Another friday

And another Friday just went through.

This time we had the chance to show our pieces, but not without the traditional bit of haggling (thanks Ilka for your assertiveness).

This Friday I presented a little installation, which mainly was a visual gag, inspired somehow by Gary Larson.

The setting was the next:


An image of the real Louvre museum where the original Gioconda is exhibited, having replaced it with a version from some graffiti artist (whose name couldn't find) was projected. Four drawing mannequins were placed in front of the projection representing shock and loath.




The text next to the display said:


"It finally happened.

It wasn't Banksy but another graffiti artist who took over the Louvre museum, and changed the original Gioconda for his own version.

Clouds of confused American and Japanese tourists admired how well ahead of his time Da Vinci was.

The roaring of the camera flashes muffled the screaming of the French connoisseurs..."

On the right side of this note I placed a notebook where I asked the audience to continue telling the story.

This is how the story followed:


...and they started throwing their coffee soaked croissants at it in a blinding rage
as the crowds of screaming tourists ran from the museum a lone figure stood and admired the masterpiece
and then, he took his knife and took the drawing off the wall, put it in his luggage
looking around, everyone staring at him. Suddenly he begin to run but as we can see the guy in the middle is looking left, he saw an original Banksy
and it's a work in progress! -, he wondered.."-. I think I will never make it -
The American took pictures in front of it
and then a Greek "connoisseur" tears apart the "fake" picture and puts in its place a statue of ancient Aphrodite.. cause Leonardo Da Vinci was a Greek. Didn't you know it?

Double reactions from the audience:

Some people did believe that that story really happened, and sadly I had to burst their bubble and explain that still a dream no one had achieved yet.

Some people didn't get the role of the mannequins, and ask what did they represent?
Is pitiful when you have to explain the joke it looses the surprise factor, is not funny any more.

But the fact that some people didn't get it, made me think that maybe the way of staging it wasn't the right one.

In specific the short talk I had with Douglas (who by the way wasn't very impressed with the whole thing) put things more clear.

The aim of this experiment was to try to bridge the gap between visual languages via action:




The action represented by the mannequins: shock, loath, confusion, disgrace...
was intended to merge the different languages ( projection and figurines), but this action wasn't intense and powerful enough to lead the imagination to ignore the difference.



Instead what happened was confusion and misunderstanding for the representational role of the figurines, is like they didn't belong to that setting.


This issue brings me back to Appia and his discourse about the materiality of the performer and the materiality of the scenography:

His main argumentation is against the use of painted backcloth:

The body (of the actor) is alive, mobile and plastic; it exits in three dimensions. Space and the objects used by the body must most carefully take this fact into account...
...Our stage directors have, for a long time, sacrificed the physical and living presence of the actor to the dead illusion of painting. under such a tyranny, it is obvious that the human body could never develop in any normal way its means of expression.

Adolphe Appia, Actor, Space , Light, Painting (1919)



I'd like also to quote Erika Fischer-Lichte on her book the Transformative power of performance:

"..products of technical and electronic media. While they might simulate effects of presence, they are unable to generate presence itself...they create impression of presentness without actually bringing forth these bodies or objects as present... Human bodies, their fragments, objects, and landscapes are made to seem present in a particularly immediate manner but they remain constituted only of moving lights or pixel arrangements on a screen. Real human bodies, objects, or landscapes actually remain absent anywhere on the movie, television, or computer screen."






Is like coming back to Magritte's pipe.

We know that is just a drawing of a pipe but we want to believe is a pipe.







From here I reclaim illusion. Illusion as part of the theatre, illusion as part of the performance, illusion as part of life.

One of the most powerful weapons Theatre has is the power of make-believing.

From the classical concept of character, to the set, lights, sound and everything that composes theatre, we playing with illusion.

Even in performing arts, in way or another there is always an element of illusion or make-believing.

I will continue preaching about this issue, is not over




By the way this is Douglas' work