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DD'S GRANDPARENTS SERVE
THE PUBLIC
By Agnieszka Ryszkiewicz
30 degrees
C and no wind. Sweaty participants of the ImPulsTanz Festival wander around the
Arsenal's lawn in desperate search of some shade, or better – some moment of
shaded solitude.
Nothing
easier: The Shade Office provides detailed maps of the terrain, where shadow
areas have been precisely determined according to the time of the day. Even
better, one can actually book a scratch of shade for a certain hour, as well as
improve the database by reporting some unrecorded sun-covered space. Attention,
the choreographies that perform all registered shadow users are being tracked!
For those, who do not necessarily look for lonesome refreshment, the Festival
of Short Pleasures will offer an opportunity to beat both friends and enemies
in a water-balloon fight. In order to cool down or just take a break from the everyday
rush, one might want to enter a "Squarcle" – specially designed circumscribed
squares spread all over Vienna – that provide opportunities not only to relax.
And all of
this is for free. And all of this is for everyone.
At least it
gives this impression.
The initial
idea came from DD Dorvillier and Trajal Harell – this year's DanceWeb coaches – who proposed: "Instead of spending time on learning our 69 names, let's
concentrate our energy on a Public Service Project" or actually on 10 different
Public Service Projects.
While the
way the participants split into smaller units was a top-down process – each one
had picked up a random number – the issue of group leaders was strongly present
in the first day of discussions. Luckily time was a great constraint. Only
three afternoons were officially dedicated to the subject, therefore ways to
function in a group had to be figured out efficiently. The outcome nevertheless
was left open. A product is well seen (time, space and format are free), but of
course as the context is that of contemporary art – the process is considered a
valid product as well. In fact, nine groups were happy to acknowledge the
testimony of the tenth group's failure to make any common decision as a valid
public service.
In the
beginning there was chaos. At least as many ideas as there are DanceWebbers
were floating, bumping, swallowing each other around the Arsenal space.
Although each group finally came up with a very individual proposition, the
discussions that were held touched very similar issues.
It is
neither possible nor interesting to report them integrally but acknowledging
the recurrent topics might provide an interesting perspective on this
experimental group of young dancers coming literally from all over the world,
from Russia through Cabo Verde and Alaska to Bolivia.
A relation
of those talks could be as follows:
In order to
start the work, we agree that PROJECT stands for PROCESS. As the process
becomes part of the work, all participants involve themselves in discussions in
order to determine what each of them separately and all together deal with.
Let's
assume that PUBLIC means available for everybody.
What does
EVERYBODY stand for? There is no everybody. There are BODIES. Each different,
socially, gender-wise, politics-wise etc., different, in different time and
space. Those bodies form overlapping circles rather than one big entity.
Therefore PUBLIC should be rather read as aiming at a certain determined group
of people/public. In a sense this target group is exclusive. Groups of support
for alcoholics, free hotline for sexually abused women, special lifts for
wheelchairs in the metro …
Ideologically,
PUBLIC SERVICE stands for something that is provided for free and is necessary.
Food served to the homeless by the Red Cross in Croatia. The possibility of
having water facilities in an apartment in Mexico City. Public toilets in
France. As dancers and choreographers we assume that culture is indispensable
as well. Should we therefore work for free as Red Cross volunteers?
Dance is
anyway mostly paid by the governments. A big part of governmental money comes
from taxes. Most of the time, public service is financed from this source.
Austria even has a specific tax called "Vergnügungssteuer" – the pleasure tax.
Therefore we may say PUBLIC SERVICE is something that is necessary, is
addressed to a large but selected group of receivers, presents itself as a free
good, but isn't totally free.
The
question of necessity is raised by those grandparents who come from communist
regimes. Simultaneously they declare that an ideology can be a twisted public
service. The service would then be arbitrarily stated as necessary by a
specific, powerful group of people, which would take care of providing it to
others.
Therefore
PUBLIC SERVICE would be a good (in a large sense) stated as necessary by some,
targeting a specific group of others, and provided, performed as free, although
there would necessarily be someone paying for it.
According
to this definition, 10 Groups of 6 to 8 people decided for the other
DanceWebbers, or participants of ImPulsTanz, or the inhabitants of Vienna, or
even all the users of Youtube, which services are necessary, adequate and
offered for free.
That is how ImPulsTanz became the co-sponsor of an internet diary of ImPulsTanz (The ImPulsTanz Report), of the Association of Neos Antropos, of The Festival of
Short Pleasure, of The Shade Service, of The Exercising Generosity Project, of
the One Minute Talk Project, of The Initiative of Giving Bodies, of The
Computer Babysitting Service, of The Squarcles, of an attempt to create a
special catalogue.
(July 20, 2008)
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