bang bang
ICA. Very cool, exciting place, created in fact to be cool and exciting place. Monkey boy's mum used to go to the private views there when the phrase meant there was a good likelihood of Mick Jagger turning up. Not quite likely when i witter about private views, but hey, if I'm there, then surely Micky is just a side-show...
Anyway, I digress. As I mentioned, I had less then no info on Einsterzunde Neubauten when MB suggested it would in interesting. I now know how to say it, thanks to the very cute german chappie who works for one of our tenants, and wears little tank tops stretched over a small, teutonic pot belly when he's out having a ciggie. But, despite my relative ignorance, armed with a few interviews with people and some half-remembered reviews, I was looking forward to it. We got there to find as usual, lots of people milling about, waiting for other films /lectures/ talks. I would absolutely love to get my hands on that kind of events programme, it must be incredibly interesting to work with those people, and with the kind of resources they must be able to rustle up...Ah well. Bumped into Augeas, which was cool, had a few drinks before we went in, spotting who was in the performance, and who just looked weird. They were handing out ear plugs in the vestibule of the theatre bit, but I had come forewarned and had brought my own, which are softer and cut to fit my own lugs.
It started late. Of course, of course it started late. There has to be a bye-law that says it may not start on time, no matter how many times we were told that the performance was going to start at 8pm sharp. Of course, you could always argue that the performance did in fact start at 8, and it was meant to include a period at the start where it seemed nothing was happening. Without access to their own, precise, ops order I might never know. Which is were it starts to get kind of interesting. The director (sorry, probably wrong terminology, but have left thing at work) had the most officially accurate information on the original event, and without that being generally published, we were more or less in the dark about the order of events, the timings, etc. So there we were, waiting for a re-enactment, standing next to a chap who was a big E. N. fan, and who wasn't old enough to have been there the first time round, but there were people there who could well have been. Every person we espied who we had clocked for a performer came on, some sooner, some later, including a few in the audience, who I wanted to believe were just people, but were qute obviously artistes. And this was another really interesting thing about the event, that it was incredibly embedded in noughties ideas. Like, everyone was into seeing this performance, we all knew more or less what to expect, and what the audience of the original performance did, eg, take on the machines themselves and try to continue the attempted destruction when the performers took off. It was all very apart, a performance in which the audience was separate, like a pro-scenium (is that the right word?) audience at the theatre, embodying a portion of the original whilst being aloof from that part. It felt important to the piece that there were people planted in the audience, who formed a part of the original feeling, but I was, perhaps a little naively, hoping for a more spontaneous reaction.
There was the necessary piano, which I didn't think got trashed, and grinder-type machines sending out showers of sparks, directly very clearly away from the audience, and electric drills, the kind that road menders use, and the concrete mixer with the milk bottles, and two people, male and female, shouting through megaphones, and occasionally screaming. It was extremely noisy, and curiously melodic; it was not without an almost coherent, internal form, even if that form was (originally meant to be) a spontaneous construction. I'm not even sure that last bit makes sense; I don't normally do performance art. I am more used to looking at it, thinking "what the f*ck?", reading the blurb, and getting even more confused as to why anyone would think that this in any way enriches, or enlightens, or entertains anyone except, presumably, the "artist". That's just my little rant out of the way to pointless, self-congratulatory, intellectual masturbation. Sorry. This in fact, has nothing to do with the Tuesday performance, which was really, really interesting, more a reason as to why my thinking is probably really quite basic on this kind of work. And I know that the performers were informed by a tape, not of the best quality, of the original, and even with that tape it would have been unlikely to have achieved an exact copy, even with masses of practice, so some credit has to be given to the '07 performers for creating something out of an idea.
So, for me, it was an exhilerating, noisy experience. It was not an immersive, participative experience, which would also, I think, have been interesting (I wore clothes that could enable clambering onto the stage, and which wouldn't break my heart if they got covered in sparks, etc). It also got me thinking about this kind of re-enactment. This is one of several that someone at the ICA has commissioned, specifically a re-enactment. And I'm thinking about the ideas of performance, as in you have a script, you have a stage, you have props and actors; everything has been constructed so that it can be performed again, and constructed with future events, theatres, actors in mind, compared to re-enactment, which re-stages something that once happened. The original event was legend the next morning, it wasn't subjected to the recording, analysis, health&safety of 2007, it existed in highly romanticised / condemning press, it has always been recalled with the subjective. The accounts that are still knocking around the place contradict each other, though it was interesting to note that whilst at the time the ICA insisted that the performance had concluded and that there were no stewards intervening to get people out, an actor did get on stage to try and herd people out. Anyway, it lacked the everpresent recording of a 2007 event. It wasn't around to be pored over later. When you can watch a "normal" person showering, or taking a shit, or making toast, or smoking a roll-up, online in the name of Big Brother entertainment, and get the edited "highlights" on telly every evening, there must be an understanding that the recording of something is never an objective process, bugger all remains unedited, and even the editor may not entirely understand their motives for specific focuses. So, objectivity out. And it was inevitable and depressing the number of people with little camera phones, and little bloody recording devices, that require a large amount of attention to be drawn out of the now, so that you can get a crappy little recording of it later, when you can't quite remember because you were recording it. And of course, I would lay money on the venue recording it, which i have a lot more sympathy for; it's their job, after all. And is the experience more authentic for potentially only being available that once? Cue discussion of Iain M. Banks' excellent books involving the Culture, where people can be as immortal as they want to be, and still there are people who refuse that back-up and insist on feeling the danger of death.
Gosh, this has been a long post, and I would suspect that most people who started it, didn't finish it. Wouldn't blame them, I don't get into long posts either, normally. But if anyone did finish, and would like to get involved in a discussion of themes, do let me know. There will also be a panel discussion on it soon, which I intend to go to. As I said, performance art isn't something I am particularly interested in per se, but this was thought-provoking. My thoughts need much more provoking. They have been idle for too too long. They are flabby and weak, but please bear with me... Details of the talk are on the ICA website, which was listed on the last post.
Above is a very long, possibly incoherent account of my last Tuesday evening, which I spent at the ICA, to see a re-enactment of Einsterzunde Neubauten et al's Concerto for Voice and Machinery. And a very pleasant evening it was too. One thing that it did make me think of, is that fact that I have spent 4 years studying variously pretty pictures, odd sculpture, devastated buildings and some really insane modern theory, I am currently living in the most exciting arts / cultural city in the world, and I don't see enough shit. So, anyone with a yen to get some culture give me a shout. Have museums staff pass, will visit.