Politics of Rehearsal
Karen and I were in Los Angeles this past weekend for her Uncle Abby's 90th birthday and on Sunday we had some time to go the Armand Hammer Museum to see a show by an artist I had never heard of, but who is apparently (according to the show brochure), one of the most important artists working today - Francis Alys - a Belgian now living and working in Mexico.
Francis Alys: Politics of Rehearsal was a small show, but with some big ideas, focused on concepts of rehearsals and repetition, failure and success, storytelling and performance.
I was particularly drawn to the idea of rehearsals and repetitions as a metaphor for how to stay open to the possibilities of change, how change and the constant practice of preparing for and executing against ideas by using repetitive actions created both spaces of efficiency and an interesting counterbalance to the notions of efficiency and productivity in the clash of modern worlds and traditional worlds.
Alys uses some simple devices - a man pushing a block of ice through the streets while it slowly melts to nothing more than a puddle of water; a car driving up a hill to the music of a band rehearsing, and every time the band interrupts their playing, having the car roll back down the hill and start again and repeating this over and over; a stripper in a nightclub going through the process of undressing as a singer and piano player rehearse, and much like the car scenario, every time the singer and pianist interrupt their rehearsal, the stripper re-dresses herself and starts over again as well with varying amounts of success at the re-dressing until she finally gets through her act and is completely undressed. All of these scenes are videotaped, and video is the primary vehicle used in the show to communicate the art.
All of these different "rehearsals" were interesting investigations of time schemes, concepts of efficiency/inefficiency, productivity, the idea of development and modernity, and in many ways brought into mind things like the mechanics, poetics, politics and vocabulary of rehearsal as a form unto itself.
The video of the man pushing the block of ice through the streets, a piece called Paradox of Praxis, 1997, was fascinating to watch for both the idea of action and inaction - the concept of "sometimes making something leads to nothing" - another interesting take on the role of rehearsal in performance and life.
The other interesting piece in the show was When Faith Moves Mountains. Five hundred volunteers with shovels moved a giant sand dune outside of Lima, Peru, over the course of a day, but of course, only moved it somewhat figuratively and only an inch or so - kind of a massive collective effort for a minimal return on that effort where by the next day no one would even notice that this action had taken place. Alys called it a kind of social allegory where the piece is a true rehearsal for events that still remain potential, things that may or may not happen in the future.
Alys is interested in exploring and producing work that has a certain resistance to imposition of modernity on traditional cultures, especially in Latin America, but at the same time using the fluidity of rehearsals as a means of exploring the potential for change by addition, deletion, improvement, simplification - all doors to further exploration.
While I'm not sure that the execution of the pieces was all that interesting, the ideas conveyed were, and that made it a show worth my time.
Francis Alys: Politics of Rehearsal was a small show, but with some big ideas, focused on concepts of rehearsals and repetition, failure and success, storytelling and performance.
I was particularly drawn to the idea of rehearsals and repetitions as a metaphor for how to stay open to the possibilities of change, how change and the constant practice of preparing for and executing against ideas by using repetitive actions created both spaces of efficiency and an interesting counterbalance to the notions of efficiency and productivity in the clash of modern worlds and traditional worlds.
Alys uses some simple devices - a man pushing a block of ice through the streets while it slowly melts to nothing more than a puddle of water; a car driving up a hill to the music of a band rehearsing, and every time the band interrupts their playing, having the car roll back down the hill and start again and repeating this over and over; a stripper in a nightclub going through the process of undressing as a singer and piano player rehearse, and much like the car scenario, every time the singer and pianist interrupt their rehearsal, the stripper re-dresses herself and starts over again as well with varying amounts of success at the re-dressing until she finally gets through her act and is completely undressed. All of these scenes are videotaped, and video is the primary vehicle used in the show to communicate the art.
All of these different "rehearsals" were interesting investigations of time schemes, concepts of efficiency/inefficiency, productivity, the idea of development and modernity, and in many ways brought into mind things like the mechanics, poetics, politics and vocabulary of rehearsal as a form unto itself.
The video of the man pushing the block of ice through the streets, a piece called Paradox of Praxis, 1997, was fascinating to watch for both the idea of action and inaction - the concept of "sometimes making something leads to nothing" - another interesting take on the role of rehearsal in performance and life.
The other interesting piece in the show was When Faith Moves Mountains. Five hundred volunteers with shovels moved a giant sand dune outside of Lima, Peru, over the course of a day, but of course, only moved it somewhat figuratively and only an inch or so - kind of a massive collective effort for a minimal return on that effort where by the next day no one would even notice that this action had taken place. Alys called it a kind of social allegory where the piece is a true rehearsal for events that still remain potential, things that may or may not happen in the future.
Alys is interested in exploring and producing work that has a certain resistance to imposition of modernity on traditional cultures, especially in Latin America, but at the same time using the fluidity of rehearsals as a means of exploring the potential for change by addition, deletion, improvement, simplification - all doors to further exploration.
While I'm not sure that the execution of the pieces was all that interesting, the ideas conveyed were, and that made it a show worth my time.
posted by Paul Salinger at 8:59 PM
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