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A LOOK INTO "ATELIER07" AT THE DISKURS FESTIVAL 2007
by Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz
The Diskurs Festival is one of the oldest festivals for young artists in Europe. Organized on a yearly basis by students of the Theatre Applied Studies department of the Giessen University, it skillfully interweaves various forms of performing arts. Events such as panel discussions and public debates foster the constructive exchange between artists presenting their works, the public visiting/taking part in them, students of the University and this year's members of an exceptionally constructed atelier07.
If, according to Jan Ritsema's new definition, created during the festival 07 edition, choreography is "thinking about the circular or linear organization and/or explanation of the moving relations between objects and subjects in time", Diskurs 07 was quite a challenging piece of choreography.
The topic of Diskurs 07 was "twilight".
"Whether you read twilight as a special ratio of lightness and darkness, as an obscure interplay of pretence and reality, or as a meeting of natural and artificial things – it always marks a threshold, a field that is situated somewhere in between."
It became the guideline of both the dramaturgic work and the interest in the content of the invited works. As a result, a great variety of forms such as theatre, performance, dance, installation, video and music inhabited Giessen from dawn till dusk, and throughout the nights, offering individual conceptions and ideas circling around twilight:
Among others, Piet Zwart's . ..... .:.:....:::ccccoCCoooo::, Cornford/Appleby's Human Separation, Jan Machacek's Erase remake, or Seon-ja Seo's – related #1 – #4, expanded the borders of conventions in thinking about the unconventional.
But the high point of this year's edition of the festival was a unique atelier initiated by Jan Ritsema and Boris Nikitin. Following their proposition, nine international artists met to form "atelier07" in Giessen, in order to develop their own production for the Diskurs Festival. After five weeks of discussions and preparation via e-mail, they had to create a performance within seven days.
The topic of atelier07 was quality time, an issue as much an intangible as twilight. There was only one requirement – every single person, the group as a whole, and the audience of the presentation, had to spend "quality time", whatever that means.
The specificity of the proposed atelier reaches beyond its unusual topic. It starts at its very roots, at the process of selection. Challenging the issue of quality time versus efficiency, Ritsema and Nikitin decided for a democratic selection. Instead of them choosing the applicants, the whole process was made public. A self-selection: All applicants were read and rated by all applicants. Those that received most points were invited to take part in atelier07. "As a result of this selection process that does not represent the will of a curator, the participants have nothing more in common than their participation in the project, their journey to Giessen, and the rooms of a former geological institute in the Zeughaus where atelier07 takes place. Within this framework, which forms the collective starting point, they will try to spend and create quality time."
Is it an utopia?
Take off your coat, Jan
Friday, the 5th of October, in the old geological museum of Giessen, the 9 artists are supposed to meet at 10:30 in order to reflect upon, deal with and create quality time. The day seems perfect, the hour not too early. In exactly one week they will have to present the result of their working time, their quality time.
Next Friday seems distant. Presenting one's former works appears like a great solution for a start. Safe and secure, open and friendly they gather around the TV screen, keen to observe, comment, look for common points and understanding within the art fields.
Marina Perchikhina (Russia) displays a video documentation of her recent performance. Discussion is hot but polite. Sofia Medici (Argentina), Juliana Smith (USA/Switzerland), Eric Green (USA/Germany), Lise Risom Olsen (Norway, nothing to do with Deleuze), Boris Nikitin (Germany), Julia Jadkowski (Germany/Holland) and Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz (Poland/France) fight for common words to describe what they see. Then a coffee break. Lunch break follows, expectedly. A kind atmosphere establishes itself when waiting for Jan Ritsema's arrival at 4 pm. They all have a feeling of being among equals, of being able to discuss and talk productively about the art they make. Time to talk about quality time and their final product will come; they first need to get to know each other.
Half past four Jan enters the "day room" of the geological institute. Chats lower in intensity. They all agreed upon the fact of having no leader, Jan is just another member of the group, maybe only a bit less hairy. The small, compact figure stands still in the middle of the room. His immobility during the next five minutes enhances the already present attention for his person.
Categorically refusing to take off his coat, Jan claims to have no time to lose and bombards the mostly unprepared artists with his usual nervousness.
How come they haven't been speaking yet about QT? What the – – – do they care about each others' work, they need to create a new work here, together, and there are only 6.5 days left. Did they agree already on the principles of QT?
A general scream for a cigarette break spreads throughout the institute.
"Why hasn't anyone warned me that he is a freak? From the e-mails, I understood that he was one of us.", miaows one of the smokers.
The principle days
Some will love him, some despise him. But thanks to Jan's very first appearance, a couple of things seem to be clarified. For most of the participants at least. Not to mention that this clarification is an ongoing process that takes a couple of days.
Rule nb. One – there is no leader, but if no one takes the lead, Jan will do it, even against his will. :)
Rule nb. Two – they did not gather in Giessen to hang around and enjoy life. They came to have a highly productive time – because a highly productive time is QT – according to Jan.
Rule nb. Three – one should always define what is QT for him/her, but they will anyway deal with Jan's proposal of its understanding – a rule they didn't want to agree on via e-mails has simply been turned into life.
Rule nb. Four – one can always disagree with a proposed idea, which will force the whole group to rediscuss it.
Rule nb. Five – one does not talk about Fight Club.
Discussions continue until Sunday evening. They include cooking together, eating together, watching Inland Empire, love and hate and common excursions to the toilet. There are the topics of borders, visibility/invisibility, decision making. There are discussions which lead only to talk and others which have a goal. The participants start to disbelieve agreements, doubt their own opinions, desperately look for QT in the process. Heterogeneous as they are, they only arrive at a partial agreement of presenting on Monday, their individual ideas of QT.
Monday
A decision is being made. Out of hope, despair, disagreement, physical tiredness, emotional exhaustion.
Each one separately, or in small groups, all the participants will work on something they are good at. They will do their best and look for a reference that is even better. According to organizational performance, the bonus rating system is given up to the judgment of paradoxically opposite incentives: the best/highest quality of an individual performance and the best/highest quality of a group performance.
Most of the participants try to stay friends.
"I don't want to be a friend of you, I want to work with you" sums up Jan. Some agree, some don't.
The duration of qt is relevant to the previous time/amount of non-qt
Concerned about the quality of the final work, they all do too much.
The all-together meetings have shifted from 10:30 am to 3 pm. Meaning that most of them stay at the Zeughaus from 11 am to 1 pm. Some go shopping. But buying dozens of plastic corn-cobs, fake guitars, garden swimming pools doesn't dissipate the growing frustration. Why do they concentrate on mere copies of better originals?
Fortunately, the topic of work gradually seems to be drifting to a secondary place. There is a so-called "working atmosphere". Everyone runs here and there taking Polaroid pictures, watching bits and pieces of movies, constructing the lights. They all cherish a moment of relief when it comes to thinking about a form, about forms of their particular small pieces of work, and the issue of "why" and "what" they do does not get discussed for a while.
But the obvious easiness that comes with forgetting those questions still torments some, especially those who found themselves engaged in too many of those small productions. With tiredness comes the concern about quality, followed by a thought of abandoning some pieces, and the question of purpose regarding those arises immediately.
They often long for advice. Unguided, they tend to look for approval. They try to support each other, not always able to do so. They offer to be there for the work of some, and in friendship for others. Most of them accept the difference now.
Jan is less and less present, retreating to his room, working on a lecture performance he's planning to give on Friday.
His pieces of advice are hardly helpful when it comes to practical questions – "Say ‘kiss me' so that I can believe it, say you love me, say fuck me, just lie, acting is lying, it's easy, you see."
The participants start to reunite under the pressure of an unbearable amount of work. Some wake up in the nights speaking lines they were learning, some do nightwalks around Giessen recording reflections, ideas, words.
Sitting in the hallway, around the table, five of them decide to change the frame of the supposed final outcome: No performance is to be expected. They will not carry it through. They claim a different form, that of an open space where party mixes with art.
They are happy with their own proposition. Satisfied. They finally arrive at making qt both "by" and "for" themselves. They suspect they might have learned something.
Often forgetting to eat, they keep on drinking every night.
The last supper
Thursday is the final countdown. The structure of the upcoming event is so vague that there hardly is any. Moments of visible collaboration are rare. Some long for a common action, but isn't the whole process a big enough example of collective work? Do they need to show that they are able to work together?
They manage to find time to look more specifically at some individual propositions. Most of the authors are eager to ask for opinions. Comments, openness to propositions and suggestions help to upgrade, transgress, mutate some works. Exchanging precise information, drawing on peers' knowledge and experience, profits of a collective work become obvious.
The whole event gains complexity through raising the quality of its individual parts. However, nobody has a clear picture about the totality of the evening.
Jan talks about trust. Hardly anyone is eager to rely on this assumed reciprocity.
"It's not about trust and all this sentimental shit", he claimed in his e-mail answering Boris' assumption of a basic amount of trust needed between the participants. All eight swallowed the hard words.
They cannot figure out why they should trust each other now.
Did the working process seal them and teach them so much about each other that disagreeing in a pre-working assumption they can now fully relie on each other?
They are afraid of being manipulated, framed by Jan's lecture about Ritsema's poetic. They want to prevent Friday's event from being Jan's life example of a badly made work.
Confusion, challenge, struggle, product, QT …
They end up without any run-through. They surrender and settle in the end on keeping the whole thing open and on adjusting, reacting to whatever will happen tomorrow evening.
Hitting the bottom is not a weekend retreat; it's not a goddamn seminar
Both the female and the male toilets flood the main hall.
At quarter past seven, a flock of 70 people is gathered at the gate of the Geological Institute. Unpredictable circumstances challenge the qt evening. The delay raises expectations. What was supposed to be an open and accessible space was changed into a territory where one has to line up to in order to get inside.
The 9 people serve hamburgers, give lectures, display fake video clips, home-made versions of speak bitterness and fight club, multiple video installations are displayed here and there. They do their best. But their best is not enough. People leave acknowledging that no show is going to happen. The hamburgers eaten, martini glasses emptied, they rush out of the Zeughaus.
Soon the 9 find themselves within a small group of enthusiasts. They continue performing, organizing time and space for that reduced audience which is eager to take its time and wander around the different spaces. Intimate actions take place. One-to-one performances, encounters privileged by the specific, elitist situation, discussions …
At ten the strike-down starts.
Drunk, sitting in the festival café, all 9 continue discussing the work. It has become the core part of their togetherness. Through the prism of work they discuss personal tastes, plans, ideologies, goals. They quarrel and are thankful, happy and disappointed about the evening. What worked, what didn't? Why, and what does it mean when something doesn't work? Didn't they reach the goal of qt? What could they have done differently? Did they play too safe?
At the open discussion that will follow next day at noon they will admit to playing safe. Something none of them would have thought of during the process. The concern about the quality of the final product pushed them to take some decisions ad hoc. They forced the idea of the personal best, they went for a solution before really arriving at a dead point in the discussion. They prevented hitting the bottom. Didn't allow themselves to check what could probably have happened if they'd continued dis/agreeing until a solution/no solution came up by itself.
Some slowly start to imagine a continuation.
Others are happy to quit.
(18.1.2008)
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