French Alliance
PAE gathered a bunch of performers for a poetic dada session concerning the french language at the Alliance Française in Rotterdam, a combination of commemorating the hundredth anniversary of DADA as well as participating in the general mellée of the Rotterdam's Poetry week and continuing the successful formula PAE has applied, the soirée at the Goethe Institute nearby as recent example…
so: La connection des performances artistiques françaises…
Voix, mots, son, image, action et objet
This time around the prevailing wind was from the south, obviously, with Montange Froid as coproducer, with central performer Valentine Verhaeghe present, having brought along their sumptuous review ‘Mobile’ and a facsimile Filliou-poster…and performed a complex dance in which the plight of bees, the questions of our treatment of self, the planet and our fellow planet inhabitants was proposed in a whirl of upbeat dancemusic, contrasting the gravity of the situation…
it is for the public to consider and reconsider the themes touched upon… compatriot Jean-Michel Espitallier was installed in the back room area taking note of time passing right through the proceedings… he noted every ten seconds that by the time the performances had taken place he, along with all of us, was two hours older (or more…) Marguerite Bobey, also from France collaborated with Wen Chin Fu, intriguing experimental instrumentalist from Taiwan, here using a classic cello as sonorous contribution… They ended the series with a breathtaking combination using text, ritual guttural chant, shaman drumbeat and what might be classed as movement theatre but then not playing but performing - a slight difference I know, but essential one… very strong stuff indeed… but we are getting ahead of ourselves…
Other performers were closer to home: Bob Lens, l’eminence grise of dutch fluxlistings, presented his ongoing series of possible spaces, possible applications and definitions with sometimes more than two meanings, especially those that cross over between french/english/dutch… in the form of the all-prevailing plastic bag - le sac comme véhicule d’art plastique… this time he did not fill them with nature mort as we do when we go shopping, but proceeded to scrunch and scrabble words, consonants and vowels and bag-sounds into the mike…
Hollands most Selfindulgent Asshole found nothing better to do than to sit in a corner at the top of the stairs throughout the late afternoon declaiming single words uttered loudly from a french classic, deconstructed into an alphabetical irritation translated into dutch… intervening as it were in all the performances with his sudden calls… And yes, Belgiuim’s own Messieurs Delmotte came to demonstrate their artistic prowess by painting, live, then and there (with the assistance of carefully selected ‘volunteers’) three canvasses in bleu-blanc-rouge (signed in Prussian blue, to remind us of the repeated incursions…) - one with the mouth, one with a foot, and the third with both hands! amazement all around - not so much because of the talent these messrs were endowed with, but the fact that they did it all in english - while of course being native to the french part of Belgium… curious consternation for the more chauvinist elements among us… The other belgian participant, Antwerpian Heinrich Obst, also a rather curious character, presented his proposition in broken franglais-flamand: a reading of the Broodthaers version of the central page of Mallarmés “Un coup de dés jamais n’aboira le hasard”… to rather muted response and with questionable academic credentials… and a spatial application on the wall…
Nina Boas, co-organizer and by nature of her dual nationality straddled the affair Holland-France with a do-it-while-you-wait & see performance of one of her chançons - cutting, tearing picking folding ruffling and disordering papers with recording sound and image resampled re-looped into an elaborate system to end up with a complex show of son/lumière rap-beat style with that ‘certaine je ne sais quoi’ in française style… presenting the resulting show standing absolutely straight & still while the just-produced piece unfolded around her.
PAE spokesperson Ieke Trinks performed the role of maitre D' and held the whole thing together, aiding the confused and blazing the trail for performance not only here at the AF, but everywhere, since she is in fact truly an international phenomenon… flitting here & there and all over…
so, we were lucky to partake in this rather unique encontre, which was, of course, (c’est l' alliance française quand-même), sealed with sumptuous vegetarian food and wine....
