lundi 15 octobre 2012

De l'atome au Soleil


À une cinquantaine de kilomètres de la Vienne Impériale en remontant le Danube, dans la riante campagne autrichienne, se niche entre fleuve et forêt la centrale de Zwentendorf, qui est sans nul doute la centrale nucléaire la moins dangereuse du monde – bien obligé puisqu’elle est restée inactive depuis l’achèvement de sa construction en 1978 ! 

Tout avait pourtant bien commencé en 1972, à part un tremblement de terre – nous ne sommes pas si loin de l’Italie du Nord où ça secoue sévère – qui avait obligé assez rapidement à démolir puis refaire les fondations, et il ne restait plus qu’à appuyer sur le bouton pour lancer la machine quand cette saloperie de démocratie s’en est mêlée ! 

Les dernières années de construction ont en effet vu la naissance et la montée en puissance du mouvement écologiste et anti-nucléaire autrichien, qui ne se contenta pas alors de négocier des places de ministres dans le gouvernement socialiste de l’époque, mais enchaîna manifestations monstres et grèves de la faim. Pour calmer la populace, le gouvernement du Chancelier Kreisky, fort du soutien des industriels et de la plupart des syndicats, décida d’organiser un référendum sur la question du nucléaire, certain de le remporter et de moucher une fois pour toute les adeptes de l’éclairage à la bougie ! 

Mais pouf pouf, les Autrichiens votèrent à 50,5% contre l’ouverture de la centrale de Zwentendorf, et dans la foulée le Parlement se senti obligé de voter une loi interdisant l’utilisation de l’énergie nucléaire en Autriche ! D’ailleurs les anti-nucléaires autrichiens semblent aujourd’hui vouloir réitérer leur exploit au niveau européen en soumettant une pétition à la Commission Européenne pour appeler à l’interdiction du nucléaire dans l’Union (faut bien que le traité de Lisbonne serve à quelque chose). 

Quant à la centrale de Zwentendorf – dont la construction puis le démantèlement auront finalement coûté un milliard d’euros, en pure perte –, elle est restée inactive depuis, et se retrouve donc la seule centrale nucléaire au monde accessible au public ! Elle a d’abord surtout servi de centre d’entraînement pour les techniciens nucléaires allemands – qui ont aussi recyclé pas mal de matériel –, mais ces dernières années elle a commencé à accueillir de nouvelles activités. D’abord elle s’est équipée en 2009 de 1000 panneaux solaires photovoltaïques qui lui ont redonnée sa vocation de centrale thermique, mais elle est aussi devenu un lieu de tournage unique pour films et shows télévisés, et accueille des tournages du monde entier… 

Publié dans Siné Mensuel n°13, Octobre 2012
  

vendredi 1 juin 2012

Amsterdam & Fascinus - Design of the In-Human



“Les machines désirantes au contraire ne cessent de se détraquer en marchant, ne marchent que détraquées.” 
Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari: L’anti-Œdipe. Paris 1972


Dancing on Ashes (Amsterdam) and Dancing on Ashes (Fascinus) operate as a diptych within the series of the six Dancing on Ashes performances proposed in Stuttgart and Berlin between December 2009 and June 2011 (each performance is connected with all the other performances), and they contribute to a narrative and conceptual whole in conjunction with many other works using different media—videos, posters, installations, websites, a novel—all gathered in the transmedia project Angel Meat.

Both performances started from a Duchampian meditation on art and desire from the perspective of fetishism. They depict female characters facing objectified desire and the objects of desire—sometimes themselves—brought to the extreme, until they have become vital and metaphysical issues for the protagonists. These characters are not embodied on stage by actors and the depicted situations are not performed, but are told through a sequenced text projected in the performance space. The performances are based on two forms of historical modern ritualized erotic entertainment: cabaret and the rock concert, highly stylized and reduced to their most immediate and sensitive expression. This rooting into entertainment collides with the contemplative narrative device—that is actually the active medium of this series of performances, an investigation of the cathartic experience of collective reading, questioning stage performance as much as literature in his extended field.

Dancing on Ashes (Amsterdam) is actually a performance-installation in which there are no live performers at all, but music machines (self-playing piano and guitar, sampler...) generating a random and hypnotic music, the projected text, and the video of an Amsterdam-style erotic stand-up comedy number (performed by Ines Birkhan). The text tells the story of Yu, a young dancer who, after learning that she enters the terminal phase of a neurodegenerative disease, decides to live as intensely as possible before her forthcoming death. Having spent her childhood in the Red Light District of Amsterdam in a relative indifference toward the local sex industry, she starts a quest of self-dispossession by abandoning herself to the endless fascination offered by sex shops and sex shows, and eventually discovers the Dancing on Ashes cabaret—the core of the fictional universe of Angel Meat.

Dancing on Ashes (Fascinus) is an in situ performance conceived for the glass room of Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, taking mainly the form of a rock concert played (staged) behind a glass wall on which the text is projected. It tells the ambiguous encounter between two of the main characters of Angel Meat: Skullface, a Berlin jeweler with a complex background revealed by a morbid facial tattoo, and Alicja, a collector and manipulative erotomaniac with twisted designs. The band assembled for the occasion (with the special participation of drummer Marco Barotti) plays a noisy, violent, and de-constructed jazz-rock. The music, stifled by the glass wall, made it possible to conciliate the contemplation needed to dive into reading and experience the vibrant and cathartic energy specific to amplified live music.

The stories of Dancing on Ashes (Amsterdam) and Dancing on Ashes (Fascinus) take place in a world dominated by fetishism, in a society that requires an absolute credulity and the constant acceptance of a fictional interface to keep functioning. Every day, television, advertising, news, politics, and religions ask us to believe in a myriad of fictions, often improbable, if not contradictory. Human desires always have been perverted and reattached onto artificial objects—it is a constant of human societies, if not a prerequisite. But our techno-scientist society systemized the process with technological and intellectual logistics beyond anything that has ever existed. Art and eroticism are probably the only areas in which fetishism is assumed, claimed, cogitated and, therefore can be mastered and applied to the benefit of humanity. Only there, the latent conflict between man and man-made productions can recede; the threats exerted on man by anything meant to increase his own power are subjugated by surrendering joy.

These performances feed without doubt on Georges Bataille’s notion of Eroticism, but more than half a century after it had been a central issue of the surrealist intellectual and artistic vortex, the relation of our society to sexuality has profoundly changed. They also playfully rely on another central object of the investigations of the early twentieth century avant-gardes which are still today’s art basis: mechanical eroticism. But everything has been reversed, there is no need anymore to use the euphemisms of the Bachelor Machine, the Chocolate Grinder, or the Carving Machine to evoke the ecstatic union of man and machine fantasized at the dawn of modernism, and the fascinating dildo of the ancient poetess or the faraway geisha has become the commonplace birthday gift sold at the drugstore. No more ecstasy or panic, but new questions about how and where intimacy and art meet—in desire.

The game of objectified desire requires that the human and inhuman exchange roles again and again until the distinction becomes irrelevant. In (Amsterdam), the self-playing instruments don’t need human musicians, they are activated by strings and electric fans (like Albert Roussel’s elemental music machines), they are puppets—like the talking dildos manipulated by the Comedian for her farcical number, but also like Yu trying to get rid of her ego and become a mere image to escape the feeling of a stone statue growing inside her. In (Fascinus), the musicians wearing the cliché costumes and make-up of two-dimensional rock idols perform behind a glass wall, like the erotic objects in a window (or the prostitutes of Amsterdam) that Skullface exhibits in an art fare, and all the characters display strong artificial interfaces—a facial tattoo for Skullface, heavy jewels and stereotype behavior for Alicja… Objects and images actually play with the people more than the contrary, but it is not a power game, it is a practice of selfless indifference leading to abstraction and serenity through sated desire.

An early concern while elaborating these performances was to generate emotion for the audience through clearly artificial devices—literature, music, technology—better than with theatrical empathy. The performers have no identifiable features but wear iconic make-up and costumes; they only address the audience through stereotyped behavior—either stand-up comedy or a rock concert. But they manipulate objects that have immediate emotional impact, sometimes mixed—like arousal, embarrassment or amusement with the sex toys handled by the Comedian, or excitement or rejection with the music (a combination of phasing complex rhythms, atypical time signatures, distorted sounds, screams and chaotic soundscapes, that one could describe as “math-noise”). But all this is supposed to happen only in the peripheral vision or as auditory stimulation—the most direct emotional levels of perception—because the central device is the narrative text, that has its own powerful way of conveying emotions, not only psycho-physiologically, but as the central cultural element of Judeo-Christian civilization.

In the stories told in the two performances—fragments of a bigger narrative but also meant to stand on their own—like in real life, the protagonists are confronted with an endless series of objects, statues, tools, weapons, toys, jewels, images that they can use as adjuvants in their quest of the self. Actually, one could define human by his ability to conceive, create, and produce the inhuman—and more than an ability it may well be a necessity, as these concepts, images, or objects are permanently determining reality and interfacing with it, up to oneself and one’s fellow humans. The object able to fulfill many levels of human needs—symbolic, phantasmic, metaphysic, aesthetic, erotic—as described by Alicja in (Fascinus) is just a step further than the ordinary paraphernalia of daily life, though it can easily reveal the latent animism of a materialist civilization. But there again, acknowledged and purposeful fetishism is probably much less alienating than its widespread suppressed alternative.


article published on the  Design of the In/Human transmedia research project website in June 2012

vendredi 13 avril 2012

Afterword to Ines Birkhan's novel "Angel Meat. Verwerfungen"


Having finished reading Ines Birkhan ‘s novel Angel Meat. Verwerfungen, you might not be aware that it is not just a novel, but the current culmination of the long term transmedia and collaborative project Angel Meat, of which it is not exactly an achievement – the project is meant to go on endlessly –, but a key manifestation, for Angel Meat is – in spite of existing through many different medias –, primarily a literature project. Having generated artworks in various fields – performances, videos, installations, websites, etc. –, Angel Meat was conceived and developed by two multimedia artists – in that case multimedia is more a technical description than a manifesto, expressing in contemporary terminology the inevitable wide range of curiosity one expects from an artist since the Renaissance – and fed by many sources during the length of its progress, in a complex but playful attempt at elaborating a ‘total artwork’.


During the long process of its conception, birth and maturation, Angel Meat organically evolved, its theoretical and quasi-abstract premises gained flesh and emotions, and therefore from experimental it became experiential, and it might be interesting – though not critical for the appreciation of the novel –, to briefly recall its very early stages. First of course you have people: Ines Birkhan is a writer as much as a dancer and a choreographer, who happens to have studied music and sculpture, Bertram Dhellemmes is a musician, performer, stage and video director and visual artist, and they started collaborating in 2003 for dance and music shows, then films and video installations. When they initiate Angel Meat in 2009, they have already elaborated common strategies to combine in a creative way not only different art disciplines and personal inputs, but also vastly heterogeneous reference fields. They’ve set the path to projects reaching other levels of complexity – not a complexity for the sake of it, that would somehow improve artistic value, but just as a reflect of reality. .

Of the issues that converged to initiate Angel Meat, some were technical, some were aesthetical, some were philosophical, many were raised during previous projects – because art doesn’t bring answers, but more questions – and needed to be processed again… There was a quest of how literature and dance could be combined on stage in a non-theatrical way – how can you not be busy with that when you’re like Ines Birkhan both writing and performing? There was redundancy to embrace the cultural hierarchy of what is relevant or efficient to build our interfaces to reality, and a desire to actively work on the issue from every perspective. There was an investigation in new ways to induce catharsis and create artworks that would immerse their audience in an intense emotional meditation without resorting to dreary old tricks. And there was the need to be intensively involved in a dynamic and exciting creative process – that is always the best way to have something compelling to share with an audience!

Detailing here the whole process would be tedious and irrelevant, and you can consider that most of it emerges in Angel Meat. Verwerfungen, in a way or another. Let’s say that little by little a diegetic world appeared, that would manifest itself in several works and through different medias. Each work is to stand on its own and be independent of the knowledge the audience may have of its belonging to a wider piece, but would contribute to it in its specific way.

The main series of works – and in a way the backbone of the project until this novel was achieved, or at least reached its audience – is the ‘staged literature’ performance series Dancing on Ashes, that is an experiment within the experiment. In Dancing on Ashes, the core of each show is a narrative written text, projected sequentially on the stage, and the performers – dancers and musicians – as much as the scenography and soundscape, provide an intense emotional and atmospheric support to the unique experience of collective reading. The short stories told in the performances, and the characters they introduce, have been incorporated in the novel, though they are not central in it. Only one Dancing on Ashes performance stood out of this model, and was a chaotic attempt at creating an alternative cabaret show, with guests artists performing acts combining comedy, music, dance and erotic exhibitions!

Another important segment of Angel Meat is a series of printed text posters, exhibited together with visual and sound installations and videos: also narrating fragments – revolving around the protagonists – that more or less found their ways in the novel, and also proposing an alternative relation to literature and the act of reading. Several videos have been released on different supports – online or not –, either as autonomous works or combined with other medias, or documenting the performances and the process; parallel web-based projects have appeared (and disappeared), sometimes providing point of views from fictional characters that didn’t obligatorily merge in the main body of Angel Meat, often camouflaged in social networks… And there are many other projects to come over the coming years, that will either deepen what has been created so far, use previously unreleased material, or develop new storylines as well as explore new disciplines.

Having been conceived as an expanded field of literature, Angel Meat was since its earliest stage meant to generate this novel, that therefore doesn’t recycle previous works, no more than it is a higher manifestation of what would have been so far only drafts: everything was elaborated as parts of a whole, and Angel Meat. Verwerfungen is as much a laboratory and an autonomous work than the performances, the videos, the posters, the websites, and everything that is still to come.

Angel Meat fed deliberately on whatever felt relevant to catch the current and strange spirit of the time – that feels unbearably but increasingly just post-post-something, with very little chance given to anything to be the beginning of whatever might happen next –, things often hidden in the many blind spots of our arts and cultures. This would include Black Metal, cheap continental transports, erotic cabaret, TV personality cult, French decadent literature, recreational drugs, Roller Derby, sex toys, antiformal dance and music, amateur political subversion, archeology, yoga, artists squats and communes, jewelry, electric guitars, pansexuality, fashion, haikus, blogging, eschatology, orchid collecting, black blocks, and many more. It was meant to deal with love, sex and death, also initiation, temptation and achievement, the way you can do after Dante, Joyce and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with the tools of experimental arts, dance, music and literature but in a way that would concern its audience. This is overly ambitious of course, and probably bound to fail, but so far it was a quite fruitful experience that at least gave birth to this book.


published in German as afterword to Ines Birkhan's novel Angel Meat. Verwerfungen, Neofelis Verlag, Berlin, April 2012.

mercredi 7 mars 2012

Ach Merkel Gross Malheur !


Faites péter les saucisses et les bretzels, l’Allemagne est le paradis sur terre et le bonheur de l’humanité – et donc de la France – passe apparemment par notre germanisation si l'on en croit notre bon président-candidat ! Mais les Allemands sont-ils vraiment fiers et heureux de faire des sacrifices pour maintenir une économie vigoureuse et florissante ?

D’abord, leur économie a tout de la demi molle malgré les AAA et les leçons que Merkel donne à tout le monde ! La dette allemande n’a rien à envier à celle de ses petits camarades européens – supérieure à celle de l’Espagne, n’inquiétait-elle pas il y a quelques mois le boss de l’Eurogroupe Jean-Claude Juncker, qui s’étonnait de la constance avec laquelle politiciens et économistes teutons arrivent à éviter le sujet… Sans parler des entourloupes comptables entre les Länders et l’état fédéral qui permet de camoufler une bonne partie de cette dette, ni des dédommagements de guerre que l’Allemagne a omis de verser entre autres à la… Grèce après la réunification de 1990. On ajoute à ça les prévisions de croissance pour 2012 en chute libre, la stagnation de la consommation et des heures travaillées, la récession démographique, pas de quoi chanter Kikiriki !

Mais surtout, les déclassés du miracle allemand n’ont pas leur mot à dire – et de moins en moins. Il faut d’abord savoir qu’il n’y a pas de salaire minimum en Allemagne : quand on travaille dans l’industrie avec un bon syndicat pour négocier les salaires, c’est supportable, mais ce n’est pas la majorité, du coup cela donne 6,5 millions de travailleurs pauvres – à moins de 10 euros de l’heure – y compris 2 millions en dessous de 4 euros ! Autres chiffres, un tiers des emplois y sont précaires : soit à durée déterminée, soit à temps partiel, et un dixième est un minijob – salaire plafonné à 400 euros par mois, sans charges ni prestations sociales…

Et ces petits boulots de misères, on est bien obligé de les accepter depuis que le gouvernement Schröder a instauré un régime de terreur dans l’indemnisation des chômeurs ! Les agences pour l’emploi ayant à atteindre un quota de 40% de radiations, tous les coups sont permis : impossibilité de refuser un emploi, obligation de se soumettre aux fameux « jobs à un euro » sous peine de sanctions, rejets de dossiers arbitraires, surveillance des comptes bancaires... Les tribunaux sont tellement saturés de demandes de recours – jusqu’à des plaintes pour travail forcé qui devraient arriver devant la Cour Européenne des Droits de l’Homme d’ici dix ans – les tribunaux sont très forts pour faire traîner les dossiers –, que les dépôts de plaintes sont désormais… payants !

Mais bon, au moins en Allemagne, quand le président à trop de casseroles au cul, il démissionne comme Christian Wullf, il n’est pas déclaré irresponsable quinze ans plus tard pour échapper à la justice tout en siégeant au conseil constitutionnel…


Publié dans Siné Mensuel n°7, Mars 2012