Quivering world weave
By Elin Hyland, Morgenbladet 12/10 2007
Somewhere
between an audio-visual travelogue and junk-concert, Verdensteatret creates a noisy poetic atmosphere
with its roots in a river of cultural history.
Caption: Unique: Verdensteatrets
nomadic life as artists shines through as something other than life
in a classical theatre.
The stage
holds no people, but a field of stadium megaphones stare back at a buzzing
premiere audience on its way into the Black Box amphitheatre. The megaphones,
with their lily-like petals, seem to have grown up through the floor to tell
us, or perhaps guard us against, something. Suddenly, one of them starts
rotating. A flow of incoherent French-sounding noise fills the room.
Technologys harvest spider.
We are attending Verdensteatrets latest work louder. The long back wall serves as the
visual canvas of the performance, in the first tableau hung with a picturesque
blood-pink flower. Around it, branches quiver, which in one moment seem poetically
beautiful and in the next become threatening shadows which turn your eyes
toward an over-dimensioned robotic harvest spider (sic!), a threatening visual
centre, slightly to the side in this stage setting. Then the human actors enter
the already arranged machinery on stage and embark on a journey of audiovisual
tableau. The pictures from the Mekong River (a cargo ship, a ship of war, fog)
mixes with the soundscape, and after a while with a shadowlike theatre of
primitive prehistoric figures and shapes which are cranked across the stage on
a roof of strings. The figures cut through a commotion of noise, poetry and
different languages and moods. At times in the form of silent conversations
between the actors on stage, at times in some kind of musical battling.
Riches of culture?
The performance is part of the
Ultima Contemporary Music Festival which again is seen as part of the Contemporary
Stage Festival. Despite the lack of a spoken thematic profile for the festival,
certain streams of contemporary art find their lines of communication across
different forms of expression. We have been given thundering texts by Nobel
winner Jelinek, which open up a suppressed cultural historical
complex: fertile soil for terrorism in a European context. We have seen German
plays which portray the downfall of the individual in its own capitalism-based
success (Unter Eis),
and negroes and dogs in battle against the white man and his burden as
responsible for the development of the world.
Verdensteatret, a
broad artistic ensemble fronted by Lisbeth Bodd and Asle Nielsen,
conceived louderthrough
travels along the Mekong River in Vietnam. In a parallel to the above
mentioned performances, loudercan also be connected with European-American war and colonial history,
and the relations between riches of culture and oppression of culture in the
so-called global times in which we live. At any rate, it is easy to interpret
the performance in that direction, although louderdoes not make a huge fuss about its
relevance to modern times. Verdensteatret however, invites you
to an open forum of reflection where external categories are sucked into a
cacophony of cooperating and conflicting powers. Aesthetic, as well as
reflecting on society.
Signature.
This is where Verdensteatrets
nomadic life as artists shines through as something other than life
in a classical theatre institution. The latter mentioned often with all the
worlds themes at hand, but still well rooted in the theatres neutral area
of reflection and the interaction of dramatic text, direction and actors. With
their works, Verdensteatret has demonstrated a demolition of
this trinity, where what is created within the stage is in a close to organic
relation to the outer world. Through their travels, and through a founding
principle of associational dramaturgy, they have managed to create an aesthetic
signature second to none. louderstands as an ultimate artistic reflection of
modern times, and a voyage through theatre technology and cultural history
which pulls at the nervous system of the world weave.
The classic moment
Therese
Bjrneboe, Klassekampen 08/10 2007
Verdensteatret seems to have reached the point where
form and substance are in perfect symmetry.
Caption: Successful: With this performance, Verdensteatret
seems to master their own peculiar form to perfection.
Verdensteatret: louder
Made by: Lisbeth Bodd, Asle Nilsen, Hkon Lindbck, Piotr
Pajchel et al.
Black Box Theatre
A full house and great
anticipation awaited the premiere of Verdensteatrets latest performance
Saturday. louder is part of a series of performances which are all connected
to travel, preferentially to non-European countries and former colonies. The
Oslo based company has gathered a growing audience on its way, and had its
international break-through, due to the use of modern technology amongst other
reasons. Last year they were awarded the prestigious price Bessie Award in New
York.
In louder, Vietnam and the Mekong
River is the endpoint of the journey and according to the program the
performance consists of driftwood and other materials from this voyage. With louderVerdensteatret also shows that they are
moving increasingly further away from what one traditionally associates with
theatre. Finding a fitting term for what they do is equally difficult. The
video footage and image projections shown are connected to the river and the
journey, whereas a giant spider with black shoes on its feet stands to the
right on the stage. The spider could possibly be a metaphor for colonial times
and American warfare.
louderis a performance devoid
of any normal storytelling. The few remaining fragments of human speech are
distorted and digitally manipulated Vietnamese and French, plus the recurring
and meaningless American clich: Just ask, if you require something I will answer.
Verdensteatret asks of
the audience to open up all senses, as the performance is about presence,
listening and observation. Something which also triggers certain ambivalence,
as the performance is a great aesthetic experience, yet still presents the feeling
that there is something – what lies behind it all, the real – which
escapes ones consciousness. This also serves as a reminder of how our views are
dulled by media projections which manipulate us into believing that reality is
actually like these readable and well-arranged stories.
Across the stage several fishing lines are stretched with which the actors make
sound, like some kind of dyslectic telegraph line, by using violin bows. Along
the same lines, an arrangement of weird shapes and figures, hands and sculls
are pushed. As in the later performances of Verdensteatret, where similar
shapes and figures are used, they produce associations to witchcraft and
voodoo. Big speakers, or radars, on the floor turn like robots talking
incomprehensible (digitally manipulated) gibberish, while at the same time
offering slight associations to Indochinese straw hats or spinning parasols. An
image of transformation, from peasant country to high tech, which at the same
time is a landscape.
The image material also refers to visions of Hell. One is presented with
pictures by the painter Bruegel (I believe), and old water-colour paintings
from Indochina, or the colonisation of America, where dead bodies hanging from
trees are part of an innocent portrayal of nature.
The performance itself is as brittle as cobweb, whereas at the same time the
sculptural compression of sound offers the feeling of standing in front of a
well filled with prehistoric noises and strangled screams.
Throughout the years
that Verdensteatret has been at it, the core consisting of Lisbeth Bodd and
Asle Nilsen have cooperated with a series of different participants with varied
backgrounds. Theatre-folk, artists, sculptors, musicians, computer experts and
sound-technicians. louderincludes actors side by side with stage-technicians
which frequently enter the stage to run the mechanical installations of shape
or sound. In this respect, louder may also be experienced as some kind of
cannibalistic orchestral sculpture which transforms the people on stage as
well as the images and props into an echo of something else.
Through this performance Verdensteatret seems to master the form to perfection.
The series is a pioneering project which has taken much work, exploration and
failing. Now we wait and see whether this form becomes an artistic signature
which can be recycled infinitely. Right now Verdensteatret seems to have reached
the point where form and substance are in perfect symmetry, reached their
classic point.
A
comatised life form
Verdensteatret, louder,
Black Box Teater, Store scene
6 – 7 october,
and 9 – 14 october, 2007
Part of the Contemporary
Festival 07 and Ultima.
Anette Therese
Pettersen, kunstkritikk.no
Verdensteatret has
created art in the crossover between theatre, music, images and installations
for over twenty years. Their latest performance, louder, is like a separate organism of which the
viewer becomes a part. A comatised life form whose memory is revealed in
glimpses.
Entering Store
Scene (the Big Stage) of Black
Box Theatre once Verdensteatret has rebuilt the room for their latest
performance Louderis like entering something familiar yet at the same time
unknown. The landscape seems deserted, still everything has life. There are no
clear divides between what is living and what is dead, and the whole room
serves as a living machine. Or a mechanised entity?
The room is filled
with peculiar constructions, shapes, video footage and megaphones. Not to
mention a sculpture made up of legs which walk and walk without going anywhere.
It looks like a giant spider, dressed up in pants and shoes. Nylon strings are
stretched along the room, resembling the racks for dried fish found in Lofoten,
and it turns the whole room into a gigantic instrument.
louder is not based on a dramaturgic sequence of
actions. In theatre-terms I would place it in post-dramatic tradition, meaning
a theatre where text is not superior to the other elements of the performance,
and where the dramaturgic plot is absent. The performance can hardly be summed
up as a story, more like a series of sequences relieving one another.
Just when one got used
to one of the props in the room, each time the eye or ear becomes comfortable,
something new happens. The actors move quietly through the room, from one
element to the next. They shift the megaphones, play the strings with violin
bows, tin cans and their hands. They give life to the lifeless while at the
same time remaining at a distance. Thus the roles are swapped: the actors
become machines, and the objects in the room become storytellers at the centre
of the action.
An amateur amongst
the established.
I might as well admit
it straight away: this is my Verdensteater-debut. Slightly awkward to admit, a
bit like studying dramatic arts without knowing Brecht, and so I arrive at
Black Box this Sunday night with great expectations and awe. How this performance
compares to previous works will be impossible for me to decide, but my first
meeting with Verdensteatret is a strong one. And at the same time somewhat
domestically harmonious: I immediately find my place in their peculiar
universe.
The participants of
Verdensteatret come from various fields within the art world, together they
create performances which struggle to fit into what one normally associates
with theatre. Even though one may well view louder as an installation or a
concert, there is something about the actual experience that makes it a strong
theatrical experience.
Verdensteatret seems
an opposite of e.g. the French/Austrian company Superamas who visited Black Box
Theatre the previous week. Superamas have a smooth, polished and superficial
expression. Verdensteatret, on the other hand, gives us fragments of something
underlying, we get to see something surface, or the remains of something which
has been. Where Superamas had me nodding in recognition without further
pondering, Verdensteatret mixes that recognition with the completely foreign.
And just as you manage to grab hold of something, it slips.
The comatised entity
This winter,
Verdensteatret set out on a long journey to Vietnam and the Mekong River. Jon
Refsdal Moe writes in the performances program that as in Apocalypse Now, the
very same river serves as the circulation of blood around the heart of
darkness. What they experienced there I dont know. Nor is it of great
importance. But the journey is present through the whole performance, beating
like a pulse. And this is exactly how it feels. It is as if the whole room
breathes, a steady and strong pulse of which we are a part. Once in a while the
temperature rises and then falls again.
This is how I presume
it must be like to sit inside a comatised organism or entity. In a room which
on the surface may seem deserted and dormant, but where life flourishes just
below the surface. One catches glimpses of different stories, images, memories
and nightmares, like something which may pass over the retinas of someone in a
coma. From the inside of this entity we must ourselves guess what the images
represent. Is what we see memories of what happened right before the entity
entered the coma? Or rather a nightmare of what is going on outside? The images
flutter past, without reasoning or explanations.
Out of the megaphones
facing the audience come text fragments, music and incomprehensible noise. At
times the sound reaches a level threatening to blow your eardrums, but in the
next moment the noise is reduced and the performance throbs on. The increasing
noise may be understood as the entity being uncomfortable, having reached a
painful memory. As if the entity can express itself through some undefined
intensity of the senses.
The glimpses of the
Mekong River, on a screen partly blackened, accompanied by the sound of a
motorised boat – possibly also a helicopter – and a machine gun,
triggers a story of war in me. Verdensteatret manipulates and distorts both
sounds and images so that everything seems unclear. Thus one is forced to
actively seek the stories which may lie underneath. Images from various
American Vietnam movies run through my head – someone one the run, hiding
under the deck of a small river boat – but then the mood changes again. A
new story is about to surface.
The dormant entity in
which we find ourselves, or rather, are a part of is working hard at
reconstructing its own memories. We are in the ashes of an unknown catastrophe.
Inside something which has survived and which struggles to stay alive. The
memories of what has happened mix with each other just as they do in our own
dreams. An absurd yet somehow completely inevitable course of actions is
developing.
From scenes of war to
a peaceful house faade along a river, still in Asian surroundings. Someone is
moving behind one of the large windows, and then suddenly a black curtain is
pulled down so that one may observe no more. The curtain covers a wide strip
along the house faade. Something comes swimming out of the house only to
disappear again. It could have been a bird, a duck perhaps, but the movements
were mechanical and sudden, as if this too was a mechanised animal. The image
freezes before a new entity pops up, a fire-breathing creature this time. Sparks
fly as it moves back and forth in anger upon the surface of the water in front
of the house. The sound in the room follows up the action, until suddenly
broken off.
One of the most
visible theatrical elements in louder comes in the form of shadow play. On the above mentioned
strings are placed figures and shapes in metal which are pulled back and forth
across the stage. Thus they cross through the path of both the video projection
and the lighting with the scary effect of figures chasing each other on a
backdrop of different Asian landscapes. A flock of metal figures on a spree are
chased back by a larger creature moving towards them. This too suggests a
story, which again is not told in its entirety.
louder is experienced as incredibly insisting, and in
the interaction of the performances elements fragments and pieces of the
puzzle appear which Im unable to fit together. There is something big brother
can see you about the whole thing. Many of the elements give me a feeling of
surveillance, both in the video footage and in the parts of conversations heard
when the actors pull fingers along the strings. I get the feeling that louder will stick with me. It has gotten under my
skin where it lies waiting. Like a dormant entity waiting to wake up. In glimpses
it pops up in my consciousness, reminds me of a scene or deepens a sequence,
before yet again going to sleep. A comatised entity which has become a part of
me and which may awaken in full force at any time.
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