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Quickie reviews of Something Raw Festival 2006 performances
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Maria Technosux
2006-02-19 16:32:15 UTC
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Quickie reviews of Something Raw Festival 2006 performances

http://www.brakkegrond.nl/somethingraw2006.htm

STERVEN IN STIJL [DYING IN STYLE] by Hans Bryssinck & Dolores
Bouckaert.
vr 17.02, 19h00, Frascati 3 (45 min.)

Sure, very stylish, all those filmic lights and samples from the OST of
Lost Highway and assorted films and songs (quoting NIN's Hurt made us
chuckle), but please, die *before* 20.00 please. I left in a hush, and
Guido (who stayed put) told me later that people mistakenly thought
that was part of the performance because of my "theatrical stomping"!
Hahaha! He was also kind enough to explain the ordeal to the actress
later. (I did NOT leave because it was crap, but because I had to
attend the show discussed below:)

EMOTIONAL ARCHITECTURE OF MOVEMENT by Diego Gil.
vr 17.02 20h00, Frascati 2 (45 min.)

With his dark hair, bright blue eyes, stereotypical SNDO expansive
movements and very male frame he reminds me of a younger someone I'd
rather not be thinking of. It's the Henry Rollins emotionalism by way
of fatigue invoked grimaces that makes all the difference to me. If
you've seen live footage of Henry Rollins (solo/music, not with Black
Flag or spoken word) I think you know what I'm talking about. It's that
eyes shut-mouth-square guy-on-the-verge-of-breakdown boot-camp face he
puts on when he's trying to put emotion and (disciplinary) feeling into
his hyper-masculine performance. And fortunately, Diego Gil is not as
smooth as u-know-who which makes his repetition, fragmentation and
reassembly of phrases a lot more interesting to look at, as it is never
the exact same thing we are looking at.

I suppose Dirk van Weelden (who wrote the belletrist non-statement for
LISA) doesn't like women at all, otherwise he would have, at the very
least, bothered to point out that in EAoM, Diego Gil is accompanied by
Irina Mueller, a very capable female dancer who has worked with Jochen
Roller amongst others. For me, EAoM was the first time I saw her live,
and I really liked her tomboy-with-the-long-hair PowerPuff
explosiveness (I think I can see why Jochen Roller might pick her to
dance for him, he probably recognizes something of his own explosive
nervous edge in her). I think it supplements Diego Gil's Henry
Rollins-emotionalism quite nicely.

How pathetic that Dirk van Weelden would totally erase her from his
LISA text. There is nothing "unusual" or "introductory" (as it happens
around the clock all the time) about such male erasures of women's
contributions to male-authored art.

More later...

Tex.
Maria Technosux
2006-02-23 14:41:31 UTC
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Post by Maria Technosux
Quickie reviews of Something Raw Festival 2006 performances
http://www.brakkegrond.nl/somethingraw2006.htm
More later...
Tex.
vr 17.02 21h30, de Brakke Grond, Rode Zaal (60 min.)
SARAH MANYA - BELLE

The girl onstage reminds me of Shirley Manson, with her exaggerated
dark make-up. Unfortunately I was the shockingly few people laughing at
Sarah's listing of stereotypical rocknroll poses, poses that Shirley
Manson herself does, poses I've seen many others do both onstage and in
video-clips. I got the impression that Something Raw audiences have
never attended a rock show in their lives, otherwise they would have
gotten the satire.

At long last a woman onstage with flesh on her bones. I feel a little
guilty saying "nice tits", since this was a story about her (character)
being battered and exploited by her wannabe "rockstar boyfriend". I
even hazard the guess that there was a rape scene involved, since the
screeching sound of her thing-length latex go-go boots suggested
dry-fucking to me. I even got the impression that she was crying at the
end during the applause. She piece certainly had the feel of a
self-purification ritual, whereby the woman both mockingly enjoys but
ultimately rejects (removing the go-go boots) the gendered rock cliches
that made her desirable but excessively feminized.

NADA GAMBIER CONFESSIONS - THE AUTOPSY OF A PERFORMANCE

It's a good thing they put this piece of work together with Belle on
the same bill, otherwise it would have been a total rip off. I have
sent Nada "be strong!" Gambier an e-mail telling her exactly what I
thought of her performance, but she has yet to reply.

METTE INGVARTSEN - TO COME
za 18.02, 21h30, Frascati 1 (60 min.)

The blue suits used in the first part reminded me of a website I hear
of a while back called "OBSCENE INTERIORS" (by designer Justin
Jorgensen) which is a collection of pr0n interiors Photoshopped so that
the people are removed thus highlighting the decor in which the pr0n
action takes place:

http://www.justinspace.com/obscene/oi1intro.html

Mette said later during the Q&A that she used the blue suits the same
way that blue screens are used in film animation/special FX: "so that
they audience could projected whoever they wanted onto the blue suits."

I liked it, though I think I liked Manual Focus better because that was
more weird, more surreal, the semi-human characters more ab-normal. By
comparison, To Come is quite straight-forward and comprehensible. The
"creatures" in Manual Focus were another thing altogether, in To Come
it is clear that we are dealing with human beings... who get down and
screw, cos what else is there to do?

I have to wonder though about the 3rd part (to the jazzy big band
music), is that the avant garde version of the "glued on smile" that
ballet dancers are taught to fake from day 1 in class? I wanted to ask
her whether she still enjoys this music as much as she seems to (i.e.
the (im)possibility of performing pleasure onstage).

I also wanted to ask her about how she deals with issues of shame and
reticence in herself and her dancers. I mean, "put your face in my
crotch and then this person will put his face in your crotch and then
we'll moan and thrust"... I don't care how "instrumentalized" or
"open-minded" you think you are about your body, some people would
still get cold feet at being asked to do something like that. Being a
body-artist doesn't necessarily mean people have overcome reticence (I
can imagine them cackling away in the studio to overcome their
shyness). But, lo behold, I was too shy to ask these questions myself!
:-X

There was a Q&A with Mette afterwards, and she also seemed likeable as
a person, openly and adamantly disagreeing with the moderator who was
interviewing her.

Tex.

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