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AGNIESZKA RYSZKIEWICZ MEETS CEZARY TOMASZEWSKI AT PAF
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Black font – real-time interview at PAF, France, September 7, 2008.
Red font – Czarek's second thoughts and explanations.
Comments in square brackets [ ] – some of Agnieszka's deliberately left-over first remarks.
Indented and cross-linked side comments – Agnieszka's final remarks
Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz: Whenever I meet a man I wonder what kind of a father he would be. Could you explain to me as if I were five years old what EXPEDITION [*] is about?
Cezary "Czarek" Tomaszewski: … talking about the father figure now is very strange, because I used to think that I would be a good father in general, good material for a father. But I have recently found out that there is nothing more annoying than a kid. It is apparently something that I cannot tolerate anymore, even in my environment … Kids are a live and loud visualization of the process of losing paradise and joining our facebook society.
So I don't know anymore how fatherhood would work for me. Nevertheless, if you were five years old and I would try to explain what EXPEDITION is, I would say that it goes like this: it is about 15 chosen people, about an exchange program between let's say artists, young artists, 15 of those; the exchange program is based upon a specific time frame which is very long – actually it takes a whole year. Within this year, those 15 young artists meet three times, that's all. (…)
I really don't know how to explain it to a 5 year old child.
Let me try again: a group of 15 peoples goes on holiday, three times during one year, and they look for … for …, and they wish that something happens. It is like an experiment. We've already been kidding about it, although that's not so very true – but EXPEDITION is a kind of Big Brother thing. It's not entirely this, not even a bit, but what is similar is that people who don't know each other are together in one space and react to energies, to who they like and who not, they try to communicate, to behave, to use the time in a proper way and the money that was invested. All of this happens within a very open frame that proposes no topic and doesn't impose anything. Basically, everything was possible.
Ryszkiewicz: What do you mean by "use time in a proper way"?
Tomaszewski: Yah, what's the proper way? Anyway, you know … what is anyway anyway. The trick is that each of us can find out how to use the time/frame in such a way that it suits him/her and his/her needs and aims. A funny thing: although there never was extra pressure to create anything or any external obligation to work together, we all had it in our minds for a while.
("Networking" could also be a valid description. EXPEDITION is linked to the concepts of networking, communication and the notion of "tool sharing". I can sense in the air a flair of a new socialist vision of the future of performing arts. This new artistic socialism puts an accent on groups, networks and cooperation instead of promoting individualism. It is something that derives from the ideas of chats, Facebook, Myspace etc. – constructions that are supposed to help the creative processes and productions.
Thank God, our expedition group was made up of individual artists and strong, separate characters. The program actually has only confirmed it. We all witnessed how after trying for a long time to cooperate as a group, only when we gave up this idea a strong group got established. Interesting thing – group dynamics)[a1]
[a1] I think there is a difference between group work and networking. As far as the first one puts forward the importance of cooperation in a creative process, while the second one promotes the role of information; but I think the "possibility/potentiality" factor is even more important. I am not so clear in defining it yet, but the difference is important – I hope you agree. And as far as I understand it, such different initiatives as EXPEDITION, Danceweb or Everybodystoolbox encourage the second way of building connections.
Ryszkiewicz: And how would you explain it to somebody who is deaf and mute?
Tomaszewski: Well then it's going to be a metaphor…
(He keeps talking and explaining what he is doing. I would like to tell him that I can't hear what he's saying as I am deaf but since I pretend to be mute too, I'm only making signs that he doesn't even notice)
Czarek creates a smoking installation that metaphorically pictures the ambience of the group: Isabelle Launay's and Boris Charmatz' book continuously puffing a cigarette.
[We could include a picture cut out of the video interview?]
(That would be really cool.)
Czarek decides to break the installation by recovering the cigarette and smoking it himself.
Ryszkiewicz: In the last issue of Viva! magazine, you pointed out that being chosen for EXPEDITION was the greatest achievement in your life. Now that it is coming to an end, is there more ahead of you than behind you?
Tomaszewski: (smiling) Absolutely! Everything is starting now! There is something here connected with art marketing that is about always promoting young people, claiming that they are so new and straightforward … it's all untrue, the young are the most fake and with age you get most natural, if you have of course the capability and/or talent.
(There is something interesting going on nowadays. In my opinion, there is basically no difference between the works of young and older artists. It looks as if the new generation would not have anything else to propose apart from what the established one has been doing for years. It is as if there was no difference between our generations' interests and sensitivities. That can't be true!
Codes and aesthetics that have been the subject of artists and philosophers of the last let's say 20[a2] years are already, so to speak, in our blood, they are our common vocabulary. I would say that we don't have to study those for inspiration because I feel for certain that, for example, Deleuze's thoughts/ways of thinking hav already become a mainstream of how people work now.
[a2] Why 20?
So what happens with our young life feeling? What is so specific about it, about us?
I would draw a parallel with the Baroque and Rococo. For many, Rococo was just a pimple on the face of the Baroque, but it was nothing else than taking the Baroque's aesthetics and vocabulary and turning them around, making them more playful and fresh in forms and topics. It was a representation of the needs and attitudes of the new, growing society. I am wondering why this is not really so visible in most of the young works one can see today.
The question of speed for example; zapping channels, a notorious lack of concentration, windows popping up in our computers, adhd etc. Speed and language of most of the works I see remind me more of Morton Feldman's music than of the Beverly Hills generation[a3]. The works I see are seldom challenging in associative, switching and connecting/inconsecutive processes, which I would dare to say are more representative of what I grew up with than the post-war generation. And where is the sense of critique and negation typical for youth?)
[a3] And there is a new season coming out this year!
Ryszkiewicz: But you mentioned in that interview I read that you are afraid of becoming old.
Tomaszewski: (confused) Oh, I think maybe … I think I said this to … well I am definitely not, but it is good to say things like that when talking to Viva! so that you stay in the market.
Ryszkiewicz: (looking shocked) You lied?
Tomaszewski: Nononono, it's not about lying (…) It's not about lying. Look, I'll give you an example from the conceptual scene I'm in. I just found out last month that I was fighting like Don Quixote with this thing, these windmills, for nothing. All it is about is how you present your work, or rather the concept of/for it. The thing has to be proposed in such a way that it may be bought by people who only understand concepts. Simple.
Therefore, it is important to be kind of trained in politics …
Ryszkiewicz: So you would always say what people want to hear?
Tomaszewski: Yes. In order to present the concept. (After that I'm doing my own thing anyway).
Ryszkiewicz: So let me write this article – I know what people would like to hear you say, what would catch their attention, I'll give it to them and we can leave now and have a beer …
Tomaszewski: Yes, it's an option but that's a bit simple now, isn't it?
Ryszkiewicz: It is. What's wrong with being simple?
Tomaszewski: (Nothing. On the contrary. Simple is the best. But I believe it is more interesting when things become simple after they seemed to be very complex. It's more fun then.) Let's start from the beginning. You said that I'm cheating in interviews. No, I said that. I think it's strange anyway to do interviews. (laughter). It's something like KGB or CIA files. It stays much longer than you do actually. [That's an interesting thing but isn't it the same with everything you produce?].
(Sometimes I complete work with the feeling: and God created the world and knew it was good. Simply like that. Of course after some time you find out many things you don't like anymore about that work which is normal because life goes on. It flows. We change from day to day. I don't think that God would be so sure about the world looking at it from today's perspective.)
An interview is a specifically slippery situation. As I don't know what you are going to ask, I cannot prepare in advance, nor even draw a rough schedule like the first day – I will create light, the second day – separate sky from earth, on the third I will go for lands and oceans for example.
It is quite difficult to avoid the mood, a certain state you are in or a specific moment in time you are at now, and then you give a statement that should be quite clear for someone who approaches you. So it's always a tricky moment when you have to concentrate a lot and clearly distinguish between what is just a momentary feeling in you and what is really a fact, a statement you want to give and can stand for. Even when you can do it well already, statements have this quality that they like to change pretty fast or even worse – turn around completely.
Therefore when I said I am afraid of being old …, I guess I even can't remember the context in which I said it.
Ryszkiewicz: The context was that you always choose young people to work with in order to compensate for your feeling of being old.
Tomaszewski: (laughing) I think someone has just twisted my words around. (silence, smiles, silence) Well, I choose young people … oh, that's very interesting … (laughing) I think we have to change the subject because it's getting very interesting. (silence) I don't know. It's true that I choose young people although I think that only the older ones are interesting …
(Funny thing, but most of my friends are people younger than myself. It is probably because I got into a dance school when I was already a bit older than the average, I was 24 already. All the young performers, dancers I worked with until now have attitudes which do not depend on their age. They are easily very special characters, yet already professionals in a specific way.
For a new work I created thanks to the EXPEDITION production support – Liebeslieder Walzer op.55 – I have been working with Mikolaj Karczewski, a Polish dancer who has just started his dance education. Besides of his enormous talent, his specific presence, character and charisma, this young dancer has something true [honest?] which has to do with the coming together of restraints and a strong will. This mixture brings out wonderful effects and makes work evolve faster and pleasantly at the same time. Fully developed professional dancers often lose that attitude. They often become extremely boring, turning into some kind of self-confident dance machines. Therefore the whole effort might concentrate on finding things that would still be challenging for them. They are too smooth, too gymnast-like; for my taste.)
I think it never was about the jealousy of them being young and me old because I think I am not old enough to play Aschenbach in "Death in Venice" and fall in love with 15 year-old beauties. The fact is I am not afraid to be old, no, I am not at that point yet where I would like to sing along this song with Cher, you know that goes "If I could turn back time" … I'd rather go up to the end enjoying it 100 percent.[a4]
[a4] Is it the mixture of you at your age and with your experience together with those young performers that makes it altogether interesting? – this could finally close this somewhat psychoanalytical topic of age …
Ryszkiewicz: Talking about turning back time, please tell me, during EXPEDITION, what was it that you wanted to do but didn't do? And no lies please (laughter).
Tomaszewski: Oh, that's really simple. I came here with a deep wish to find a mentor. Not somebody who would tell me what to do but someone who would ask the right questions, maybe to open my mind a bit more. I thought that on this kind of platform, in these places where you meet so many people and everyone is so talented, creative and wonderful, that one might get lots of mentors there. In the beginning I was quite curious but it was very difficult, and what I did is that I lost this curiosity … and I just told myself: "No, it's not this place." (And I also understood that there was no other place which could offer me that.) Everyone must go for oneself.
Ryszkiewicz: What gave you satisfaction?
Tomaszewski: That I did what I said just before. That I thought: "Don't wait for a miracle, just go and work on yourself." This last period is for me a bit of a success within the whole EXPEDITION situation. I got independent of how I should behave, of questions like if I were together with others, what should I do, what should I propose, and I am now just doing what I want to do. The result is "Liebeslieder Walzer".
Ryszkiewicz: What was proposed that you rejected?
Tomaszewski: (silence) In a broader sense I think what I rejected is what was primary to the EXPEDITION project – this group network situation. I was trying to be really catholic at the beginning, very Polish, you know, trying to behave and try to build some stuff with others and so on … Not that I completely rejected it, I like everybody very much, but I ended up rejecting the idea of togetherness. (…) In the beginning I thought that this group thing was just going to happen by itself. That something would simply switch when you get into such a situation. I had many questions, more the kind of generation questions I mentioned before. I was very curious how people that are more or less my age approach the work they do, and what their themes, their obsessions are. At the first meeting where everyone presents his/her works, one obviously relates to some people more than to others and likes some works more than others. Nevertheless even the works I liked I couldn't relate to. I found that my work is different. Therefore it is very difficult to do even one exercise together; we can of course do Yoga …[a5]
[a5] Hey, you cut out the story about putting pandas and chickens together! I loved it, but as you wish …
Ryszkiewicz: If you were the one to choose the participants …
Tomaszewski: I think the choices were very good, because the people are extremely diverse, busy with completely different things, styles and thoughts, so I think that it was an optimal choice from what was available at this time of course.[a6]
[a6] I see you don't want to develop the idea of how to create a frame that would be optimal for creating a creative atmosphere. Although I judge this issue important and I think I would like you to elaborate shortly on it here. Let's say the question would be: how would you envisage to create such a frame? What would be necessary in your opinion? Can we add this question here?
Ryszkiewicz: I would like you to do a short dance about EXPEDITION starting with the announcement: "It's too much it's too much, I have to dance now."
Czarek tries to act/be tricky and then does a beautiful dance of two eight counts.
Tomaszewski: You will make a selection of what I am saying, because it is really nonsense sometimes?
Ryszkiewicz: Sure.
Ryszkiewicz + Tomaszewski:
Vienna is – beautiful
If I had supernatural power – I would be either Adolf Hitler or a very good artist
Vienna is – slow
I am – very happy
My pieces are – very funny
Other people – (laughter) are other people
My mother – (silence) has grey hear
I think sex – too much effort
For me Vienna – is stuck.
Ryszkiewicz: What are the things that excite and motivate you?
Tomaszewski: This is difficult to answer because what is exciting is actually the most stressful thing. It's connected with the fact that you don't know anything and you would like to know and then all of a sudden it happens. It's again an experience I had with the opera I did. I had no concept what it should look like; then I saw the people, heard the music, and it simply was there. Everything. And it is so exciting and motivating. It is not motivating in the sense that you have to prove something, to do something special, no, it just goes on.
I have a problem – I am quite lazy. Nevertheless there is this moment when my body just screams for something to happen. But I still have these common doubts, maybe yes, maybe not, maybe later. But I start and everything just happens.
I rather get motivated when I see that something is not going well for me, that I don't get it, then I try to do better, relying on my instincts I guess.[a7]
[a7] You cut out the last sentence where you said: "My works are not conceptual which in the end turns into a style." Why?
So excitement comes from putting oneself in impossible situations which must be solved and worked out. Otherwise excitement would have more to do with the Bovary syndrome. When you imagine yourself in a situation and you get excited for five minutes … for example, I dreamed that I was in a dance school, and then I once realized when I already went to dance school that this dream was totally unreal, that it is hard work, reality and so on …
But the pictures one can create of oneself are so enchanting. So always changing the pictures, a constant display of slideshows with oneself in the main role, this is excitement for a while, but when those become true …
(Well. I believe I'm slowly getting over it. I prefer to jump into the unknown rather than to imagine myself in this or that situation. Here we are into the issue of age again. Am I already much older than 2 weeks ago?)
Although, while working on the opera, I think I discovered something that is really exciting and motivating: You cannot invent everything! It is so relieving. So much comes from your partners, situations, moments from people you work withm and you are the one who sees it and reworks it, and everyone is happy and what is exciting is that the community is created through concrete work. That is my new experience, it is very fresh and I haven't yet thought about it deeply.
But because of work community happens anyway, and it is somehow natural. Whatever you give it stays within, and everybody participates in it. It is a quasi-religious experience. This opera was like this. Such a mixture of different people, and everybody participates and gives a lot, and they start to like each other and hang around with the others, and it's such a short and intense time. It is very simple, we do it, then we show it and it's done. Once it's over everybody has a depression lasting two weeks. It is almost like a summer camp experience but in a concrete working situation. It is not research! You have to do something, you have like a concrete …
Ryszkiewicz: … goal?
Tomaszewski: Yes, goal … and the one who has to create that comfortable work atmosphere is no one else but me.
Ryszkiewicz: Concerning dreams and Bovarism, did you have a moment of epiphany when you knew who you would like to be when you grow up?
Tomaszewski: I think I constantly have moments of epiphany, but they are not connected with me directly, rather with music vibrating inside me. I was really young when I discovered that I just have to listen to something that is really good to get an epiphany.
I was around 12, and was so depressed and wanted to kill myself and then I got a Mozart cassette, as far as I remember, and it was so good, so much above everything.
I think I also have moments of epiphany when I discover a kind of sameness in people. Like via books, for example Bovary, or Chekhov; it's the same for everybody. You know it's something that they understand more. We all think we are so special, and have so unique stories happening to us and then you read Chekhov and you see it's about falling in love in a circle, again and again, like a curse. When I was younger and still a good listener – which I am not anymore – I used to listen to thousands of love stories from my friends. While trying to concentrate I just think "come on, read this fucking Chekhov and you will be able to laugh about all those troubles".
I get excited not about somebody's talent but because some people do great stuff and manage to translate all the universe for us. There is this music and literature and paintings that manage to talk to us, for us, about us. Depending on our sensibility, talent …
(That is probably the reason why I'm doing art …)
Ryszkiewicz: Questions from readers – Some people are really concerned about the famous spiritual ceremonies that take place at PAF. During those events, as the MC you apparently insist on summoning the ghost of Mozart instead of presenting to the gathered folks Maurice Béjart or at least Heath Ledger. Why those unpopular choices?
Tomaszewski: It's very simple. The basic problem is that for contemporary creators the history of art started with Godard, so 50s, 60s and that's it. But I think that so many good things happened before, even starting in antique times. At the same time I believe that ideas do not come from nowhere, so they come from something we watch or read etc … Therefore I honestly feel much more linked with the 18th century than with Godard.
(Sometimes I think about a project that would ignore all the knowledge and events that happened after 1791. I know it is impossible; nevertheless it is fun to imagine what a contemporary piece created from the perspective of an 18th century thinker or artist would look like.)[a8]
[a8] And also to reflect what contemporary would mean in this case …
I try to bring those spirits here, especially to PAF because the building is probably from the 19th century although people claim it is the 18th, but I don't think so. I am sure that it is the right context for my Bovary syndrome. I prefer to summon Marivaux or Racine, Racine's texts are so decadent and so contemporary in codes, how they play around with them, how they are structured, and their rapport with entertainment.
We once talked about not being able to read a lot of paintings because we don't know the mythologies so well, because we do not study Ovid's Metamorphoses or Discourse really, which used to be basic culture, and now it is a little bit lost. At the same time it is like a big conspiracy and it underlies all the questions.
And it touches my sentiments.
I think I am more sentimental then intellectual. Yeah. The thing is to dig there, try to understand or feel and extend into the world in which we live now. Extend, not translate.
Ryszkiewicz: What is the question that you wish you could answer that I didn't ask today?
Tomaszewski: A question where I would have to judge something on a scale from 1 to 10. I guess I miss mathematics.
Footnote:
[*] EXPEDITION is an interdisciplinary, international exchange platform for artists as a collaboration of brut Wien (Vienna), Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (Paris) and Gasthuis (Amsterdam).
(21.3.2009)
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