
insole exchange and unnoticed background group3
Yvo van der Vat and Frans van Lent
Just when realizing our abject fai'lure and getting ready to leave we were set upon by another group who apparently had the same idea to use that café, but decided to use the one on the corner, using a full-table-configuration for their attempt. With them was project instigator Frans Van Lent with the insoles that had been left in the van earlier... a proposal by Josh Schwebel, “hidden sculptures”... to be worn inside your shoe... a pink & green one I got with knobs and things, thought: ooh, that’s going to be uncomfortable, but if fact it was okay... only later in the day did the irritation increase to such a degree as to modify my gait, and in the end one might have thought I had a bad leg, limping slightly... whether this was noticeable or not I don’t really know...
I moved off towards the old city, noticed another participant was going the same way and doubled back, turned off somewhere and got lost. This was the first disappearance as such, not that you’d notice.- as proposed... but then more members were disappearing, so the impact of a disappearance became less noticeable than unnoticed, being construed as part of the program. If it is then part pof the intended program it is no longer a disappearance but an absence – which is banal enough to go unnoticed and as such not noteworthy in this context. Un- dis- or non-appearance on the other hand is something that should be contrary to the expectation at a given moment and create a void to be filled by speculation or at least bemusement. In that sense this first attempt was not a very good one, an I even have to look at my notes to remember what I did, indicating that it was not very memorable either...
Ah yes... went to the tourist office partly for a map, partly to perhaps do a version of the proposal by Ieke Trinks to get an extensive tourist Day Program proposal at the tourist office... as detailed as possible – but when I got there I saw participants were already doing that and it would take a while – being asked by the lady at the theatre reservation counter if she could perhaps help me with anything I told her to get .... , and proceeded to the railway station, where I came across another participant and we exchanged one of the “modern greetings” (phone branding) proposed by Paul Shortt. We had been given his instruction brochure the evening before as part of our on-site training package... I didn’t learn all the moves, so sort of improvised...
At the train station I checked out trains, lines, time-schedules and general information of how to get out of there quick, as part of a possible disappearance strategy or just bugging it before the rains hit too hard... noticed the bus-stop for down the rabbit hole and considered perhaps... but decided on a cup of coffee marked ‘drink me’ instead. I moseyed down to the old town to have a look around as a tourist, even without the instructions from the local official tourist information office and came across a rock bearing a plaque commemorating the resistance and specifically one young scout that spied on the Germans securing the bridges over the Waal, but in the end paid dear...
(got shot, name and something ‘bout wanting to do good for once...)
Then I nearly got run over myself (always good for an adrenalin surge) down on the waterfront which is pretty well in hands of German and Swiss tourists... headed back up the hill into the area we had begun, since we decided to rendezvous at the McDonalds for an execution of Ieke’s “Slow Food” proposal. Passed through the shopping district, which is weird enough for me... Anyway, quite a number of us converged on the fast food chain to more or less block normal operations and occupying the joint with all these slow eaters... conversing mainly while munching on fries that were cooling down and becoming a sort of cardboard like consistency... it took quite a while and by the time we were back out on the street the rain had come again.
The next one I didn’t want to miss for the world: Jonathon Keats’ reenactment of the Big Bang. We chose the inaccessible round garden, risking our lives to get there, and proceeded to arrange ourselves for a big bang under a low-hanging tree so no-one could see us... we had decided in 14:19 and then dispersed, each jettisoned into a different direction... running back across the rotund traffic did have a slight encounter with this fragment hurtling into the unknown, but other than this small side effect the operation went unnoticed.
just before the big bang reenactment
I slipped into the tourist office and did a small fraction of the Day Planning piece (a version Alexandra Baybutt had spoken of... asking about the less attractive parts of the city) and headed down to the station, where I took the number 5 bus (again considering getting on the one going down the rabbit hole) and ended up at the Honig factory on the outskirts of town down by the river.
By now it was raining hard and the rather desolate area of former industrial, now semi cultural-recreational mix looked a bit soggy and forlorn – just what I was looking for. Sat myself in a nearly empty café and proceeded to follow instructions from that little book by Haytham El-Wardany ‘how to disappear’ (with a cup of coffee in front of me) I thought perhaps that I did manage to arrange the sounds and thoughts in such a way as to become aware of the unaware, perhaps becoming somewhat translucent, but I don’t think I really disappeared, and the few people who where there weren’t taking much notice anyway, so I think I sort of convinced myself at being gone rather than actually departed... I think they thought i was meditating... so when a couple with a puppy dog came in, the pup immediately came over and sniffed at my heels, giving me the indication that I was anything than disappeared... also had to pay for my coffee, which if the process had worked, would have been unnecessary.
Headed back towards the bus stop, now raining hard and desolate, the feeling of being lost in space now apparent... but at some point the bus did come, and I found myself back in town when the evening rush hour seemed to be starting. I came off the bus and added myself to the waiting crowd in the other direction... making lines longer by Chris Wildrick... waiting next to an American couple of Indian decent and listening in on their conversation in order to execute a piece of oral transmission by Paul Money... which I did later on. I waited till everyone was on a bus, my Indo-American couple on the number 8... then headed back up the hill to see if I could find some other participants... stopping to shelter under a large protrusion of a flat building and taking time to eat a note I had jotted down as execution of the proposal eat your secret by Liam Herne, coming close to that surreptitious feeling of no-body knows or notices...
Further along I dumped the sand in my pockets, across the road from where I had gathered it, returning it as if nothing had occurred, the sand still being close to it’s original location, even after a field trip of some 50km during the day. One day added to 200 million years is pretty innocuous and I think perfectly unnoticeable.
By this time it was raining so hard that I dived into a café and had another cup of coffee just to be out of the rain... sitting there I began wondering if there were still operatives around or if they had all skedaddled, and there would be no more minivans and in fact it was the whole organization that had disappeared unnoticed while I sat in fool view of the world... so after the rain had abated slightly decided to head out again, but perhaps have a listen as to what was going on, calling main-man Frans Van Lent... they were down by the river waiting for a van, too far for me, but just at the same time I got a call from Malou Van Doormaal, our team’s coordinator and just at that moment Inke Kastelein’s group came around the corner, and so we all proceeded to the Paraplufabriken where the others had also come for a visit (private view!) to the exhibition Conflicting Destinies curated by Youri Appelo. Interesting show and a very good way to end the day, by then having coordinated a pick-up at our point of departure, making a full circle of the operations...
It had all gone wonderfully well, and I was able to execute quite a few of the proposals I had marked, as well as doing my own research on the extraction from group and observation, though If it worked is still a matter of discussion, as is the participation as such. I deliberately undermined the identity of Heinrich so as to be able to exclude him at will, in fact one might say this participation was executed by myself and Heinrich never showed up. It is also an investigation into whether Heinrich still has a role to play in this sort of manifestation, or whether, as I alluded to in an performance-meet earlier in the month, he should return to his non-activity as an art-striker and refrain from any public comment.
In this sense the ‘Content Strike’ by Heath Schulz was helpful, taking down notes as to the execution of pieces, a first analysis as it were,- as well as Mikio Saito’s absence whereby a fictitious presence (him in cardboard, me in pseudonymity) could be construed as similar interpretations of the unnoticed... but anyway, we were treated to a sumptuous meal on our return, even the weather granted us a late afternoon sun, bathing our tired and contented bodies in gold.
Aside from the ‘content-strike debriefing’ we were treated to thank-you’s and drank, washed up an a part of the party headed out back into the noticeable world, while we lingered somewhat, drinking and making merry – though I didn’t go all the way since I had to catch my train on time to go to my next venue to rally people to read simultaneously... up early and help break up the camp, train station and Sunday commuters, in the end, I looked a lot less disheveled than some other festival-goers that I encountered on the way back...
But no-one noticed.
Gruzemayer / HO
So much for a quick subjective run-down of goings on at the 2nd unnoticed festival at Nijmegen 25/25 june 2016, there were a lot more projects and participants than mentioned here… excuses for wrong info/names if applicable…
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