maandag 2 juli 2018

Parallel Visitation

I had been following the goings-on of the parallel show for a while, on & off, with some interest and bemusement, as a slice of life citytrip kind of enactment – life with that live twist and intentional shift of occurrence... manipulation perhaps, modification, deliberate disengagement...  various things spring to mind and each of the participants has different points of view, making for an interesting kaleidoscopic image of the place in question... ten in all of which I most enjoyed Delphi and the Cloisters... 
(read all about it www.theparalellshow.com...)



Now a double parallel finale was offered with the possible participation of ‘the public’, to what had until then been a closed circuit only viewable from the outside as it were... In this case two venues were connected wit a live feed (resembling the old closed circuit television, security camera players & ‘the house’ voyeur programs..) A white cube space in Groningen (MP3) and a disheveled former cloister chapel at Greylight Projects in Brussels. I could manage a visit to the Brussels venue... a wonderful deco-haunt in full refurbishment... 
There I came across three performers (Ieke, Yolanda and iwbdjdyatmvezdmnekzawvb) known to me from other activities, among which the unnoticed festival... (here I must think of the three graces, which I used as mascot/muses for my own ‘european theatre of operations’, (see seal) ... sitting together in the strange chapel setting, just gearing up for a meeting... ah, my luck... I could directly participate in one of my favorite passtimes: meetings... 
What are we doing here, who are we and what should we do next... 

Before the meeting could really get underway I was texted from the counter-pane out in Groningen... it was FvL himself, having seen me on the sreed, who immediately proceeded to propose instructions... (Regieanweisung aus Groningen – in the old fluxdays if would have been a piece of paper or score, now instant messaging, wow)
I had moved away from the meeting (sorry I have to take this call) towards the open window, and saw, on the same level across the street, a bearded man jerking off at his open window... before I could switch my telephone from text to camera-mode he had receded into the gloom of his room... I was curious if he was just enjoying a morning wank or if he was masturbating in function of the three graces discussing the pro’s and con’s of  performative live art across the street... I attempted to linger at another window and get a shot, but it was not too clear at this point what he was doing... He was wearing a shirt but no pants, or they were about his knees... but an interesting off-off intervention nonetheless... 
Returning to the meeting, I had in the meantime been given an interventive instruction by FVL... so instead of informing the gathering of my discovery, which I had been intending, I proceeded to execute the intervention by asking Ieke to
“stand up and take her place brutally”

She looked at me rather quizzically but proceeded to stand and demand the seat that iwbdjdyatmvezdmnekzawvb was occupying, who then switched with Yolanda, leaving me no choice to complain that that should have been my seat and now all was perturbed (...which was no doubt, the intention of FvL in the first place...) In an attempt to continue the meeting we considered the situation: the performers unsure what this ‘final’ had to do with the other ten in the series... I for one found it interesting as an outside viewer to now have the opportunity to partake ‘live’ in the series, even if ‘hors serie’... it was now the performers who became to objects of observation, say, a madonna with no hands – in an environment which could be considered equally fake as ‘The Cloisters’: this neo-gothic flapper Byzantine decor was plasterboard and painted marble, itself by now a cultural curiosity, and we camera-players at the behest of an invisible Oz somewhere in Groningen... Another of my instructions was to ‘turn / turn away from the camera’ for a photograph to be sent... And, on top of participating in the meeting, the long-distance choreography I also could execute my own activities at will, being a sort of investigative dance of the space with a piece of wood, plasterboard and MDF respectively, enjoying the acoustics of the place (from what I gather they had already been playing around with that before I got there) and participating fragmentarily in some conversation about the situation aside from the recorded official record being written down by iwbdjdyatmvezdmnekzawvb.


More people arrived, new configurations were created, the video was blocked visually from various sides, both in Brussels and Groningen – family portrait sans portrait, so to speak... I had to take my leave, having participated for perhaps half an hour... On the way out grabbed some brochures about an earlier show ‘Parallel Placings (Koek/Malherbe) in which chance page also saw comments on white cube versus kinky chapel... but seems more of a chance dispalcement... and so I too displaced myself: to weave my way from the Botanique area towards the south station Midi, while a bit to look at the copper cauldrons at Wiels, then on towards the province of Hainaut, to various other presentations, like at Hornu: Jef Geys, last work, Jean Glibert & Ann Veronica Janssens...
More on that later. (see other gruzeblog)