Reflections on SPRING Intensive with Dries Verhoeven
In 2016, the work Guilty Landscapes III had its Asian Pacific premiere at the Singapore International festival of Arts. Being a one audience at a time event, each lasting 10min, I waited patiently for my turn, feeling tentative about what experience I was going to encounter. In front of me were 2 people, each of them escorted quickly into and out of the room, with the intention of minimizing contact with those waiting for their turn. As such, an atmosphere of anticipation was built up. The tension was tripled when the person before me gave a huge scream in the room. My mind raced with various exuberant scenarios of what landscapes could trigger such a response. As one can imagine, when it was finally my turn, I was filled with adrenaline as I entered the room. Confronting me was a projection of a ruins of a city with a chair in it mirroring the physical chair that was in the room. Flashing in my head were gruesome images of war in Syria and immediately a sense of dread filled me; praying fervently that it's not going to be a video of a bomb exploding right in front of me. While these thoughts were filling my mind, a young man, looking like a Syrian walked slowly out from the right side of the ruins towards his chair. My heart palpitated faster as the title of the work began to dawn onto me; both of us on our chairs but his in a war zone and mine in a safe gallery space.
Looking at him in the projection, I silently cursed, aghast that the artist might really just want to expose people to violence but then it would really be meaningless if that was what the artist wanted to do. No, festival director Ong Keng Sen would not choose a work that is so banal. With that in mind, I decided to give the artist more space and time. Within a few minutes, the whole scenario brightened up as what seemed as a video was actually a live feed. All this time, the young man in the projection was copying my movement and it took me some time to finally realize it. It was that moment that I was struck with emotions being able to share precious time with him, whose life is in danger. Somehow the concept of time seemed precarious and I desperately grasped on to whatever minutes I had left with him. Starting with a wave of the hand, we developed a sort of play/interaction without the usage of language(there was no audio, only visual). There were times when we had to guess what each other wanted to communicate, which we negotiated through mime. He smiled gleefully when I suggested something silly through movement and we played. All this time, the threat of a bomb blast lurked insidiously at the back of my head.
He probably had someone telling him that 10mins is up as he slowly indicated that it was time for him to go. Slowly rising from his chair and retreating, he faded back into the ruins. I waved to him as I did before but this time with gratefulness and melancholy. Questions arose as I was led out of the room. I wondered whether it was ethical to expose a young man to a danger area. Would this be a case of exploitation of the young man's misfortune so as to validate the efficacy of the art? (Later I found out that it was a green screen and the young man was safe in Netherlands, but then a friend of mine wondered whether it was ethical for the artist to deceive the spectator then!) Filled with a desire to find out more about this artist and how this seemingly deceptive simple work could affect me so much, I decided to google him and ever since became a fan of his work. Needless to say, the artist in question is Dries Verhoeven.
In 2019, I received an email from Performance Network that Dries was going to lead an intensive focusing on artificial intelligence and the influence of digital media on interpersonal relationships at the SPRING festival held in Utrecht. A sense of elation flooded over me. However I deliberated over the decision to go as though the fee for the intensive was not exorbitant, the cost of traveling was a deterrent. On a serendipitous occasion while catching up with a dear friend, he wisely encouraged me to just apply and see whether I'll be accepted into the intensive. It'll make more sense to make a decision then. Heeding his advise, I prepared the application and sent it. Once I did that, I knew I really wanted to go. In spring 2019, I flew to Utrecht to attend the intensive.
The intensive was held at Het Huis Utrecht, a quaint 2 storey building with a courtyard housing a small theatre, a black box, a cafe and a couple of seminar rooms, one of them being used for the intensive. The room had large windows and in the early spring morning, sunlight streamed through them. A perfect room to house an intensive. There were 11 of us in the room including Dries(Later through interactions, I found out all were fans of Dries in one way or another) consisting of lighting designers, actors, directors, performance makers, scenographers, costume designers. Perhaps to avoid seeming pompous by introducing ourselves and our work, Dries suggested we start off with sharing about problems or things we are facing with.
I shared about my current research on ASMR(Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) and how when paired with a proposed body in space, could trigger one's imagination and hence form a individualised experience for the spectator yet while still contained in the framework through the specificity of the sounds selected and curated for the show. Initially I felt skeptical and even shy to talk about it as my research was in its infant stage but it seemed to arouse a lot of enthusiasm and one of the participants, a scenographer shared with us her experience in using ASMR in her work.(She wasn't satisfied with the result.) Dries even suggested I try it out with the group if there's time!
After that, we proceeded to discuss about the theme of the intensive, starting with printed pictures of performances and creators that have dealt in one way or another, robots and its relationship with humans, ranging from Romeo Castellucci's Tragedia Endogonida (having start off the show with an infant on stage taught how to read by an enormous robot) to Kris Verdonck's series of dancing robots (machinery disassociated from its function).
In addition to the discussions, Dries also invited guests artists to our intensive. Peter Eckersall, a specialist of Japanese theatre and dramaturgy and contemporary performance shared with us the director Hirata Oriza's work, Sayonara, a story about a young girl facing terminal illness and her robot caretaker reading poetry to her. He further enlightened us on how Japanese view robots giving examples of funerals held for retired Sony pet dogs(Aibo); the ability to empathize with robots. Of course, we were also privileged to have him also talk about Japanese mask work in Noh theatre and the culture of seeing "kami" in objects not human.
Stefan Kaegi (Rimini Protokoll https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/en/) whose work "Uncanny Valley" was featured in the festival gave us an overview of his past works which utilizes technology a lot. In his latest work, he had a lifelike robot of German Author, Thomas Melle, narrate a biography of Thomas, and at the same time being confused that he is the real author itself.
What I felt most revealing of what makes a scenographer (in which Dries was trained in) was through the private discussions we had after we went to visit site specific art works. Wikipedia defines a scenographer as a person who developed the appearance of a stage design and works with the director to ensure the message comes through in the best way possible. An example was when we went to Joroen Van Loon's Ephemeral Data. The following is the description of the work from his website:
Ephemeral Data
The internet is evolving from an archive machine into a performance machine. Storing, saving and archiving copies of copies of copies is becoming obsolete. Temporary, local and unique content is becoming the new status quo. Today’s teenagers are already accustomed to this shift in digital culture.
Ephemeral Data was a performance that stretched across the full ten days of the SPRING Performing Arts Festival (16 – 25 May 2019, Utrecht, NL) and visualised this shift in digital culture. Ephemeral Data used sand, the raw material from which fibre optic cables are made, to create a sand mandala of 12 by 9 meters representing Utrecht’s complete digital infrastructure. Each telecom cable and cell tower was visualised.
The sand mandala was created by a group of performers in their utmost concentration, inch by inch and grain by grain. The public could witness this slow and focused process on a daily basis from 14:00 – 22:00. The public also received a small sticker when entering Ephemeral Data to cover up their smartphone camera: any photo or video documentation of the artwork by visitors was prohibited.
On the 10th and final day of SPRING the performers wiped the sand mandala away in presence of the public. The only thing left was a heap of sand. Apart from two photo of the artwork, day 1 when nothing is created yet and day 10 when everything was erased, nothing is visually documented. The work will never be seen again.
The whole performance was housed in a generic "party" enclosed tent with windows that enabled passerby to peek through. There were A4 sized paper stuck outside the tent walls saying that admission is free. At the corners of the tent were platforms with huge orange pillows for audience to rest on. Some of the performers had earphones on and some didn't.
You might wonder why I added the extra information. The reason being those details were what we discussed in addition to the choice of colors chosen to create the mandalas. Would the big orange pillows undermine the serious nature of the work? Is it counter productive to advertise the performance as free? Would it create a sense of mystery if there were no windows in the tent?
These attention to details invariably causes me to question my own practice in creating work. It made me realize how vital each element is and a work is really a sum of all its parts. Perhaps a scenographer is really actually someone who can both micro and macro manage. I looked again at Dries' work and figured he really is working from a focus point and fine tuning the elements that supports the structure of the work.
While not exactly learning scenography, which the thought of it is actually not practical in an intensive of a mere 10 days, I felt that I have learnt a lot more through interactions with the participants and the discussions that were led professionally and interestingly by Dries. In September, he will premiere his latest work "Happiness". Perhaps time to make a trip to Utrecht again.