P’repetition
Savier Klaro
Viewport Festival
Everyone has their stone to bear. Savier Klaro’s (see below) latest production, P’repetition, was based on a line from Prometheus “one’s intended destiny must be lightly accepted due to its impact and inevitability”.
The room was empty except for rocks and two 35mm cameras with flash units, which were set up facing a screen, behind which was a stool. A plainly dressed man then entered the room carrying the letter “T”, stood in front of the cameras, and snapped, using a cable release, his own photo. He put the letter down on the floor, and spread out other letters that were hidden behind it. He then sat down on the stool. Another person entered, carrying another letter, while the first person, now on the stool, took the second person’s photo. The 2nd person then, spread out, from behind, their new letters on the floor.
The 2nd person then picked up a stone, proceeded to the other side of the room, and began juggling the stone.
These actions repeated with new people displaying a letter, having their photo taken, spreqading them out and spelling a word, and carrying out some task with a stone. The tasks were repetitious, and clearly without any clear meaning: standing on stones, sitting on stones, making noises on stones, carrying stones on ones back, or with one’s midriff, balancing stones, etc.
At the same time, words were being projected on the back wall: FATE out, ineVITAble, sufFERTILE, COGNITiOn. After Prometheus’ complete saying was spelled out, after 8 or 9 players had had their photo taken, and were carrying out their occupations with their individual stones, the play ended.
This performance was written and conceived by Jürgen Waldmann, and Sabine Felker. IMR.NET spoke with them:
Gary Levinson: Can you explain the title: P’repetition?
SK: P’REPETITION refers to both the theme ‘repetition’, around which the project revolves, and also to the performance-trilogy P’RESETS 1-3, which has as themes: Repetition, Variation, and Sequence. That’s to say that the word PRE means at the same time the preparation and the condition for the next step in the project. The following part of P’RESETS is always based on the previous performances.
GL: I noticed that when you were taking the photos, you had the players take both frontal and lateral photos, like in a prison mug shot. What is the significance of this?
SK: Photos of this kind repeat the significant surface of a person. They are tools of identification. The introduction photos are in a conflicting relationship with the closing photo, a group shot, that serves as a further reminder - a mental repetition of the context and situation - of the hierarchy and identification in the group.
GL: Projected on the screen from behind the photo shoot, was a projection of the cage used in your last project. How do you relate the 2 performances? Do you always try to incorporate pieces from your earlier work in your present project? What does this cage mean or symbolise to you?
SK: The performance P’REPETITION consists of 3 elements that build on another. They came to be out of our preoccupation with methods of repetition; processes and machines and their ideological implications. The first repetition phenomenon is the procession. A procession is a repetition, the repetition, later, of a base situation, the base symbols, the guarantor of society. Through repetition, the society’s supporting ‘moment of meaning’ is attained. The now plays off the past.
In P’REPETITION a metal form is dragged through the city. It comes from our last performance ERGINDWON. There it plays a central roll, as cell, as centre of idealistic philosophy, as machineal heart. Removed from this context it is as unoccupied, emptied, coreless form - as skeleton - and it asks the question: What “transports” a decentralised centre, or the form, released of meaning, of the procession.
Generally, we are interested in the replaying and transformation of aspects of our earlier works. A performance is always a phase, not a finality. Single ideas, concepts, objects are further worked on; they are integrated in other works and newly formulated. In spite of this, we choose, in our aesthetic language, a specific approach and means of proceeding for each work.
GL: Before the piece started, there was a man on the roof in front of the theatre/room cutting up the cage. The cage then reappeared later in the performance locked around the window frame. Any explanation?
SK: The starting point to one approach to the theme repetition was the text “Prometheus bound”. The central sentence of this performance says: “one’s intended destiny must be lightly accepted due to its impact and inevitability.” A clue about this is given as a reference on one of the room’s columns. The action of fettering - the welding of the cage(from the procession) - onto the buildings architecture indicates this on the one hand, as banal indication of this dramaturgic level of the performance.
On the other hand, this action is the source for the media-cycle, in which already finished material (video of the procession) and contemporary material (the welding of the cage ) are connected, in the media-cycle fed, and transferred and repeated from medium to medium. The picture level of the media-cycle is again the starting point for the next day’s prospect -an exhibition of a photo-documentation of the performance by means of photos, that are made of the actors live - in which the cage (centre) as present, released object, dominates its duplication.
GL: There were some words projected on the back wall (FATE out, ineVITAble, sufFERTILE, COGNITiOn) Why were they selected? How do they relate to the piece?
SK: ‘Fate’, ‘inevitable’, ‘suffering’, ‘cognition’ are repeated extracts, central terms from Prometheus’ sentence: “the intended destiny…’. ‘Destiny’, ‘inevitable’, ‘suffer’, ‘knowledge’ are robbed through repetition, through addition or reinterpretation - through other tragic interpretations - of their pathos; that’s to say transported into the light and positive. The indispensable ‘destiny’ fade out, life, its own resume, not the inevitable predetermined; the fertile not the suffering; the knowledge that everything will come as it does, occurs as not-yet-knowledge, concealed - knowledge in cognito. The “fatal” of Prometheus’ sentence, that points to the western meaning of the repetition, as an obligation of repetition, as evil, as penalty, is transformed, as it is diverted, into a positive view of the repetition - repetition as training of perception, as opportunity for the perception of differences. The same is not repeated, rather the identical other.
GL: Any comments about the music played during the performance?
SK: The piano music is likewise a translation, a copy, a transformation of the sentence ‘the intended destiny…’ and its translations ‘Fate out’, etc. A short, about 30 second, lasting musical line is continuously repeated, rotated and is with that thinned out. Both musicians, who play with 4 hands, play this line around 60 times, always the same, at least in one’s head. What you can hear of it, are at some point only fragments, until nothing at all is left - for the listener. This music is interrupted or overlayered every 2.5 minutes through 6 computer derived fragments from the finale of Beethoven’s “Eroica”, which can be understood as Prometheus’ music. They are a part of a media circle, through which light sensors, which measure the light intensity of the video projection give them to a computer that regulates these light intensities. These measurements regulate the illuminated letters, the video mixing of the 4 live cameras, and of the film of the procession, along with the volume proportions of a selection of Eroica-fragments; and the direction of the ‘play’.
A completely separate aspect of the sound arrangements are the performer’s noises, which get continually louder, as more performers are appearing, while the piano music continuously becomes less. This is a type of Cross-Fade in the room, from one of the room’s halves to the other. The Eroica-fragments are some constants.
GL: I noticed that this piece was less complex than the usual fare from Savier Klaro, and it was much easier to understand what you were trying to show, because of the use of words. Is Savier Klaro going mainstream?
SK: No, that’s why we remarked in the program that it was considered by us to be a “Performance-Study”. This is pieces like the ones we have always done. ”Ohrzeit ”, ”Timetable”, ”A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg” and now ”P’REPETITION”. These studies are less extravagant and complex. They are studies or preliminary projects for investigation of an aesthetic question or problem. In this case, we are interested in the possibilities of an autonomous self regulating media circle, which is linked to repetition and transformation in an occurrence.
GL: Do you find that you are limiting the possibilities of the public’s interpretation, by using words (that make complete sense) in a performance? Isn’t this giving a pre-decided meaning? An already formulated interpretation?
SK: We are interested in the structure of fields of tension or conflict. In the case of P´REPETITION, the sentence from Prometheus urges a clear interpretation of the repetition theme. This sentence is confronted and ironicised with concepts, processes, and procedures, which urge a different/opposite reading and interpretation. There comes into being a paradoxically aesthetic creation. That’s why we work with direct opposites, which for performances, have unusually complex structures and hard ruptures. We ask questions, we give no answers. The interpretation is fragile, it can not remain unmistakable, one-dimensional.
GL: Where did you get the idea for this piece, and where did the idea of using the “destiny” quote come from?
SK: Repetition, variation, and succession are the themes in P’RESETS 1-3. These aspects have already, for a long time, concerned us and are always themes in our work. We wanted to dedicate ourselves in P’REPETITION explicitly to these concepts. We simply didn’t want to present a minimalistic approach to repetition, rather we were looking for other aspects, because we are more interested in the demonstration of fields-of-conflict than in clearness. Then we stumbled on to the Prometheus stuff, from which is beautifully seen the western presentation of the dimension of repetition. In this sentence about destiny it makes itself especially clear.
GL: I noticed that during the whole performance, and also during other performances in the Viewport festival, you were constantly filming it, recording it on video tape. Is this for archival purposes, or do you considerate this part of the performance?
SK: The recording of the Performances during the festival was only made for documentation reasons, for us and for the artists.
GL: Savier Klaro organised the whole Viewport festival. What was most difficult in trying to set up an alternative theatre festival? Did you have problems with funding?
SK: SAVIER KLARO is the group of artists. As management of the darK. (organisation for the co-ordination of performing art e.V. ) which is with SAVIER KLARO quasi identical (Sabine Felker, Jürgen Waldmann in collaboration with Art-historian Raimund Ziemer) we connect, under the title ART HAPPENS! with the public. That was not always so.
As far as that goes, a first ‘action’ under this title, was the VIEWPORT festival. The main problem for this festival was the financing. That is, at the moment, unfortunately always the main problem. But in the end, it all worked, that the cultural funds of the Mainz business community just at the last minute participated in the support. Otherwise we would have wished for more time, to make possible other forms of co-operation, as for example the co-operation with the Landesmuseum (State Museum).
GL: I noticed that at the Viewport festival there were many solo-artists/performers. Did you purposely select single acts, or is it just a nature of the medium, that alternative performances, are more easily organised by 1 player groups?
SK: The was really not the concept. There are, in fact, in this area many solo artists, and as far as that goes, that’s how it turned out. A bigger Performance production, for example, would have come to nothing however, because at this point in time there was too little money and it turned out that the darK. -Halle, as premises, is not suitable for these. There are artists that work with groups, there are Performance-Ensembles, of which we also take a very strong interest. Maybe there will be more of them to see at the next VIEWPORT.
Also part of the Viewport festival was a performance by Maren Strack, Ivory Stone, doing a dance on destruction of the ivory tower of art appreciation, and a performance by Erika Enders, Table Time - a family legend, showing the cost of verbal self-repression in the realm of the family.
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